Political Value in the Values Debate : Punting the campaign away from the economy

In the years between 1980 and 1990, the average annual income of the richest 1% of Americans rose 75%: from $313,206 in 1980 to $548,970 per year in 1990. During the same decade the average income of the bottom 90% of Americans rose only 7%: from $27,451 to $29,334, while the income of the bottom 10% dropped from $4,791 to $4,295. The Republican Party, which controlled the presidency during that entire period, might seem, on the basis of these numbers, to be in some trouble with some of the voters in 1992; and indeed, to judge from all the polls, President Bush’s popularity is plummeting. What can he do to restore it?

The strategy that Ronald Reagan adopted as President was in some ways a variation on the politics of resentment. As Thomas and Mary Edsall explain in “Chain Reaction,” a book on the decline of the Democratic Party, the strategy succeeded when “working-class whites and corporate CEOs . . . found common ideological ground in their shared hostility to expanding government intervention; these former antagonists joined forces across traditional class lines to form the core of a center-right majority that survived past election day to become a driving force in support of conservative policy retrenchment.”

DIVERSION: The Democrats had set themselves up for just this fall, the Edsalls say, by championing the rights of minorities: not just racial minorities but also homosexuals, the handicapped and even criminals, the rights of the accused being pursued more avidly by some Democrats than the concerns of crime victims. It was this tilt, according to the Edsalls, that permitted the Republicans to redirect attention from what government gave to what it took. Neglected were many other issues, including the importance of tax policy and social needs to the economic balance between rich and poor.

The consequences of this strategy were less evident as long as there were modest increases in income among the bottom 90%. When all were at least inching forward, no one resented those who were bounding forward on seven-league, tax-break boots. But now that we are in a deep, lingering recession, the strategy of distract and conquer is in serious trouble. The phrase of the hour is “something has got to be done” and nobody in the White House is doing it. What impends is a rediscovery of government as at least a part of the solution and a shift in the politics of resentment back to its earlier form: the poor against the rich rather than “people like you and me” against the government.

In such a moment, what the President must do is punt. That is, at a moment when the opposition threatens to score, he must kick the ball downfield and hope to resume play later on more favorable terms.

Enter Vice President Dan Quayle.

PUNT: By raising the issue of “family values,” the vice president has attempted to punt the presidential campaign away from the economy, which clearly has not improved fast enough to assure a November win, to the culture.

“I know exactly who the cultural elite, the media elite and the Hollywood elite are,” Quayle says. His hope, clearly, is that the alliance between CEOs and working-class whites may be reassembled against this new enemy. Times are too tough, just now, for a direct attack on government. But Hollywood is always good for a hit along with those fancy people, wherever they are, who think they’re better than you are.

Is the American family in trouble? Of course it is, and federal family policy is as legitimate a campaign topic as any other. Does morality still count? Of course it does, but has Bill Clinton or Ross Perot said anything to the contrary?

The topics are legitimate and will remain so. But the vice president’s timing, unfortunately, suggests something less than a wholly legitimate concern with them.