New Hampshire Proves Shaky Ground for Candidates Who Would Blame Japan : Campaign: Ads that smack of ‘bashing’ in calling for tougher trade policy risk a backlash. Kerrey, Harkin and Bush have come under fire.

Democratic candidate John A. Durkin learned something about the temptations and risks of blaming the Japanese in 1990, when he complained that his opponent for the U.S. Senate was benefiting from TV ads purchased by Japanese auto dealers.

The ads questioned Durkin’s stance on free trade.

But Durkin’s attack on Republican Rep. Robert C. Smith quickly proved a loser with New Hampshire voters, and when Durkin once referred to the “Japs” he provoked a thunderclap of criticism from newspapers in the state. Smith crushed Durkin by a margin of 67% to 33%.

Though it happened only 14 months ago, this lesson seems to have been lost on some of the presidential candidates stumping the state this year.

Most of them are appealing for a tougher U.S. trade policy toward the Japanese, a message analysts agree is legitimate and powerful. But some candidates are edging toward appeals that may go too far toward blaming Japan for this country’s economic shortcomings.

Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska has already been sharply criticized for such statements, even as President Bush has come under fire for an Asian trip that has been called an attempt to blame the Japanese for America’s declining economic fortunes. GOP presidential aspirant Patrick J. Buchanan and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) risk such criticism as well, some political analysts say.

Blaming the Japanese is “a risky, tricky strategy in any part of the country, and it’s one that just has been particularly weak with New Hampshire voters,” said Greg Schneiders, a political consultant who worked with the campaigns of Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) and former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt.

Although some New Hampshire residents may have recently lost jobs because of Japan’s economic inroads, the state is generally non-union and conservative, and its people usually don’t make a connection between their own economic well-being and the Japanese advances. The unemployment rate and bankruptcy filings here are up, while the real estate market is in the doldrums.

Surveys suggest that New Hampshire residents do not blame the Japanese for current difficulties. American Research Group, a Manchester polling firm, recently asked people to assign blame for their state’s economic ills. Of those surveyed, 18% blamed politicians, 11% blamed Bush and 10% blamed the real estate market. No sizable group singled out the Japanese.

“There are a lot of people to blame, but people here aren’t talking about the Japanese,” said Dick Bennett, president of American Research.

Yet some of the candidates are. In the televised debate Sunday, Kerrey’s rivals continued to needle him about a TV ad in which he compares international trade to a hockey game. Other countries are guarding their goals, he says, while the United States is leaving its net open.

“If I’m President, I’ll tell the Japanese if we can’t sell in their market, they can’t sell in ours,” Kerrey warns as he strides across an empty hockey rink. The ad was an attempt by Kerrey’s new media consulting team, Doak, Shrum, Harris, Sherman & Donilon, to lend focus to his campaign. But soon after its debut, Kerrey was on the local news denying that he intended to bash the Japanese.

In the debate, Harkin told Kerrey he was on “thin ice.”

“You’ll never catch me bashing Japan,” Harkin said. “I have a lot of respect for Japan.” Then, complaining that Japan keeps out American beef and computer chips, he added: “Open your doors and let us compete in your markets, or we’re going to keep out your cars.”

Within days after the ad first ran, Kerrey seemed to back away from its tough message. At a stop in Manchester, he acknowledged: “I have gone after the Japanese recently.” Then he praised Japanese leaders as “courageous” and “future-looking.”

Harkin, meanwhile, has told voters he would give the Japanese five years to bring their trade deficit to zero, then close the U.S. market to Japanese products. His comment, which echoed former Texas Gov. John B. Connally’s presidential campaign pledge that he would turn away Japanese ships at U.S. docks, “sounds like Japan-bashing to me,” said Philip W. Kincade, editorial page editor of New Hampshire’s second-largest newspaper, Foster’s Daily Democrat.

Bush’s words about the Japanese have been more diplomatic, but even some Republican loyalists here saw his visit to Japan with American auto executives as a tacit effort to minimize his Administration’s responsibility for what Bush has called the “free fall” of the U.S. economy.

Foster’s Daily Democrat editorialized about the “foolishness” of the trip, saying the President had sought to blame the Japanese. “The problem is homemade,” Kincade said. “We should be talking about why Americans are not buying American cars.”

Bush also drew criticism from the staunchly conservative Manchester Union-Leader. It said in a Page 1 editorial that the trip had reduced Americans to “beggars.”

Buchanan, the conservative columnist and TV pundit, has castigated Japan for what he calls unfair trade practices and for getting a free ride on this country’s defense spending. He has also criticized some Bush campaign officials for ties to the Japanese.

Buchanan singled out advisers James H. Lake and Charles Black as lobbying on Japan’s behalf because of their outside business dealings. He charged that the Bush campaign is “a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan Inc.” and called Black a “geisha girl of the new world order.”

For all of Buchanan’s rhetoric, he is not without blame, the Union-Leader said. The paper, which strongly supports Buchanan, noted puckishly that he drives around in a Japanese car.

Japan’s overall effect on the New Hampshire economy is difficult to gauge.

Among this state’s auto-parts manufacturers is Davidson/Textron, which last Friday said it would furlough 90 assembly-line workers for one week. The cutback, announced one day after Bush visited the plant, was blamed on declining sales of American automobiles.

But New Hampshire’s auto-parts companies also include Bailey Corp., a $100-million-a-year employer that does 40% of its business with Japanese car companies.

And then there’s the case of New Hampshire Ball Bearings, one of the state’s largest manufacturing employers. It had experienced layoffs and declining sales, but Japanese investors purchased the firm and turned it around and it is gaining a growing share of a shrinking market.

New Hampshire voters’ views of the Japanese also are complicated by the admiration many feel for Japanese achievements in business and education.

At a candidate’s campaign stop in Derry the other day, one voter explained to another that concern for the U.S. economy was not sufficient reason for him to go back to buying American cars.

“I see no reason to blame the Japanese for anything,” said William H. Greer, 61, of Londonderry, N.H., who was laid off from a job with the military contractor Raytheon last year. “To me, the fault lies with our own Establishment.”

Then he ticked off some examples of his admiration for the Japanese: his Honda automobile, his Nikon camera, his Seiko watch, his Mitsubishi TV and his Toshiba VCR.