Analysis : As Campaign Wanes, It’s Still Continuity vs. Change

The 1988 presidential campaign enters its closing hours with Republican front-runner George Bush still steering down the middle of the political road and Democrat Michael S. Dukakis vowing to come from behind in what would rank among history’s most stunning upsets.

As they neared Tuesday’s finish line, each candidate added a few flourishes. Bush began referring to the distance between himself and his foe as “The Great Divide,” repeating the phrase like a mantra wherever he went. The Democratic standard-bearer, whom Bush once scorned as “the Iceman,” went to great lengths to demonstrate the fire in his soul. “I’m on your side,” he declared repeatedly, even salting his rhetoric with mild profanity.

But such theatrics did not alter the fundamental reality governing the 1988 contest for the presidency: In the absence of any critically pressing issue, the fundamental choice confronting voters in the campaign’s climactic phase is just what it has been all along--continuity versus change.

Against this background, Bush’s basic strategy of depicting Dukakis as an out-of-the-mainstream liberal who would threaten the peace and prosperity of the Reagan era appears to have made the idea of change too risky for many voters to accept.

“Bush has been able to set the agenda and define the context of the campaign,” said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman. Bush’s decisiveness in implementing his strategy helped him build an early lead in public opinion surveys and made it difficult for Dukakis, for all his recent fire-breathing rhetoric, to cut into that lead substantially in the closing days, he said.

Dukakis was heartened Saturday by national polls that showed him closing to within 7 points of Bush, but it was questionable whether he could generate the momentum that would move him in front in the several big states he needs to reach an electoral vote majority.

Professionals in both parties agree that Dukakis failed with his recent effort to take the sting out of Bush’s accusation that he is a liberal. Dukakis tried to identify himself with the liberalism espoused by past Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy.

“But Bush had already defined liberalism in a negative way, and it is too late to get people to change their minds,” said one Democratic strategist.

And the difficulty of getting voters to focus on his message so late in the game plagued Dukakis when he sought to exploit potential vulnerabilities in Bush’s record. Pointing to the Reagan Administration’s long relationship with Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega, for example, Dukakis promised to halt U.S. aid to countries failing to cooperate in curbing the drug trade and declared:

“I’ll be damned if I’ll let those countries send their poison into the United States of America to poison our kids.” There was little evidence, however, that many swing voters were listening.

Bush continued to enjoy a comfortable lead nationally and in most Electoral College breakdowns, and his strategists saw no need to change anything. To the contrary, the main objective of the vice president’s closing drive seemed to be to emphasize his basic theme and avoid rocking a campaign boat that seemed to be cruising steadily.

“The message is choice,” declared Paul Manaforte, director of surrogate operations for Bush. “The great divide separates mainstream America, which is us, from out-of-the-mainstream, which is Dukakis.”

Asked what the campaign hoped to accomplish in the home stretch, Craig Fuller, Bush’s chief of staff, said bluntly: “Avoid mistakes.” He added: “If we on the staff can avoid mistakes, the candidate will do fine.”

One obvious mistake that the candidate and his staff both are determined to avoid is overconfidence. Thus, for the most part they have shied away from any discussion of what the post-Election Day future would be like.

Bush did allow himself one digression early last week in a stop at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. That state is so safely in the GOP column that the candidate had no reason to speak there except to deliver what his aides billed as the philosophical wrap-up of his campaign.

Not incidentally, the address was also intended, Fuller said, to “lay a foundation on which the mandate will be built”--the program that Bush intends to pursue from the White House.

Bush, opening the door for a more moderate approach to the Soviet Union, pledged in this address to seek an early summit conference with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev. And he implied that his Supreme Court appointees would not be the hard-line conservatives that Reagan has picked.

Working to Hold Lead

But Notre Dame was the exception in a week devoted by Bush to not yielding one iota of his lead. “We’re going to campaign in the areas where we think the support may be a little bit soft,” Fuller said. “We’re going to campaign hard where we know we’ve got to work hard to get enough votes to win.”

In the early part of the week, Bush barnstormed through Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan--all states where polls have declared the race close. Then he stopped briefly in New Jersey and Connecticut before moving west to California today.

Wherever he went, Bush remembered to make a pitch to Reagan Democrats, the registered Democrats who voted for President Reagan in large numbers in 1980 and 1984 and who could decide the outcome this year in a number of closely contested states.

“My appeal tonight,” he told audiences in Wisconsin and Michigan, “is to those blue-collar, hard-working men and women that share our values and that have been or still may be Democrats--come and stay with us.”

Perhaps because the end was so near, Bush appeared to be putting more stress on the positive side of his rhetoric than on the attacks on Dukakis that have been such an important part of his campaign.

Nevertheless, the vice president still found occasion to take a dig at his opponent. “History gave us the Fair Deal and the New Deal,” he jeered, “but I don’t think the nation’s ready for the Ordeal.”

“I am on your side,” he said, co-opting Dukakis’ current battle cry. “So I’m asking you next Tuesday to send a message to Michael: We are on the right side on these fundamental issues.

“I believe in the mainstream,” Bush added. “I’m comfortable there, and I’m going to leave the left bank to the others.”

Upholding Status Quo

While Bush was determined to maintain the campaign status quo, Dukakis and his staff were trying hard to shake things up.

After spending the three months after his nomination trying to find a compelling message, Dukakis finally came up with something his aides believe he can sell--his “on-your-side” motto. By depicting himself as the spokesman for the economically beleaguered middle class, confronting the forces of wealth and privilege personified by Bush, Dukakis appeared at last to be offering voters a reason to make him their President.

