Brace Yourselves for the Battle of the Millennium

Outside Whitley’s Seed and Farm Supply store, the sweet smell of grain and the sickly odor of fertilizer floated gently over a crowd of about 100 people waiting to see their first national politician, the first big name that anybody could remember stopping in Snead, Ala., for more than a Coke and a decent set of directions. * Yet here was Dan Quayle, former vice president, clearly happy to be in Whitley’s parking lot, flashing his famous boyish smile at a baby, an old man, a distant camera. “Mr. Quay-ell,” Annie Cleveland shouted as he came within earshot. The 66-year-old reached out for her quarry, as much to steady herself as to touch this political superstar in his white city shirt and his dark Washington trousers and shining black shoes. * “You should be the president,” she declared urgently, as if she needed to make certain he had considered it. Quayle stared a moment, grinned and then wrapped his arms around Cleveland as if he were a nephew greeting his favorite aunt. * “Would you support me?” he whispered. “Would you?” * “I sure would,” Cleveland began nodding. “I would, for sure.” * And so, on that cool afternoon in September, Dan Quayle enlisted Annie Cleveland of Alabama into his brigade of supporters, just as he had won over the others in Texas a day earlier or in Florida a day later or all those who saw him between Labor Day and Election Day, when Quayle campaigned for more than 65 Republican candidates running for office this season. Voter by voter, candidate by candidate, brick by brick, George Bush’s vice president has been building the kind of rock solid support that could sustain a presidential campaign in the next millennium.

It is a lot of work even for an energetic 50-year-old, but this is the old-fashioned way to run for president--by “collecting chits and paying dues,” as they say in the political world. Quayle--like a number of other unannounced presidential hopefuls--will have paid a lot of dues and collected a lot of chits by the year 2000.

Yes, that’s right, the year 2000. Here we are, only three days away from the 1996 presidential election (with President Clinton a lap ahead in the polls at deadline time), and already the political establishment has moved on to the next presidential race. And even though political fortunetelling is a hazardous business, it doesn’t take a Tarot deck to foresee that the first race for the White House in the next thousand years will be a doozy.

For starters, candidates will need vats of money--one estimate is that they will spend a total of $2.4 billion seeking office in 2000--about three times what was spent this political season. And they’ll need to get accustomed to new ways of campaigning. Barring some electronic breakdown or deadly computer virus, the Internet will become a force instead of a distraction with political ads on the World Wide Web and maybe even e-mail precinct captains.

Perhaps the political party conventions will acknowledge that they are really massive political ads and, therefore, they will be broadcast by each party on their own political networks. Whether the major networks will cover the conventions live is a question that sparked numerous debates in San Diego and Chicago this summer, but such issues will undoubtedly look quaint by 2000 as viewers will have access to news in so many different forms and by so many different media.

Already political experts are quietly asking themselves whether the primary schedule should change, whether the ads were too negative, whether Clinton’s yearlong ad campaign is the wave of the future, whether the charges and countercharges were counterproductive because the counterattacks were often launched before most people even saw the attack. Pollsters are charting the demographics, and campaign strategists are wondering what the new big voting blocs--more older voters, more women, more Asians, more Hispanics--will want next time around.

And finally, there will be candidates of every political flavor--all jockeying to be the first president elected for the next millennium.

THE CANDIDATES -- “Aaaauuuughhh,” Democratic pollster Peter Hart groans. “The first thing I would say to your readers is, ‘Spare me.’ They don’t even get to the end of the last reel when you say to them, ‘Oh, by the way, the next movie is starting even though you thought this one was way too long.’ ”

As for his predictions about who might be starring in the next one: “It’s a fool’s errand.” Not only is it difficult to predict who will be running by the year 2000, he says, it’s impossible. In fact, he has won more than a few wagers over the years by asking friends to write down predictions like this: five names of candidates in four years, the next big one. He pays them $10 for every one they get right. They pay him $50 if they get them all wrong.

“It’s a sucker’s bet,” he contends. “I always walk away with a lot of money.” Thus warned, here are the names that prognosticators have on today’s lists. They come from political experts whose business it is to think ahead or, in a few cases, to think about job prospects come the next political cycle.

The easiest picks for next season now are this season’s vice presidential nominees -- Al Gore and Jack Kemp. They’ve done their time under the spotlight. It would seem to be their turn. Nevertheless, there have been many times when such predictions were wrong. Here’s just one: At the end of 1968, Washington’s finest believed that there was no surer bet for the Democratic nomination in 1972 than Ed Muskie, but the prize went to George McGovern, who lost in a landslide to Richard M. Nixon.

