The Democrats’ Game? Call it ‘Waiting for Cuomo’ : Politics: The presidential campaign looms, and the Democrats’ top 10 prospects all have pluses and minuses, but there’s no rush to announce.

Here it is almost 1991, and according to the inexorable logic of the political calendar, the 1992 presidential campaign is about to begin. So who’s lining up on the Democratic side to compete for the big prize? Answer: nobody. They say you can’t beat somebody with nobody, but the Democrats seemed determined to try.

Think of it: George Bush is a colorless and odorless political entity, in trouble in his own political party, presiding over a nationwide recession. And the Democrats can’t find anyone to run against him.

Why not? Well, for one thing, the Democrats have tried just about everything they know how to do. A moderate Southerner? Jimmy Carter, 1980. An old-fashioned New Deal Democrat? Walter F. Mondale, 1984. A newfangled high-tech Democrat? Michael S. Dukakis, 1988.

Democrats were deeply demoralized by what happened to them in 1988. To make matters worse, Bush looked pretty good for the first 18 months of his presidency. The economy was stable. Peace was breaking out all over. And the President was getting record-high approval ratings. Understandably, Democrats were not lining up to be the next Dukakis.

Then the President started getting into trouble. Bush enraged conservatives--and many others--by abandoning his “no new taxes” pledge. The economy slid into recession. The budget deal turned into a political fiasco.

The Democrats discovered a message: “Tax the rich.” They hammered the Republicans with this message right up until Election Day, when they discovered that the voters didn’t want to hear any more about taxes.

The Persian Gulf crisis makes running against Bush even more problematical. After Bush announced the troop buildup, his ratings started to drop. Bush may not have frightened Saddam Hussein, but he scared the American people. They thought he was about to start a war.

Then Bush announced an exchange of envoys with Iraq, and the public breathed a collective sigh of relief. The President was giving peace a chance. Not only did Bush’s ratings go up, but Americans seemed more prepared than ever to go to war.

So what are the chances of the Democrats retaking the White House? They don’t lack potential candidates. Let’s look at the Top Ten non-candidates, two by two.

New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley are the big boys of the 1992 race. They come from important states and they have national name recognition, serious reputations and a lot of campaign money. They have something else in common, too. They both got burned last month. Voters in New York and New Jersey, angry over tax hikes and declining economies, reelected Cuomo and Bradley by embarrassingly thin margins.

Right now, the entire Democratic presidential campaign might be described as “Waiting for Mario.” The New York governor clearly enjoys the sport. Just last week, Cuomo came to Washington to deliver a vigorous attack on President Bush’s economic policies. He described Bush as the captain of a ship about to have a collision with what he thinks is another ship. Captain Bush keeps ordering the other ship to change course. Nothing happens. Finally, Bush hears a voice from the radar screen: “I am the lighthouse. You change course.”

The implication is obvious: Maybe it’s time to get a new captain. “I don’t have any plans,” Cuomo said when asked. Until 1984, nothing of importance happened until Ted Kennedy held a press conference and announced his campaign intentions. But no one is waiting for Teddy any more. In this race, as in the last one, nothing of importance will happen until Cuomo announces whether he is in or out.

Cuomo’s message, like Kennedy’s, resonates deeply with Democratic partisans--sharing, family, compassion, mutuality. To others, it sounds like taxing and spending. But if the recession is long enough and deep enough, it will begin to sound good to them, too.

Bush’s weaknesses are Cuomo’s strengths. Bush is a wimp; Cuomo is a tough guy. Bush was born to wealth and privilege; Cuomo came out of the immigrant saga. Bush has a problem with “the vision thing”; Cuomo is a visionary. Bush is a clumsy and prosaic speaker; Cuomo is eloquent and poetic.

If Cuomo runs, however, he will have to deal with a deep and abiding American prejudice. Not against Catholics or Italian-Americans. Against New York City. You can see the ad now: “Mario Cuomo. He’ll do for America what he did for New York City.” Racial violence. Gridlock. Junkies. Beggars. Tourists slain in subways. Joggers brutalized in Central Park. The word in Washington is that Republican consultant Roger Ailes already has the ad in the can.

In Washington, the governor joked that when people hear the name Mario Cuomo, “Everybody thinks he’s a bodyguard in ‘The Godfather.’ ” Wrong movie. Cuomo’s problem isn’t “The Godfather.” It’s “Bonfire of the Vanities.”

