GOP Aims May Pose Dilemma for President

For President Bush, the fast approaching 1992 election offers more than an opportunity to extend his own Administration. It may also be the last plausible chance in this century to move the Republican party toward majority status and undermine the long Democratic domination of Capitol Hill.

But next year’s campaign also seems likely to confront Bush with a profound dilemma.

On the one hand, if his present popularity continues, he may well be able to win an overwhelming reelection victory without seriously damaging the harmonious national mood he has labored to foster during most of his presidency.

On the other hand, waging a presidential campaign that skirts confrontation and preserves political tranquility would probably doom Republican chances of breaking the Democrats’ hold on Congress and ending the pattern of divided government that has prevailed for most of the last two decades.

The most likely way to achieve big Republican gains is for Bush to sharpen the differences between the two parties dramatically on the issues that matter most to voters, most political experts agree. The President would have to adopt a hard-edged, no-compromise strategy toward Democrats in Congress and on the hustings--a deliberately divisive strategy that would shatter the present mood.

If he elects that course, Bush must begin to lay the foundations very soon, analysts say, not only by veering away from his inclination to accommodate the powerful Democratic majority in Congress but also by outlining the goals and values on which his view of the nation’s future is based.

Of course there is no guarantee that such a campaign would work. It could help Democrats crystallize their own message and energize their partisans nationwide.

But many Republican conservatives want Bush to take that gamble.

Voters will respond positively “if they are given the right message, words and ideas,” says William J. Bennett, who served Bush as drug czar and then turned down the chance to be party chairman. “That’s where the opportunities are, where the President has to jump in.”

Housing Secretary Jack Kemp, one of the conservative movement’s heroes in the post-Ronald Reagan era, thinks the time is right for Bush to broaden the Republicans’ appeal by waging “an audacious, aggressive kind of dramatic war on poverty” by pushing such ideas as privatization of public housing and enterprise zones.

“Bush has a chance of going beyond where Ronald Reagan went,” especially with minority voters, Kemp declares with characteristic enthusiasm. “Bush has a chance of cracking at least a third of the black vote, half of the Hispanic vote and 70% of the Asian vote in 1992”--returns that would represent dramatic gains over Reagan’s record.

Bennett nevertheless fears that caution may rule the day. “My worry is that high approval ratings will lead to low aspirations and low energy levels,” he says. “That people will say: ‘Since we’ve got poll ratings near 80%, let’s just roll right into 1992.’

“Competence, sureness of hand and professionalism are already there,” Bennett says of Bush’s political profile. “Greatness is still out there in front of him.”

How is Bush likely to resolve this dilemma? The answer will go a long way toward determining not only his own political future but the shape of national politics through the 1990s and beyond.

Some analysts believe he will be extremely reluctant to sacrifice his own personal popularity and polarize the electorate even if it means strengthening his party.

“Presidents like to be Presidents of all the people,” says GOP pollster Fred Steeper, a 1988 Bush campaign adviser. “If you want to win by 60% or more of the vote you have to run a nonpartisan race.”

Nevertheless, some militant conservatives argue that the President really has no choice but to go for broke.

“What Bush has to conclude is that if he wants to be an effective President in his second term he has to get working control of the Congress and he doesn’t have it today,” says House GOP Whip Newt Gingrich of Georgia.

That such an opportunity exists for Bush and for the GOP is largely the President’s own doing. “He helped his party a lot by fighting the war against Iraq,” points out John Petrocik, a UCLA scholar who specializes in political parties.

For one thing, Desert Storm significantly increased the number of voters willing to identify themselves as Republicans in public opinion surveys.

This measurement, which for more than a half-century has almost invariably shown Democrats with a substantial advantage, is regarded by political professionals as a critical index to Republican chances of making gains in next year’s elections by riding on Bush’s coattails.

“When Reagan ran in 1984, Democrats had a big edge in party identification,” recalls former Reagan pollster Richard B. Wirthlin. That meant that many Democrats who voted for Reagan tended to stay with their own party’s congressional candidates.

“But now it (party identification) is virtually a dead tie,” says Wirthlin. “If by the fall of 1992 Republicans are still even with the Democrats or have a three- or four-point edge, the possibility for Republican gains in Congress is good.”

Even with such potential, Bush will face a towering task if he tries to shift the balance of power on Capitol Hill. In the House, Democrats now enjoy an advantage of 101 seats and nobody believes that Republicans can erase that edge in one election.

But Republican National Committee Chairman Clayton K. Yeutter, among other GOP leaders, thinks it is “a realistic possibility “ for the Republicians to gain 25 seats or so. This would restore them to the level they enjoyed right after Reagan’s 1980 election victory, when Republicans teamed with conservative “boll-weevil” Democrats to constitute a working majority on key economic measures.

One big advantage for Bush and the GOP is the current turmoil in Congress caused by the decennial census and redistricting. Redrawing congressional districts to reflect the present population, as required by the Constitution, is bound to force some Democratic incumbents into retirement and leave others vulnerable.

“There will be a lot more House races that will be heavily contested than in recent years, so the possibility of a coattail effect is much more likely,” Yeutter says.