Still, here in 1996, Gore seems poised to be the heir apparent, presuming that he and Clinton make it to a second term. The question is how much it will help Gore to be a Clinton man in the year 2000. The rosy scenario has Clinton appealing to history and his followers yearning for a continuation of his good times, just as Ronald Reagan’s loyal fans elected Bush in hopes that he would extend the Reagan revolution after 1988. Many veteran analysts are skeptical of this one, however. “Clinton isn’t creating a mandate for anything,” fumes Larry Sabato, professor of government at the University of Virginia, as he cites a series of small-scale proposals by the president. “Instead of the great society, he’s going to create the itty-bitty society.”

But suppose a Clinton landslide on Tuesday encourages the president to try bolder measures? Suppose he pushes the free trade button (sending the unions to the streets) and starts reducing entitlements (alienating the boomers just entering retirement) and sticks with the Republican version of welfare reform (taking a final slap at the needier voters who once made up a strong segment of the Democratic Party)? Suppose there is a recession that tarnishes Clinton’s economic record and deepens the division between business-oriented and labor-oriented Democrats?

At that point, Gore could face a challenger riding in from the left. Maybe a solid Democrat from the 1960s, a new Democrat from the 1980s, maybe even a liberal. Names most often mentioned among those coming from this direction are Rep. Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, House Democratic leader, and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, the Democratic Party chairman.

Not possible? Try this one. The second Clinton administration deteriorates into scandal. Suppose Whitewater seeps under the White House doors and rots the Clinton underpinnings. A Mr. Clean who lives and operates outside Washington could gallop to the party’s rescue. Possible tryouts for this role are retiring New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley and Indiana’s Gov. Evan Bayh. Bradley is a former basketball star who knows a lot about the federal budget. Bayh became recognized nationally this year for giving one of the worst speeches at a Democratic convention since a young Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton nominated Michael S. Dukakis in 1988.

This new morality is a theme that at least one analyst thinks will cause some strange new ripples in the nation’s political waters. James P. Pinkerton, a Republican and author of a book on the end of big government, believes that there will be a “genuine, genuine backlash” against what he calls “Clinton-Morrisism” (as in former Clinton aide Dick Morris, who resigned after he was accused of sharing White House secrets with a call girl).

“You are seeing a further welling of a renaissance in moralistic thinking in the Democratic Party,” Pinkerton says. He cites their stands for family issues and against smoking. “In five to 10 years, I predict the Democrats--in keeping with the roots in our country, the Unitarians and the Puritans of New England--will become the morality party. [The Rev.] Jesse Jackson, Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Gore--to me each one of them represents some piece of Democratic moralism.”

This is the Democratic Party, mind you.

“The Republicans would become the good-times party. The gun owners, the smokers, drinkers, anybody who gets thrown out of the Democratic Party because they don’t live a sufficiently abstemious life to be a Democrat,” he says.

Considering the power of the religious right in the Republican Party, it seems a stretch, but what if they became a third party? And what if . . . well, sorry, back to the race at hand--the presidency, year 2000.

The Republican nominating process in four years may not be a pretty sight, especially for Republicans. By some counts, there are as many as a dozen possible contenders--from moderately conservative to true-blue, foot-stomping, give-’em-hell and we’ll-take-heaven right-wingers.

Jack Kemp is the obvious front-runner. Kemp, who will be 65 in 2000, bounces along the campaign trail, spreading cheer and optimism even when his listeners have no idea what he’s talking about. His critics say he sings only one big note--about the cure-all called capitalism--but to watch him in action is to realize that he sings it extremely well.

One recent scene suffices. It is the American Seating Co. in Grand Rapids, Mich., in late September. There are workers at rest, an industrial backdrop for the cameras, a wooden picnic bench where Kemp sits across from men in baseball caps and company jumpsuits. Just folks, good guys, all-Americans--they are here to interact for the cameras.

Kemp asks about taxes. They shake their heads. Terrible, taxes. He talks about the economy. They wince. They smile and nod as he describes his proposals to revive urban areas. Then Kemp suddenly seems to remember that the Federal Reserve Board has threatened to raise interest rates that day.

“I’m going to bang on the Fed today if they raise interest rates,” Kemp says, as the boys keep nodding. “The interest rates don’t need to go up. The economy is not overheated.” He stops, as if listening to some voice coaching him to talk with these voters, not to them.