Realizing that time was short to get the argument across, Dukakis aides vowed to drive it home at every chance.

“We’re going to keep doing the same thing,” said senior campaign adviser Stephen Engelberg. “We think it’s catching on.” Another aide added that this was just “what he (Dukakis) wants to do.”

But for all these statements of resolve, the Dukakis campaign in its closing days still appeared to be plagued by an inability to stick to the point. Thus, while Dukakis pressed his ringing “on your side” declaration on some days in some places, on other days in other places he could not resist going off in different directions.

During the week, he re-answered the question from his second debate with Bush on how he would respond to his wife’s rape and murder. He reopened the “sleaze issue” by seizing upon reports that a high Bush campaign aide had offered himself as a lobbyist to the government of Haiti. And, most memorably, he redefined himself as a liberal in the Roosevelt-Truman-Kennedy tradition.

The net result of these varied parries, some professionals argued, was to blunt the thrust of the populism theme, the most effective argument Dukakis has offered as a presidential candidate. Some Democratic operatives suggested that because of these distractions, particularly Dukakis’ self-identification as a liberal, the underdog was having difficulty sustaining the gains he appeared to be making late in the previous week in certain key states.

But even if the polls were not encouraging, Dukakis and his aides clung to hope, based on several assumptions.

First, they argued, much of Bush’s support is soft, and many voters will not really make up their minds until the final day or two.

“There’s a lot of volatility in the electorate,” said campaign Vice Chairman John Sasso. “This is not 1984, where they had a popular President. There are serious doubts about the kind of leadership Bush would provide.”

Second, Dukakis aides contend, their attacks on Bush’s negative campaign have turned the public’s blame for the election’s tone on Bush, while at the same time improving Dukakis’ image. This, they hope, will cause some voters, particularly independent-minded suburbanites, to give Dukakis a “second look.”

Finally, they profess to believe that traditional Democratic voters are starting to “come home” and that this trend will be accelerated by Dukakis’ invocation of populist economic arguments--trade in one place, education in another, stock market swindles in yet another.

All these assumptions would have to be borne out for Dukakis to gain the 270 electoral votes needed for election. The contest between him and Bush in the Electoral College had become a very uneven competition.

Bush appeared to be so far ahead in so many states that Dukakis would have to win nearly all the states that were still in doubt to have a chance at victory. “Everybody realizes that what we are going for is an inside straight,” said one strategist in Dukakis’ headquarters on Boston’s Chauncy Street.

As the week drew to a close, Dukakis aides were counting on winning New York and Massachusetts, two big states where they were leading, and they were privately conceding that they had to win California, where the race was considered a tossup.

But even with those three in Dukakis’ column, along with a smattering of smaller states, Democratic strategists calculated that they would need to win four out of five remaining big states--Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Texas.

But Dukakis was well in arrears in Texas, and by midweek, polls in Ohio appeared to show that state still out of reach. This forced the campaign to look elsewhere, to such relatively long-shot states as Colorado and Kentucky, to find the electoral votes Dukakis would need for a majority.

“Everybody still believes that it’s at least technically possible for us to win,” said Dukakis pollster Ed Reilly. “As long as that’s true, we’re going to fight like hell.”

A close scrutiny of the polls and the Electoral College offered a ray of hope. Most analysts have assumed that the Electoral College institutionally favors the Republican ticket because it gives disproportionate weight to the small states, most of which have been voting heavily GOP in recent presidential elections.

Scenario for a Dukakis Win

But Mark Siegel, a Democratic consultant and member of the Democratic National Committee, argues that the Electoral College’s winner-take-all mechanism could actually favor Dukakis in 1988.

Bush is expected to win the small-vote states of the South and Southwest by huge majorities, Siegel points out. But Dukakis, he argues, could more than compensate by winning the closely contested big-vote states of the Pacific West, the Midwest and the Northeast by small majorities.

Based on past presidential election returns and recent polls, Siegel calculates that Dukakis could garner 285 electoral votes, 15 more than a majority, if he won only 49% of the popular vote.

But Siegel also warns that if Dukakis’ popular vote drops below 49%, his electoral vote count could shrink dramatically.

Thus, if he got 43% of the popular vote--2 points more than Democratic nominee Walter F. Mondale received in 1984--Siegel reckons he would carry only the District of Columbia, with three electoral votes. At least Mondale also carried his home state of Minnesota.

Staff writers John Balzar, Cathleen Decker and David Lauter contributed to this story.

DUKAKIS’ 49% SOLUTION: ONE ANALYST’S SCENARIO 270 electoral votes needed to win On the basis of past voting patterns and current polls, political consultant Mark Siegel has calculated that Michael Dukakis, by concentrating his effort on several big battleground states, need only win between 48% and 49% of the popular vote to gain enough electoral votes to defeat George Bush. Siegel has ranked the states in order of how likely they are to vote for the Democratic ticket (from bottom to top of chart). (Number following state is number of electoral votes.) Dukakis - Bentsen percentage of popular vote (Ranked from 43% to 50%; Mont. = 50%, Wash. D.C. = 43%) Mont. 4 N.M. 5 Ark 6 S.D. 3 Vt. 3 Mich. 20 Ohio 23 Wash 10 Calif. 47 Ill. 24 Mo. 11 Conn. 8 Pa. 25 Md. 10 Wis. 11 Ore. 7 N.Y. 36 Iowa 8 Minn. 10 Hawaii 4 W. Va. 6 R.I. 4 Mass. 13 Wash. D.C. 3

Source: Mark Siegel & Associates.