BUSH : Running Against the Grain

Heading into the Republican Convention, it’s commonplace to cite the enormous challenge George Bush faces in overcoming almost 2-1 opposition among female voters and so-called Reagan Democrats. The untold story, however, may be another Bush weakness: 30%-40% of self-identified conservatives tell pollsters they’re backing Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. That sound you hear may be the old Richard M. Nixon-Ronald Reagan coalition cracking--right under Bush’s feet.

Bush’s personality is part of the problem. Candidates don’t register 40% negative ratings in national surveys because Mr. and Mrs. Middle America regard them with abiding affection. Other important voter doubts are cultural, ideological, institutional and historical in nature. However dubious conservatives may be of Dukakis’ professed centrism, an undercurrent of doubt exists regarding Bush--about his ability to govern as well as win.

So far, the vice president doesn’t seem to understand the extent of these doubts. Yet they are caveats he should consider in analyzing his 17-point lag in George Gallup’s poll. Let me hasten to stipulate: U.S. conservatives, some 30%-35% of the electorate, come in all flavors, mirroring the right’s expanded constituency. And most would probably only pick one or two items from the smorgasbord of skepticism about Bush I am about to lay on the table. Nonetheless, here they are:

Doubt No. 1 : Bush’s Culture. If there is one pivotal reason why Bush is a poor candidate to rally the electoral coalition of Nixon and Reagan, it’s culture--the limited salability of a man who’s almost a caricature of zip-a-dee doo-dah Eastern preppiness to a constituency that’s become populist instead of establishmentarian. Since the mid-1960s, “conservatism” has become the predominant force in U.S. presidential elections, adding to its base with ex-George Wallace voters, Southern white fundamentalists, white ethnics, “tax revolt” populists, South Boston anti-busing demonstrators, Minnesota right-to-lifers and the like. By demographic comparison, Yuppie libertarians are nothing but small cheese.

Yet for these “outsider” constituencies, Bush’s nomination is almost a cultural flashback to the Franklin D. Roosevelt-Harry S. Truman era image of Republicans as Episcopalian stockbrokers from the Philadelphia Main Line. How many pickup-truck and street-corner conservatives will vote for a man who re emarked--on losing an autumn, 1987, Iowa straw poll--that his supporters must have been at air shows, on the golf course or at debutante parties? Not too many, folks.

Doubt No. 2: Bush’s Other-Directedness. Bush is the classic second-echelon patrician in U.S. politics. He’s decent, relatively unideological and concerned with keeping the good opinion of his peers. Service is what matters; causes are, well, embarrassing. His conservatism is moderate, strongest in economic and regulatory matters. This makes him appealing to conservatives of the Skull and Bones and Bohemian Grove variety--people of solid position who sense his pragmatism on peripheral issues ranging from the environment to abortion. Conversely, it makes him unattractive to those whose conservatism is more populist and cultural; they don’t trust his sense of priorities.

For example, conservatives fret that Bush has been edging left on non-economic issues, such as education and day-care. There is a larger problem, however: Bush’s other-directed political personality stops him from being a creative or forceful leader. Thus the jeering in campaign ads by former rival Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas about how Bush, despite all his jobs, has never left any footprints. Enough former GOP Cabinet officers made similar guarded observations to give the press an interesting story or two.

With progressive trends gathering force, conservatives are not going to like the next four years--under any President. As a result, though, it’s relevant for establishmentarians and outsiders alike to consider if Bush has enough inner historical and ideological compass to manage these rising tides. The circumstances of 1989-92 pose a stiff challenge.

Doubt No. 3: The Pitfalls of a Third Term. There’s a good reason why no party has won a third term in the presidency since 1940. Political ideologies and movements are like people--they get tired. Roosevelt’s third term, starting in 1941, was a success, but only because of World War II. His domestic New Deal had stalled earlier--its popularity fading. In fact, third terms have usually been like that--a slow fade of once-powerful ideas: Herbert Hoover, in 1929-32, as Republican economics degenerated into the Great Depression; William Howard Taft (with some chronological variation), after William McKinley’s assassination and the thrill of Theodore Roosevelt; Ulysses S. Grant, in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln. And Martin Van Buren, in the shoes of Andrew Jackson. Lackluster precedents like these oblige history-minded strategists to approach third terms with two caveats: great caution and insistence on unusual leaders. Without both, there’s a great risk of 1989-92 failure that--like most of these past situations--would transfer political opportunity to the other party.

Doubt No. 4: Conservatism’s Need for a Pause That Refreshes. Arguably, if conservatives had a compelling agenda this year, then the organized right might have fielded a candidate able to take the nomination away from Bush. But they didn’t--and couldn’t. This said, it’s hard to avoid a follow-up conclusion: After eight straight years in power and a political cycle dating back to the late 1960s, “conservatism” may need some time out to recharge batteries.

The right needs to shed its increasingly irrelevant early 1980s outlook and develop a new Hamiltonian brand of greater government activism to cope with signs of U.S. decline and the realignment of global economic power. Conservatism may also need to be in opposition--with a Democrat in the White House--to reassert its traditional role as a force for a hard-boiled Realpolitik in foreign policy.

Finally, the conservative grass-roots organizations that flourished in the late 1970s by attacking the weaknesses and even absurdities of the Carter Administration have lost direction and may also need a Democratic and liberal Administration to fuel their comeback. Four years of embattled but dithering GOP control of the White House could be fatal.

Doubt No. 5: The Rhythm of American Politics. This yardstick is tricky. Changing public attitudes on spending priorities, affirmative government, new government regulation and even specific legislation such as trade, minimum wage, health insurance and plant-closing suggest that U.S. political economists may be moving away from a Reaganite conservative mode into a centrist (and possibly moderate liberal) outlook.

The obvious ideological conservative reaction is to sweep aside doubts about Bush to hold the White House and fight this dastardly new agenda. Major elements of the conservative constituency, not least in the business and financial communities, take this view.

But institutional and Machiavellian conservatives have another view. Institutionalists, sensing the shift in mood, wonder if it makes sense to hold power, with no specific affirmative blueprint, standing athwart history yelling “stop.” Perhaps, they suggest, it is better to let the adjustment occur--and maybe overplay its hand.

That could lay groundwork for a conservative resurgence on a new and more defensible battlefield--after the minimum wage has been raised, mergers curbed and the next recession experienced.

Machiavellians, in turn--remembering how conservatism’s 1980 resurgence was shaped by the failure of liberals in general and Jimmy Carter in particular--wonder if it might not be time to give the Democrats another opportunity for the political equivalent of indecent exposure. Conversely, the opportunity to gamble on Bush’s ability to manage an emerging policy watershed doesn’t sell too many Las Vegas weekends.

It may be a great mistake, then, for the vice president to think he can rally conservatives of all hues just by holding out the specter of Dukakis. What he must do is create confidence in the shape of the United States and the GOP under George Herbert Walker Bush.