So Kemp turns to Randy Gates, a 48-year-old electrician, and Mike Long, a 41-year-old mid-level manager, and asks them: “What do you think? Do you think the economy’s overheated?”

The faces in front of Kemp suddenly freeze, like those of kids in a Latin class suddenly asked to conjugate an irregular verb. Finally, Kemp says, “I don’t,” and the group exhales in relief.

Still, they like him even if they don’t understand his take on the Federal Reserve. He throws a strong football, and he seems nice to his wife and family. And do you always have to know what a man who wants to be president is talking about? Isn’t it a complicated job--commander in chief? So even a defeat on Tuesday gives Kemp a good kickoff for 2000, but Kemp could look out at the cold and snowy primary season and decide, as he did last year, that he can’t weather it.

That doesn’t mean an empty field. Far from it. Others could already be making their noises, ready to pick up the ball. Maybe retired Gen. Colin L. Powell (if his wife changes her mind), maybe Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld (if he wins a close Senate race on Tuesday) or New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (if she wins a tough reelection campaign next year) or Tennessee’s ex-Gov. Lamar Alexander (if he can find a compelling theme for his candidacy--something he failed to do this last time).

Steve Forbes would not be expected to run if Kemp runs (they see eye-to-eye on the economy), but if Kemp freezes, Forbes is still rich enough to buy another ticket on the primary-go-round. Add such possibilities as Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, who took Dole’s job when he retired to run for president, and the interesting but unpredictable Rep. John R. Kasich of Ohio.

Include a pride of governors--California’s own Pete Wilson, of course, Michigan’s John Engler, Pennsylvania’s Thomas J. Ridge, George Pataki of New York and George W. Bush of Texas. Add a few senators, among them Florida’s Connie Mack, who has fans of all political parties and, more important, all ages. Tennessee’s likable movie actor Sen. Fred Thompson also deserves a mention. “I would call him a very lively possibility,” says Michael Barone, author of the Almanac of American Politics. “For one thing, he’s got the trial lawyers because he’s always been fairly pro-trial lawyer and there’s oodles of money in them folk.”

Next, there are the tried-and-true conservatives. Pat Buchanan will undoubtedly be back--pitchfork at the ready. House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas has friends out there whispering his name. And, of course, the most intrepid of them all--Dan Quayle.

There should also be some surprises. Not Ross Perot, of course. We can probably count him as a candidate. There could be a few contenders from outside the usual ring. What about, say, Ted Turner--a media mogul to please the media because he will say anything that flits across the billboard inside his head? Or Bill Gates--a man who knows the medium of the future, since he owns a good chunk of it?

Or maybe there should be some ultimate Washington insider who is smart, a good administrator, nice looking, a savvy spouse and media wise--like maybe Elizabeth (please don’t call me Liddy) Dole?

*

THE MEDIA -- What kind of media would these candidates face next time around? If today’s media trends survive into tomorrow’s politics, two waves are heading for shore by the year 2000. First, there will be more news than any human brain can digest, much less use. Your car radio, your telephone beeper, your computer, your TV, your fax--all your personal machines will bring the latest tidbits and sound bites, headlines and breathless news blurbs. News about the candidates will seem to be everywhere.

Second, the consumer will look at these overstocked shelves and just start shopping. Some will go with the local newspaper. Some with CNN, some with Rush Limbaugh. Others will look for the raw data--an online interview with the candidate, a direct look at his or her endorsements, the Federal Election Commission filings from the campaign.

“Without knowing exactly how it will happen, I am sure there will be a further and further splintering of the audience as people search for ways of getting in direct contact with the candidates or finding news that is not mediated by the media,” says Robert Lichter, a longtime critic and analyst of the media who’s based in Washington, D.C.

Television, where most people get their news now, may be struggling the mightiest to deal with its own balkanization. There are more channels (some systems dish out 500) offering news from the old broadcast networks or the 24-hour news shows by CNN, Fox and NBC’s MSNBC. Add the computer to the TV in one of a variety of technical possibilities being concocted for the future and we’re talking about a massive bazaar of visual fact, fiction, opinion and whatever stands for news as the millennium turns.

Bill Kovach, curator of the Nieman Foundation, which gives midcareer journalists fellowships at Harvard, sees the fracturing of the news audience and wonders what happens to the center--the national campaign.

