An Election Premortem

Finally, it’s over. Well, not quite. But why wait until the body is cold to start picking over the remains? Let’s do it now and get it over with, before the recriminations begin.

All we need is a coroner to carry out . . . well, let’s not call it an autopsy. More like a pre-mortem of the 1996 campaign.

How did the GOP end up with Bob Dole?

It all goes back to the New Hampshire primary. Before New Hampshire, Dole looked weak and vulnerable--just as he does now. Steve Forbes was the hot Republican back in January--on the covers of Time and Newsweek before a single vote was cast. Dole’s morose response to President Bill Clinton’s State of the Union speech on Jan. 23 nearly finished the frontrunner off.

Then an amazing thing happened. Patrick J. Buchanan won the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 20--and sent tremors through the GOP. Buchanan’s victory was a godsend for Dole. Dole knew the GOP would never, ever nominate Buchanan. But it gave Republicans a reason to vote for Dole: He was the only candidate who could stop Buchanan.

As long as the rest of the field was divided between Dole, Forbes and Lamar Alexander, Buchanan could squeak through with narrow plurality victories, just as he did in New Hampshire.

The religious right played a critical role. Buchanan carried the religious right vote in Louisiana, Iowa and New Hampshire. That horrified religious right leaders, who did not want to see Buchanan become their horse in this race. For more than a decade, Christian conservatives have been fighting for “a place at the table” in the GOP. Buchanan would have carried them off to the party fringes.

So the religious right mobilized behind Dole in South Carolina. That was the breakthrough primary for Dole. And the coup de grace for Buchanan. When Republicans ask themselves how in the world Dole became their standard-bearer, they have Buchanan to thank for it.

Could any Republican have defeated Clinton?

No. This election is a referendum on the president, not on his Republican opponent. No incumbent president with a job approval rating in the high 50’s loses a bid for reelection. Voters believe Clinton did what he was elected to do: turn the economy around. Just as in 1984, voters believed Ronald Reagan did what he was elected to do: end the economic crisis and restore the nation’s military security.

Dole is the challenger this year, and the challenger has to sell change. The problem is, when people are happy with the incumbent’s performance, there isn’t much of a market for change. Not like 1992, when the electorate was in a frenzy for change.

Dole has another problem. He doesn’t look like a candidate of change to most voters. Not after 35 years in Washington. When voters are asked, “Which candidate do you think will bring needed change to government?” the answer, amazingly, is Clinton--the incumbent!

Another Republican might have had greater credibility as a candidate of change. Maybe Alexander, who marketed himself as an “outsider.” (Remember the flannel shirts?) Maybe Forbes, who really was a political outsider. Maybe Pete Wilson, if he could have figured out some way to get the nomination without splitting the party over abortion. Any one of them might have done better than Dole. But none would have done better than Clinton.

What happened to last winter’s populist insurrection?

It never happened. And its leader was Buchanan.

Buchanan spoke the language of economic discontent. He expressed the fear and anger of workers threatened with downsizing. He targeted big corporations and foreign trade. That was one reason why Buchanan made the GOP establishment so nervous. Mainstream Republicans support big business and free trade.

But as it turns out, economic issues had little to do with Buchanan’s support. His voters gave top priority to social issues--abortion, gay rights and gun control, for example. His following consisted mainly of social conservatives, angry that the GOP was selling them out. Reagan and George Bush never delivered on the social agenda. Neither did Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and the GOP Congress.

In exit polls during the primaries, Buchanan voters did not cite economic issues as a major reason for their discontent. Theirs was a specifically political protest, aimed at the political establishment that they felt had betrayed them.

Nonetheless, the press dutifully took Buchanan at his word and wrote all kinds of stories about the deteriorating situation of American workers. There was only one problem. It wasn’t true. Economists pointed out that the welfare of American workers has actually been improving, and that more U.S. jobs are being created than destroyed by world trade.

Indeed, Americans themselves report they feel better off economically. If they’re worried, it’s not because of their own bad economic experiences. It’s because of all the stories they read about corporate layoffs and downsizing.