Indeed, researchers at the House Democratic campaign committee now estimate that because of redistricting, and as a result of expected retirements due to age and a final take-it-or-lose-it opportunity for House members to convert campaign funds to personal use, 1992 may see as many as 80 to 100 so-called “marginal races”--races that could go either way.

That would be about four times as many close races as in 1988 when Bush won his first term and Republicans lost three seats in the House.

On the Senate side, Democrats have a 57-43 majority. But Republicans claim those numbers are not as bleak as they seem. The GOP is optimistic about regaining one seat in a special election this fall, in Pennsylvania where liberal Democrat Harris Wofford was appointed to fill the vacancy created by the death in a plane crash of Republican Sen. John Heinz.

For the rest, GOP Senate strategists point out that only 15 of their seats will be at risk next fall, compared to 20 for the Democrats, and that a number of Democrats are believed to be in jeopardy because of their votes against the Gulf War.

“Tough but not impossible,” says Yeutter of Republican prospects for a Senate takeover. “Everything would have to break right for us.”

These odds and the historical record explain why Republican strategists believe that if Bush is to spread his coattails this fall, he will have to wage a polarizing sort of campaign, based on broad themes, rather than simply point with pride to his own performance--the course usually favored by incumbent chief executives, including Reagan in 1984.

Reagan’s second-term campaign theme, “It’s Morning in America,” helped him win nearly 60% of the popular vote and 39 states. Meanwhile, his party lost two seats in the Senate, and gained only 14 in the House--a mediocre showing by historical standards.

“Reagan’s message to the voters was that ‘you don’t need to make any change,’ ” says GOP consultant Eddie Mahe. “There was no way any Republican challenger could plug into Reagan’s theme.”

And before Reagan, Republican Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Dwight D. Eisenhower both won landslide reelection victories running on similar peace and prosperity platforms that produced similarly frustrating results for their party.

“Bush would have to find a way to position his campaign so that he can convince people who vote for him that he or she cannot achieve that same goal unless they vote for other Republican candidates,” Mahe says.

To find a likely model for such a campaign by an incumbent President, Republican strategists go back to 1948 and Democrat Harry S. Truman. By waging war against what he called “the do-nothing” Republican Congress and warning that Republicans were ready to take away the benefits the New Deal had brought to average citizens, Truman not only upset Thomas E. Dewey but carried in 75 new Democratic House members and nine senators to give his party majorities in both houses.

Gingrich sees the present divided government in Washington as offering Bush the chance to run a Trumanesque campaign. “What you’ve got is a deadlock in which a left-wing, union-dominated, big-city machine Congress of Democrats refuses to pass any of the reforms with the values of the people the American people elected to the White House,” he says.

Under these circumstances, Gingrich argues, “the President has to say to the country: ‘If you don’t want this deadlock for the rest of the decade, you have to choose.”

But a strategy that calls for dividing the electorate to conquer the Congress would require Bush to develop compelling ideological themes to mobilize public support, a talent for which he is not known.

“Bush will do a lot to support his party by fighting in the trenches, raising funds and recruiting candidates,” says Richard Williamson, a former Reagan Administration official and sometime adviser to the Bush White House. “But the big picture is not his shtick.”

Moreover, polarizing involves making tough choices. For example, Bush’s chances of getting his much heralded educational reform plan through Congress probably depends on his willingness to strike a compromise with the Senate’s reigning liberal, Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who happens to be chairman of the Senate Labor and Education Committee. Bush may very well be forced to decide whether he wants his plan to become a law or a campaign issue, which would mean forfeiting the centerpiece of his domestic agenda this year.

Then, too, a divisive strategy, while it offers the possibility of high gains for the GOP, also presents risks for Bush’s own candidacy. It could cost him the support of some Democrats who might be alienated by partisan rhetoric.

“I think he would be willing to sacrifice four or five points of his own vote if it would mean significant gains in Congress,” guesses Mahe.

Right now he could afford to, because current polls make him a prohibitive favorite against any Democrat. But that situation might well change by next fall and Bush is certainly not likely to take anything for granted.

“We’re as strong as we could be right now,” says Ron Kaufman, newly appointed as White House political director and a longtime Bush campaign aide. “But Lord knows what the future will hold. And when (Bush) announces his candidacy, you can bet he will run as if he were 17 points behind.”

“All campaigns think of themselves first,” agrees pollster Steeper. “It would only be natural for the Bush campaign to make sure all their ducks are in order first before they start thinking about coattails.”

But whenever Bush settles on the course he will follow in 1992, he cannot ignore the impact his decision will have on the GOP’s chances to gain total control of both the White House and the Congress, an advantage Republicans have enjoyed for only two years out of the past 60--in the first two years of the Eisenhower presidency.

If Republicans fail to make big inroads on the huge Democratic House majority in 1992, they will have to wait 10 more years for another census and another reapportionment to give them a similar opportunity. Meanwhile, by the next presidential election in 1996, they will have controlled the White House for 16 years and thus could well be ripe for defeat.

Republicans who know Bush see the campaign ahead not only as an opportunity for their party but as the ultimate test of their President’s political leadership.

“The campaign may get his juices flowing,” Bennett says. “Or he may decide to sit back. But it takes him deciding what he wants to do.”