Candidates Conjure Up Heroes Past

Is George Bush another Harry S. Truman, giving ‘em hell in a campaign against a do-nothing Congress? Is Bill Clinton another John F. Kennedy, getting America moving again?

Or are they merely remakes of Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter--two mediocre candidates fighting for the votes of an unenthusiastic electorate?

Every presidential campaign tries to cast its candidate in the mold of Mt. Rushmore, summoning the ghosts of leaders past to inspire the voters of today. Democrats traditionally invoke Franklin D. Roosevelt as a role model; Republicans cite Abraham Lincoln.

But this year the practice has reached a new peak, with battles over which candidate most resembles Truman, and a pantheon of other comparisons from Martin Van Buren to British Prime Minister John Major.

In a turnabout from the usual practice, President Bush, a Republican, has sprinkled his speeches with references to eminent Democrats, most notably Truman, the feisty President who shook off dismal standings in the polls to win reelection in 1948.

Democrat Clinton too has likened himself to Truman, as well as to Kennedy, who ran in 1960 as a youthful challenger to the graying Administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and to Roosevelt, who ousted the Republicans in the Depression year of 1932.

The comparisons are usually inaccurate, historians say, but that doesn’t mean they’re all bad. Instead, the scholars say, these uses and misuses of history actually serve a deep national purpose.

“It’s a psychological thing,” says James MacGregor Burns, the American historian now retired from Amherst College in Massachusetts. “I don’t think they care about accuracy. The point is that they’re appealing to symbols--symbols of the virtues we want to see in our leaders, like courage and honesty and leadership. It is a way of claiming that they will be leaders, like the great leader-presidents. . . . And that’s kind of good, even if it’s inaccurate.”

At the least, it reaffirms the fundamental standards and values that apply to the presidency. However cynically they may have invoked the hallowed names, they must accept the standards of judging their own performance that doing so implies.

“Politicians play this game for reasons that are useful to them,” added Stephen Hess, a scholar on the presidency at Washington’s Brookings Institution. “George Bush wants you to think he’s Harry Truman? OK, fair enough. . . . (At least) it has some educational value: People ask, ‘Who’s Harry Truman?’ ”

Presidents and presidential candidates have tried to turn historical icons to their political advantage since the founding of the Republic.

George Washington’s supporters often compared him to Cincinnatus, the noble Roman general who desired only to return to his farm. In 1840, Van Buren and his opponent, William Henry Harrison, both cast themselves in the image of the most popular President of the age, Andrew Jackson. In 1948, Truman--today’s icon of choice--ran as Roosevelt’s heir and compared himself to another heroic figure: Citation, the celebrated thoroughbred of the period who came from behind to win the Kentucky Derby.

Clinton has been quite deliberate in his use of history. Burns says the Clinton campaign has even called him to make sure its analogies are sound. (He warned them to be careful of FDR, who was often accused of holding more than one position on the same issue--the “Slick Willie” of his day.)

But Clinton has been careful to keep his metaphors under control and rarely dwells explicitly on either Kennedy or Roosevelt. “Americans don’t appreciate someone coming on stage and representing himself as someone else,” said David Kusnet, the Democratic candidate’s chief speech writer--especially when it means assuming the stature of a revered hero.

Bush, on the other hand, may have stumbled in trying to appropriate Truman as a model. The gambit drew an angry denunciation from Truman’s daughter, novelist Margaret Truman Daniel, who said her father would have backed Clinton. And reporters forced Bush to acknowledge that in the epic 1948 election, he voted for Truman’s hapless opponent, Republican Thomas E. Dewey.

Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, jokingly said of the Republicans: “They love dead Democrats.”

The tiff over Truman was a prime example of how history is reinvented by each generation to suit its own purposes. When Truman left office in 1953, he was reviled as a failure; his popularity rating stood at only 23%, the lowest recorded for any President. But in recent years, the reputation of the salty, plain-speaking Missourian has been revived as a symbol of honesty and decisiveness.

“Truman was the most disliked President ever,” historian Stephen Ambrose noted. “And now they’re fighting for his mantle. God--politics!”

Bush rediscovered Truman this summer as he wrestled with the dilemma of running despite an opposition-controlled Congress and sinking popularity in the polls, the situation that faced Truman in 1948.

Someone gave the President a copy of a best-selling Truman biography. Its author, David McCullough, was invited to the White House to give a lecture. And the rest, as they say, is history.

On Labor Day, Bush declared that Truman “was a man of decisiveness, not equivocation. He’d find little in common with Gov. Clinton.”

Clinton countered with a speech in Truman’s hometown of Independence, Mo.: “George Bush cast his first vote against Harry Truman, and he has spent four years fighting against everything Harry Truman fought for.”

By now, a senior White House official acknowledged, Bush has gotten as much help from Truman as the 32nd President is likely to provide, and has quietly taken the Democrat out of his speeches.

“Everyone who is behind appeals to Truman--and usually doesn’t make it,” the official said. “It is a ridiculous comparison, frankly. It is too long ago. And Clinton isn’t Dewey. But ’48 is what we’d like,” he admitted.

That typifies the other use of historical analogies in election years: the search for a precedent that might suggest how this contest will turn out.

Is this 1948, where an unpopular President will surge from behind by lambasting his opponent without mercy?

“No,” says Hess. “The economy was good in ‘48, and it isn’t today.”

Is this 1976, where a young Southern Democratic governor will overwhelm a recession-harried Republican President?

“Maybe,” says Jody Powell, who was press secretary to Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter that year. “You have a majority of the voting public that is inclined not to reelect the President. What Clinton needs to do is remind people why they are so inclined, and make them comfortable enough with him to act on that.”

Oddly enough, some Republicans like the 1976 analogy too. “We came from behind and almost caught up with Carter,” said one. “We only have to do a little better this time.”

James A. Baker III, the eminence grise behind the Bush effort today, was Gerald R. Ford’s chief strategist in 1976. GOP insiders’ question this year: Can Baker overcome a deficit even greater than the one he failed to overcome 16 years ago?

Or is it 1988, when a relentless negative campaign by the Republican can demolish the Democrat’s seemingly formidable lead?

“No, unfortunately,” said a senior White House official who helped Bush win that race against Democrat Michael S. Dukakis. Clinton has proven to be no Dukakis; Bush is defending his record amid a painful recession.

The Clinton campaign’s favorite analogy, naturally enough, is 1932, when FDR knocked Herbert Hoover’s Republicans out of the White House for a generation.

“It’s a stretch,” said historian Ambrose, “but you can make a case for 1932. You’ve got a country that wants change . . . (and) a President in power who said I don’t have anything new to offer, but the other guy would be a disaster.”

Four years ago, Bush liked to joke that his favorite campaign was not 1932 but 1836--the last election that elevated an incumbent vice president to the Oval Office, the memorable Van Buren.

You don’t hear much talk around the White House these days about Van Buren’s 1840 reelection campaign. He lost.

Instead, White House aides are casting their eyes toward the surprise reelection last April of British Prime Minister John Major.

“The British elections are the ones that apply,” argued Bush campaign aide James Pinkerton. “The Conservatives stressed the fundamental importance of the economic issues. . . . It’s inspiring to listen to these guys.”

The Bush campaign has even consulted Major’s chief strategist, John Lacy, for advice.

But the news of Bush’s new transatlantic role model has Clinton’s aides unfazed.

Said one, borrowing a line from another campaign, of course: “We know George Bush. He’s no John Major.”

Times staff writers John M. Broder and David G. Savage also contributed to this story.