Sure enough, the stories died with the Buchanan campaign. Clinton surged into the lead last spring on a strong economic performance and a tide of national optimism. When the president asks, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” most Americans say yes. Buchanan, the candidate who called for economic insurrection, has disappeared. Clinton, the candidate who boasts of greater economic security, is about to get reelected. So which candidate got it right?

Why is voter interest so low this year?

Two reasons: because voters are not clamoring for change the way they were in 1992; and because there’s no horse race.

Things are, more or less, the way they were in 1984, when it was “morning in America.” That year, a woman walking by a campaign rally asked a reporter what was going on. “It’s a Mondale-for-president rally,” the reporter replied. The woman thought about it for a minute and said, “I don’t know why we need an election. We already have a president.”

Elections are about change. When there’s not much interest in change, there’s not much interest in the election. Even more so when the outcome is a foregone conclusion.

Clinton established his double-digit lead over Dole in late January, at the time of his State of the Union speech. Nothing much has changed in the nine months since. More than 200 public polls of the presidential contest have been released this year. Dole has not been ahead in a single one. Only on brief, rare occasions--when Dole resigned from the Senate in June and for a few days after the GOP convention in August--has Clinton’s lead been reduced to single digits.

For all the complaints about the press covering the election as if it were a horse race, one thing is clear: Voters lose interest if the election is not a horse race. You can’t fill the stands if everybody knows which horse is going to win. Campaigns need excitement, thrills, tension. The press would love a good horse race, and they’ve done everything they can to create one--hyping Dole’s leavetaking of the Senate, swooning over his choice of Jack Kemp, dramatizing the tax-cut plan, digging up dirt about Clinton’s fundraising operation.

But those damn polls keep coming out saying none of it makes any difference. The voters just aren’t buying Dole. “Where is the outrage?” Dole complains. You want outrage? Talk to people about the O.J. Simpson verdict.

Why doesn’t character matter?

It does. But performance matters more.

When Americans vote for president, they see it like hiring a plumber. Back in 1992, the basement was full of water and the house was in danger of collapsing. The plumber they hired in 1988 had been in the basement for four years, but nothing seemed to get fixed.

When you hire a plumber, you want to know one thing: Can he get the job done? You don’t ask too many questions about his draft record or his love life. That’s exactly how the voters hired Clinton four years ago.

Character does count for something, of course. You want to be sure the plumber’s not going to cheat you or rob the house. Do voters feel assured about Clinton? Not entirely. Americans are divided over whether they consider Clinton honest and trustworthy.

But when voters are asked, “Do you think Clinton is honest and trustworthy enough to be president?” they say yes. They don’t think he’s going to cheat them or rob the house. He’s been working in the house for four years, and so far, nothing is missing. And the plumbing works better.

What do voters mean when they say Clinton is honest and trustworthy “enough to be president”? It could mean that he passes the threshold test of honesty. Or that the voters have become awfully cynical about how honest they expect a politician to be.

Public cynicism about politicians may be protecting Clinton. To Dole’s exasperation, voters say they haven’t heard anything about Clinton that makes them believe he’s any worse--or any different--than other politicians.

What happened to Kemp?

He’s toast. As one wag put it, “Jack Kemp has a great future behind him.”

Conservatives are outraged over Kemp’s handling of the campaign. He refused to run on wedge issues. He refused to support a tough personal assault on Clinton. To make matters worse, he limited Dole’s options when he said in the vice presidential debate, “It is beneath Bob Dole to go after anyone personally.”

Kemp committed the worst possible sin for a running mate. He didn’t show any fight. The GOP had to rely on others to do Kemp’s job. Like Ross Perot and former education secretary William J. Bennett, who vigorously denounced the president’s character and ethics.

Remember Nelson A. Rockefeller? For two decades, the New York governor was the Democrats’ favorite Republican. In every election from 1964 to 1976, you could prove that Rocky was the strongest presidential candidate the Republicans could put up. The only problem was, Republicans didn’t like him. He wasn’t a real conservative. He wasn’t one of them.

