It’s Hard to Radicalize Someone as Straight as Mr. Rogers

Vice President George Bush’s major strategy is apparent: He’s running against 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern. Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, he says, is “on the very very far liberal fringe.”

While Bush’s furious label-mongering has certainly produced short-term gains, can this tactic work? Especially after hearing Yalie Bush attack Dukakis for Harvard liberalism, I’d have to say that this bulldog won’t hunt, for several reasons:

--McGovern wasn’t the radical that Republicans claimed he was. It wasn’t easy selling a bomber pilot and father of five from a conservative Midwestern state as an advocate of “acid, amnesty and abortion,” but Republicans in 1972 had the advantages of the Tom Eagleton vice presidential fiasco, a divided Democratic Party, post-Vietnam angst and an incumbent President. In 1988, however, Republicans not only lack any comparable fiasco and angst, they are also opposed by an Eagle Scout who never marched on the Pentagon. It won’t be easy for them to radicalize someone as culturally straight as Mr. Rogers.

--Bush periodically himself is campaigning as a semi-liberal. He has campaigned as a champion of child care, the environment, education, civil rights and ethics--a “Democratic” posture that discombobulates conservative columnist Bob Novak. Indeed, Bush’s $1,000 tax rebate or federal check to families for child care is positively, well, McGovernish. How long can Bush get away with running down what he’s running on?

--If Dukakis is for “big government and big spending,” what can you say about Reagan-Bush? A new definition of chutzpah is for Bush to attack a budget-balancer like Dukakis when federal spending as a percentage of the gross national product rose from Jimmy Carter to Reagan-Bush and when the latter accumulated more red ink in eight years than all their predecessors combined in two centuries. Nor was this the fault of a Democratic Congress, since Reagan-Bush’s proposed budgets exceeded those that Congress passed.

Nor does Dukakis propose statist, expensive solutions. His constant advocacy of public-private partnerships reveals an activist who wants government to do more and be less--as in be more efficient.

Also, at the important level of imagery, how do you sell the frugal owner of a 25- year-old snow blower as the last of the big-time spenders?

--Where are the “special interests” that Bush says are holding Dukakis captive? Dukakis accepted no special-interest money from political-action committees. So the governor can persuasively argue that he captured the nomination with no strings attached. (Recall who did promise to name a Latino to the Cabinet and who has never told an audience what it didn’t want to hear. Hint: Reagan’s vice president.)

--Is Dukakis “unpatriotic” because he vetoed a compulsory Pledge of Allegiance measure? A nominee who served two years in Korea need not feel defensive about patriotism. Eventually, perhaps during their scheduled debates, the vice president will have to answer a question: “Would you pledge allegiance to the Constitution, which the U.S. Supreme Court says forbids government from making any American say something contrary to his religious beliefs?”

--If Dukakis is “soft on crime,” why is there less of it in Massachusetts? The Republicans have been and will be running against Willie Horton, the furloughed murderer who didn’t come back. But since exactly 99.6% did come back, and since furloughed prisoners have half the recidivist rate of others when finally released, Dukakis’ furlough program clearly resulted in less crime. Indeed, crime in Massachusetts fell 13.4% in the last four years while the national rate has gone up.

--Is Dukakis another “gloom and doom” Democrat? Not according to one-time GOP presidential candidate Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.). After listening to Dukakis’ relentless speeches about economic growth and opportunity, Kemp acknowledged that “Michael Dukakis doesn’t sound at all like Jimmy Carter. He talks about an economic miracle, not economic malaise.”

--Is he a “unilateral disarmer”? It’s true that Dukakis believes in complying with international treaties and advocates greater collaboration with our allies. What a relief after Lt. Col. Oliver L. North’s and Asst. Secretary of State Elliott Abrams’ cowboy recklessness!

Eventually it should not be difficult for Dukakis to observe that wasting money on weapons that don’t work (the B-1, SDI) is itself a form of unilateral disarmament, while the weapons that he advocates (the Trident D-5 missile, the stealth bomber) strengthen America’s national security.

I can understand the frustrations of a Pat Buchanan, a prominent conservative commentator and liberal-baiter, that Dukakis doesn’t use, and doesn’t get tainted by, “the L word.” Pat and his party have worked overtime for the past eight years to create a liberal bogyman-strawman bearing no resemblance to reality, and now they’re angry that the Democratic nominee won’t accept their caricature.

Watching Bush is like listening to an aging soprano reach for the high notes that are no longer there. “We’re going to spend all our energies trying to make Dukakis out to be another George McGovern,” confided one Bush adviser in a not-for-attribution comment to Business Week. “The trouble is, he isn’t.”