THE COUNTERFEIT CAMPAIGN? Figuring Out What’s Real in the Political Debate : Just When Has a Weak President Been So Lucky?

Maybe Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. never said it; maybe the former Speaker of the House never referred to the Democratic presidential contenders as “turkeys.” But that same impression is currently the biggest reason for Thanksgiving at the Bush White House--otherwise, it would be about as upbeat as a morgue.

Even congressional Democrats, interrupting cold sweats over Capitol Hill check bouncing, have been publicly joking about the race. Their party, they say, is blowing its best presidential opportunity in a generation on a choice between “two Elmers”--Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton as “Elmer Gantry,” the fictional skirt-chasing, slick-talking Dixie preacher, and former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, as Elmer Fudd, the funny-talking, comic-book character. As for the serious contenders, that’s all, folks. With Clinton prospering, there’s not much chance anyone else can enter the race. And Jerry Brown, of course, is more scavenger than serious nomination prospect.

The Republican vulnerability lies with a President whose economic policies’ ratings have long since crashed into Herbert Hoover territory, whose vision of the future is unidentifiable and for whom the GOP primaries have become a Chinese water torture of nationwide repudiation by fully 30% to 40% of his own party’s supporters. In the past, weak presidential circumstances have often mobilized the great names of the U.S. history: the embarrassment of James Buchanan in 1860 begat Abraham Lincoln; the inconsequence of William Howard Taft put Theodore Roosevelt back on horseback; the tragedy of Hoover brought forth Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Bush vacuum, if we go by the caricatures, has brought forth the inadequacy of Slick Willy, Tsanctimonious Tsongas and Buchanan the Bully Boy.

That may be partly unfair. “Bully Boy” Patrick J. Buchanan, the President’s primary challenger, is now being portrayed as a bigot, anti-Semite and semifascist by a Bush Administration that smugly designed Willie Horton ads, preempted Buchanan’s criticism of Israel for the Dixie primaries and periodically funded three-quarters of the world’s dictators,

Besides, Buchanan had an excuse: By putting some tricky ingredients of frustration politics into a peripherally mainstream political message, he has overshadowed and removed a threat to U.S. society--fellow GOP primary contender David Duke--that hand-wringing liberals and Bush aides were powerless to deal with. Buchanan, in turn, is a threat only to George Bush--mobilizing GOP primary voters, spotlighting the President’s personal weakness and dividing his coalition.

This explains the recent smear tactics of Bush backers--who happily attended testimonials for Buchanan when his same rhetoric was aimed at Democrats. Let us stipulate that Buchanan lacks qualification for the Oval Office and that “beer-hall conservatism” is a description with some aptness. Beyond that, the ex-broadcaster ran a pretty successful series of early March primaries in the South, given that this was: Bush’s strongest region; a 10-part logistical nightmare for an inexperienced candidate just getting organized, and a part of the country where Duke threatened to divide the anti-Bush vote and had to be squelched with just the right amount of overlap and no more.

Now Buchanan is in battered Michigan, belaboring “Bushanomics” as, in his words, “the unilateral economic disarmament” of this country against foreign competitors--but without much oomph. If he had pulled out all the stops--for example, cataloguing the dozens of foreign agents and lobbyists with positions in the Bush campaign and GOP apparatus--he might have gotten 35% to 40% of the vote and, with it, renewed momentum for a new round of April Bush-bashing.

But Buchanan seems to be inching back, pulling the sort of punches he needs to land, because the “cryptofascist bigot” innuendo has already begun grinding him down. That would be understandable; and besides, it’s not as if Buchanan hasn’t said things that support some of the charges. If he continues to ease off, then White House strategists will have less and less reason to worry about Buchanan inflaming the anti-Bush sentiments of 30% to 40% of the GOP coalition. This will let them turn their attention to the next challengers: the two Elmers.

OK. This is also a little unfair. Clinton is one hell of a bright, charismatic guy. He’s also got the right political geography--Southern border state--and more or less the right ideology: centrist on social issues, responsible on economics but with a shrewd streak of populism and rising anger at the Pig-Out of the 1980s.

If Clinton had Sen. Bob Kerrey’s Vietnam Medal of Honor and Tsongas’ presumed uneventful social life, he might well be able to whip Bush by 55% to 45% in November. Unfortunately, with Gennifer Flowers and the Hot Springs Draft Board, what he’s got in the real world is Dan Quayle’s war record and (the long-divorced) Kerrey’s social life. Even if Clinton wins in Michigan and Illinois on Tuesday, Democratic politicians and professionals all over the country are worried about when the next high-heeled shoe will drop. GOP campaign advertising specialists are already chuckling in their cutting rooms.

Nonetheless, unless any slipper still to come has more tawdry sequins, the Democrats are still probably better off with Clinton than with Tsongas. With his border-state geography, centrism and middle-class populism, Clinton largely fits the abstract blueprint of how the Democrats need to rebuild to win the presidency. That’s with a candidate who can appeal to suburbia, blue-collar and middle-class America, as well as enlarging the Democratic presidential voting blocs of the Northeast, Upper Midwest and Pacific by expanding them south into Appalachia, the Ohio Valley and the Missouri-Arkansas area.

This is the geography that could add up to presidential victory--if not in 1992, given Bush’s incumbency and Clinton’s twin taints--then four years later. An early March ABC News poll showed Clinton beating Bush by 46% to 44%, suggesting that even with his draft board and Killer Bimbo problems preliminarily factored into the electoral equation, he’s strong enough to run a close race. Such a showing would also build the right geopolitical framework for 1996, possibly even laying the foundation for Clinton himself to make another run.

Tsongas, by contrast, has three items of baggage national Democrats need to drop. The first is identification with the “wine and cheese” middle- and upper-middle-class liberalism of the “New Class” intelligentsia that has become synonymous with a type of Democrat who worries more about endangered butterflies than meat-and-potatoes economics, Social Security taxes and unsafe streets. This has been a major reason for the Democrats’ decline for two decades now.

The second is a grating moral righteousness associated with New England and Michael S. Dukakis but also with the still unappealing memory of Jimmy Carter, another moralist-minded Democrat who might have made a better missionary in Ethiopia. Newly rising perceptions of Tsongas in this vein can be charted in the pundits’ mushrooming use of words like tsanctimonious, tsaintly and tsmug.

Tsongas’ third Achilles’ heel is the extent to which, during the late 1980s, he became a director of eight major corporations, a paid lobbyist for Drexel Burnham (of Michael Milken fame) and an apologist for Wall Street to an extent that now cripples his ability to take advantage of Bush’s links to the 1980s cycle of greed and speculation. In contrast to Clinton, whose slight lead over Bush in recent polls already reflects the erosion of intense negative publicity, Tsongas’ negative portraiture is just starting--assuming his nomination prospects are still real after Tuesday’s Great Lakes primaries.

Then there is Tsongas’ status as a cancer survivor, whose cancer, doctors say, is probably, but not absolutely and dependably, gone. Were he to get sick as President, that could bring into play the uncertain procedures of the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment on presidential disability and the assumption of power by the vice president. Ironically, should the Democrats nominate Tsongas in July, these lingering questions about his health would ensure close attention to the vice presidential choice--possibly producing a backup man with more stature and experience than Tsongas himself.

It’s not a thrilling choice for many Democrats and, under the circumstances, it’s not hard to understand why Americans are losing faith in elections. Experts worry that Election Day turnout could be the lowest in memory, with voters beginning to be contemptuous of political parties and processes that no longer seem able to rise even to the most obvious challenges. What’s even more worrisome is that no solution seems to be in sight.