Well, guess who’s the Democrats’ favorite Republican these days? “Throughout much of his career,” Vice President Gore said during the debate, “Jack Kemp has been a powerful and needed voice against . . . coarseness and incivility.”

So he’s a nice guy. He’ll finish last.

Is the Perot movement dead?

Not exactly. Perot is dead, politically. The only question is whether he’ll take the Reform Party down with him.

Perot brings both benefits and burdens to his party. The benefits are his money, his name recognition and his following. The burden is Perot himself. After his erratic behavior in 1992, his mean-spirited performance in the 1993 NAFTA debate with Vice President Al Gore and his manipulative handling of the 1996 campaign, voters have become cynical about Perot. His campaign looks like a monstrous ego trip.

But the Reform Party does have one thing going for it--reform. Entitlement reform, fiscal reform, tax reform, campaign reform, trade reform and lobbying reform are all immensely popular causes--causes that major-party politicians usually avoid. The Reform Party wants to keep those issues on the agenda. And threaten politicians with retaliation if they do not address them.

But the party is not going to get anywhere unless it figures out a way to separate itself from Perot. In 1992, the benefits of Perot outweighed the burdens. This year, the reverse is true.

Perot served a real purpose in 1992. Voters wanted to get rid of Bush, but they weren’t ready to give Clinton a vote of confidence. With Perot on the ballot, they could do both.

In 1992, Perot put the federal budget deficit on the political agenda. He proved that the deficit issue can get votes. It worked. The deficit is not being ignored any more. Both parties now have balanced budget proposals. Perot’s experience is much like that of other third parties in this country. They force an issue onto the agenda. Then the major parties steal it.

“Third parties are like bees,” historian Richard Hofstadter once wrote. “They sting and then they die.” In 1992, Perot stung. In 1996, he died.

What are the voters trying to say?

Just this: Government is supposed to solve problems. That means, more than anything else, the economy. Now that the Cold War is over, the president is commander-in-chief of the economy. Fairly or unfairly, voters hold him responsible for every economic problem--not just unemployment and inflation, but downsizing, poverty and slow growth.

The president is also addressing another problem: the “values squeeze.” To make ends meet these days, most families need two working parents. They have to live farther away and commute longer distances to find affordable housing. Parents are under immense pressure to keep up with their lives.

“Who’s raising our kids?” they want to know. “Where are they getting their values?” From the schools? From television and the movies? Or, God forbid, from each other? Clinton has taken a series of small initiatives to reassure anxious parents that the government is on their side: V-chips, anti-teen smoking measures, pregnancy prevention programs, school uniforms, gun control, anti-truancy initiatives. Measures like those may not solve the problem. But they’re a strong signal.

To which Republicans reply, “Yes, but Clinton has sent all the wrong signals on drugs.” They’re right. He has. It’s the one mistake the president has been paying for throughout the campaign.

Is there any ideological message in this campaign? Sure. Voters want to solve problems with as little government as necessary. The Reagan Revolution lives. In fact, the Democrats have co-opted it. That’s been the case with every successful policy innovation in U.S. history. If a program is truly popular, both parties embrace it.

Voters believe government should solve problems, not create them. In trying to solve the nation’s health-care problem in 1993, Clinton threatened to make matters worse. Middle-class Americans were afraid he was going to take what they were satisfied with--their health care and health insurance--and turn them over to the federal government. Clinton paid for that mistake.

Now the GOP Congress threatens to make matters worse in the name of balancing the budget. Balance the budget, voters say. But don’t do it by shredding the safety net. And don’t threaten programs that work--like student loans and environmental protection. We’ll know Tuesday whether congressional Republicans will pay for that mistake.

A pre-mortem is always risky. The patient could surprise everybody and spring back to life. Maybe the voters will defy all expectations this week and elect Dole just to make the pundits and the pollsters look foolish. The question is: Why in the world would they want to?