Bradley’s reelection campaign was a profile in caution. He stayed on the sidelines in the October budget debate. He refused to take a position on New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio’s controversial tax program, even though Bradley is a leading expert on tax policy. Bradley got roundly criticized for his timidity, and he paid a price at the polls. But what else could he have done? If he had endorsed Florio’s program, he would have lost the election. If he had repudiated Florio’s program, he would have enraged liberals and split the Democratic Party.

Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn are the good old boys of the Democratic Party. Both are moderate southern Democrats who could bring large numbers of southern whites back to the party just as Carter did in 1976--the last time the Democrats won.

Moreover, both men have gone to great lengths to prove their partisan credentials. Bentsen served the party loyally as Dukakis’ running mate. Nunn led the fight against Bush’s nomination of John Tower to be secretary of defense. He switched from pro-life to pro-choice on abortion. And he has been the leading voice of opposition to Bush’s apparent rush to war in the gulf.

Bentsen and Nunn face the same problems. Would they be acceptable to northern liberals? Nunn resigned from an all-male golf club this year. But he has one of the most conservative voting records of any Democrat in the Senate. Bentsen may have committed an even more unpardonable sin. He resigned from an all-white country club when he was nominated for vice president in 1988. Then, after the campaign was over, he got back in.

Would Bentsen and Nunn be willing to put up with the indignities of a presidential campaign? They are Tory Democrats, patrician to the core. It would be interesting to see how they deal with radical nuns who demand that they repudiate U.S. aid to El Salvador, and arrogant 21-year-old activists who insist that they take the politically correct position on the spotted- owl issue.

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson and Virginia Gov. L. Douglas Wilder are the two black candidates in the race, but that is about all they have in common. Jackson has run the same presidential campaign twice already, and it is doubtful that the Democrats want to see it again.

So far, Doug Wilder is the party’s most active non-candidate. He has created a political action committee and is giving speeches in places like Iowa and New Hampshire. Wilder’s message--”the new mainstream”--is aimed at white moderates and conservatives. It’s an argument for fiscal responsibility. Wilder exhorts Democrats to cut spending and hold the line on taxes.

It’s a good message, but Democrats may not be listening. All they know about Wilder is that he is a black man who got elected governor of a conservative southern state by running on a pro-choice platform. If Wilder got on the national ticket, the same thing might happen. The voters would probably not listen to what he is saying. All they would know is that Wilder is a black man running for President or vice president, and they would be forced to come to grips with that prospect.

Two old boys from 1988 may run again in 1992--Tennessee Sen. Al Gore and House majority leader Richard A. Gephardt. Gore won a solid reelection victory last month and says he is “thinking about” running for President again. What he needs, more than anything else, is an issue.

Gephardt has an issue. He is the Democratic Party’s leading spokesman for economic populism. He achieved a high political profile during the October budget crisis. And he gets under Bush’s skin, which is no small achievement for a Democrat. But he promised his colleagues that he would not run for President in 1992. And he has a strong incentive to stay in the House: He is in line to become the next Speaker.

Both Gore and Gephardt have to deal with the fact that they have already run and lost. New boys don’t have that problem. If they run for the first time in 1992 and lose, they are still in a good position to run again in 1996 --as long as they haven’t disgraced themselves. That’s why Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey may get into the race.

Clinton has experience (he was elected to his fifth term last month). He has an issue (education). He is chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of moderate Democrats. And he narrowly escaped disgrace in 1988, with his overlong convention speech nominating Dukakis for President.

The new boy who is attracting the most interest is Kerrey. He is a young, good-looking disabled war hero from the Midwest who became active in the anti-war movement and who goes out with movie stars. He has some new ideas, including one he unveiled last week that would radically restructure the nation’s health care system. New ideas? Anti-war? Movie stars? Sounds a little like Gary Hart. In fact, a number of former Hart people are now working for Kerrey. If Cuomo is a stronger and more eloquent version of Mondale, Kerrey is a more appealing and genuine version of Hart.

For many Democrats, the 1992 dream ticket is Cuomo for President and Bob Kerrey for vice president. It unites the old Mondale and Hart factions of the party. (There is no Dukakis wing of the Democratic Party.) Democrats salivate at the thought of Kerrey, a disabled Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor winner, debating Dan Quayle.

So far, however, only one Democrat has talked openly about entering the 1992 race. “I think it’s possibly a doable campaign. The last two years, I’ve had more people in more states talk to me about running again,” former South Dakota senator George S. McGovern, who lost 49 states when he headed the Democratic ticket in 1972, said last week. Well, why not? Another ruined economy, another disastrous foreign war, and Democrats may suddenly discover a winning campaign theme for 1992: “We told you so.”