Brave New Campaign : Just When Things Seemed to Be Settled . . . It’s All Up in the Air Again

A week ago, the presidential race was all but over. The outcome was a foregone conclusion. The Democrats were going to win, possibly by a landslide.

The Republicans had tried every thing. They tried changing the sub ject to family values. No one cared, except those offended by the nasty, intolerant tone of the GOP convention.

George Bush came out with his “Agenda for American Renewal.” But no one cared. The plan was eight months too late, it had little new to offer and most of what was in it was contradicted by the Administration’s own record.

The Republicans tried going negative. They attacked Bill Clinton on the trust issue and kept bringing up his draft record. But no one cared. It was old news. The only new revelations were about Bush’s involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Meanwhile, Clinton sat on a double-digit lead, trying to wait out the clock. Bush desperately needed to reconfigure the chemistry of the campaign. Everyone wondered when he would drop the bomb.

The whole month of September went by. And nothing kept happening.

Suddenly last week, everything seemed to happen at once. On Monday, Ross Perot staged one of the most incredible spectacles in the history of U.S. politics. He succeeded in getting both parties to come to Dallas and pander shamelessly to him. By Thursday, Perot was in the race and all the odds had to be recalculated.

On Tuesday, Bush called Clinton’s bluff and raised the ante on the debate issue. He challenged the Democrats to four presidential and two vice-presidential debates, all in the month before Election Day. And he invited Perot to participate. Now it was Clinton who seemed to be stalling. “Let’s get it on!” the Bush campaign taunted. “Chicken George” turned into a strutting cock-of-the-walk.

What the Perot candidacy and the debate controversy did was create uncertainty. That is exactly what Bush needed to do. Clinton wanted to keep the campaign in a steady state. Bush had to scramble the race. Last week’s events clouded up the crystal ball and made everything uncertain. It feels like a whole new campaign.

The biggest uncertainty is Perot. The two parties sent high-level delegations to Dallas because they were uncertain of Perot’s intentions. The Democrats wanted to keep Perot out of the race. The GOP wanted to keep Perot from endorsing Clinton, as he seemed close to doing when he pulled out of the race July 16.

The only thing never uncertain was Perot himself. The whole process looked like a fix, controlled by Dallas. Perot has spent millions of dollars during the last three months getting his name on all 50 state ballots. He has dropped hints that he might have an “October surprise.”

As for leaving the decision to his “volunteers,” they were about as independent and unpredictable as delegates to a party convention. And far less representative. The Bush and Clinton delegates got elected in primaries. Does anyone remember voting in a Perot primary?

What is uncertain is Perot’s impact on the race. Some Clinton strategists see Perot as a way station for wavering voters. Clinton is leading right now, but he still hasn’t closed the sale in a number of key states. Bush could peel off some Clinton supporters by mounting an aggressive campaign on taxes, race and trust. Clinton would rather have them peel off to Perot than to Bush.

Bush has an even greater interest in pumping up Perot. He wants Perot to do exactly what he was doing last spring, namely, split the anti-Bush vote.

The maximum vote Bush seems to be able to get in the polls is 42%. That is exactly the vote Prime Minister John Major got in the British general election last April. Republicans often cite the British election as a model. Why? Because the Conservative Party won with 42%.

They won because the rest of the vote was divided, 34% for Labor and 18% for the Liberal Democrats. That’s what Bush needs: a divided opposition. He was getting it in May and June, when Perot was the leading candidate for change. Clinton was third in the polls. As soon as Perot got out of the race, two-thirds of his supporters went to Clinton.

Bush wants Perot to get some votes back--enough to split the change vote and enable Bush to squeak through as Major did. So Bush has to build up Perot’s credibility. That’s why Bush sent his national-security adviser to Dallas. And why he invited Perot to join the debates.

There is uncertainty about which major-party candidate Perot hurts. A state-by-state analysis shows that Perot tends to draw more votes from the front-runner. Clinton is the front-runner in more states than Bush. So Perot is taking more votes from Clinton.

But in most of the states where Clinton is ahead, his lead is so big that Perot’s vote doesn’t matter. In California, for example, Clinton leads by 25 points in a two-way race. His lead is cut to 19 points--still safe--in a three-way race.

In states where Bush is ahead, however, Bush’s lead is narrow, particularly in the South. In Mississippi, for example, Perot cuts Bush’s lead from 6 points to 2, making the state too close to call. Perot may be taking more votes from Clinton, but he could take more states from Bush.

Perot’s hard-core supporters tend to be conservative white men. Their second choice is Bush. Perot’s marginal supporters, those who see the Texas billionaire as the candidate of change, would otherwise vote for Clinton. So the better Perot does, the more he takes votes from Clinton. The worse he does, the more his votes come from Bush.

Thus the Perot paradox: If Perot does poorly, he hurts Bush. If he does well, he helps reelect Bush. That is surely not what Perot wants to do. So he’d better try not to do too well.

Debates also create uncertainty. Once a debate is scheduled, it freezes the campaign for a week before. To be fair, voters hold off making up their minds until they watch the debate. The debate then dominates the agenda for a week afterward. Every impression, every gaffe and every zinger is mulled over endlessly by the press. Remember Gerald R. Ford’s premature liberation of Poland in 1976?

If debates monopolize the campaign for the next three weeks, that’s fine with Bush. Anything that diverts attention from the economy is fine with Bush. Which is what happened last week.

Clinton sees the debates as a way to raise his stature. He will be debating the President of the United States as an equal. The debates will also help Clinton undercut Bush’s efforts to demonize him.

In 1980, Jimmy Carter tried to demonize Ronald Reagan. By appearing reasonable and competent in the debates, Reagan reassured wavering voters that he was a safe alternative. Clinton wants to do the same thing in this year’s debates.

Bush sees the debates as his best opportunity to destroy Clinton’s credibility. Opinions of Bush are pretty well set, but a lot of voters still don’t have firm opinions about Clinton. Bush will use the debates to drive up Clinton’s unfavorables. He will hammer Clinton on trust. He will accuse him of flip-flops. He will challenge Clinton’s knowledge and experience. He will lure Clinton into making an error.

If he can’t do those things himself, he will rely on the press to do them. Which is why Bush insists on having as many press questioners as possible.

As usual, Perot complicates everything. If Perot is included in the debates, he takes attention away from Clinton. That hurts Clinton’s effort to gain stature: He is not the only “alternative President.” But it also makes it harder for Bush to discredit Clinton; Clinton may seem more reasonable than Perot.

Perot and Clinton could join forces in the debates to assail Bush’s record. That would throw Bush on the defensive. But it could also enhance Perot’s credibility and divide the opposition to Bush.

The two-against-one game can also work to Bush’s advantage. Right now, 38% of the voters have an unfavorable opinion of Clinton. A whopping 66% have a negative view of Perot. Bush can tarnish Clinton by painting him with the same brush as Perot. “There are three candidates in this race,” Bush will say. “The two guys over there both want to raise your taxes.”

All these new uncertainties have been introduced into the campaign. Only one thing is not uncertain--the voters. They are angry about the economy. And they don’t want to reelect Bush. Those facts are not likely to change in the final month of the campaign. It is just less certain where they will lead to.