If democracy requires an Acropolis where its citizens can meet and discuss the nation’s future, where will the meeting place be in the year 2000? “The struggle on the part of the political parties or the political candidates will be to somehow develop a national campaign with a fragmented press,” Kovach says. “Parties by then are undoubtedly going to be organizing their own national networks--the Republicans are doing something like that now and they are usually way ahead of the game when it comes to technology. But the question could be, how does the traditional press compete with that?”

One method is an increasingly controversial experiment called civic journalism. For some news organizations around the country, civic journalism has become the answer to readers’ and viewers’ flagging interest in politics. The idea is that news consumers should participate in the coverage to keep the media from being the lofty “news filters” who dictate the meaning of what’s happening in the campaign.

First tried in 1992, civic journalism in 1996 evolved into several “news consortia” of newspapers, local television stations and local radio outlets who pool their resources to cover political news. In these cases, the consortium might pay for a poll to find out what issues are bothering residents. Then they will go back to candidates and ask them for their views on these subjects. For example, tell us what you would do about crime or education (and please skip the rhetoric about what the other guy did wrong).

Civic journalism will spread like “the ripples from a pebble tossed in the water,” predicts Ed Fouhy, executive director of the Pew Center for Civic Journalism in Washington, D.C. “What they’re doing is framing their coverage of the political campaign so that it’s less of the coverage of a horse race and more like a job interview on behalf of the public.”

While this kind of coverage has won numerous converts, it has also amassed an army of detractors. One complaint is that civic journalists, in their quest to determine what voters really want to hear about, have fallen victim to the same disease that often afflicts politicians--overreliance on polls.

In North Carolina, where the Charlotte Observer has been a leader in this experiment, the participating news organizations often publish the candidates’ responses at the same time. Although advocates say this is only part of their coverage, critics argue that this becomes poll-driven news that squeezes out any candidate trying to raise a new political issue or talk about something different.

William E. Jackson Jr., a congressional candidate who lost in a primary race earlier this year in the Tarheel state, has argued that civic journalism “is an abdication of leadership on the part of the media and it leaves room for little leadership on the part of the candidate.”

Another complaint is that all the new techniques haven’t really yielded much new information. The Chicago Sun-Times, with its ear to voter complaints about how news organizations “filter” the news, this year donated two full, unedited pages to Bill Clinton and Bob Dole as part of its experiment to give better political coverage. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a disaster.

Sun-Times editor-in-chief Nigel Wade apologized to readers, suggesting that the two campaigns essentially used their free space to regurgitate text from Clinton’s campaign book and Dole’s acceptance speech at the San Diego convention. “We had hoped for better,” Wade wrote in an Oct. 4 editorial. “We offered a new forum, but much of what the candidates gave us was old material recycled word for word. . . . Voters are electing a president, not a word processor. They want dialogue--what they got was Voice Mail.”

Such debates over civic journalism, however, may well continue. “For newspapers, I suspect that we will have many regional newspapers following the lead of this consortium in North Carolina, primarily because it’s cheaper and more manageable if you pool your resources and plan your coverage carefully,” Kovach says.

One drawback: It allows very little flexibility in the unpredictable world of politics. “It’s like going into the restaurant and having the waiter ask you for your order before you’re allowed to see the menu. But I think you’re probably likely to have 50 state journalism consortia covering their elections that way--narrowly restricting the field of issues and stories to the ones that show up in the polls,” he continues. “And maybe the national campaign could be so fragmented that only the parties could become the one place where you could get unified national stories.

“We could go back to the old days of the political party press,” he muses.

It may be a natural phenomenon among sages to see the future by looking at the past. When Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft’s top visionary, is asked how the campaign will be covered at the next millennium, he also looks backward--to the year 1517, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg.

“I think the best candidates have always used a new mass medium as a way to differentiate themselves in any campaign,” Myhrvold says. Luther figured out how to use the church door, the handbill, to start a revolution called the Reformation, he explains. “He was really the first media star.”

Fast-forward to 1960, when President John F. Kennedy began to use the still-uncharted medium of television. “The election in the year 2000 will belong to the Internet and the electronic media just as television became the medium after 1960,” Myhrvold says. “In four years an influential enough part of the populace will be using this [the Internet], and I believe we’ll find candidates using very personalized messages, chat rooms, bulletin boards to organize their campaigns. Instead of ward bosses getting out the votes, it will be the e-mail precinct captains.”

Cyberspace increasingly will become the place where the networks, cable, newspapers, magazines, traditional and alternative journalists look for data, opinion and news, he also predicts. In other words, the Internet will be the media’s medium. No politician will be able to resist it.

*

THE PRIMARIES, THE MONEY, THE ADS -- The average citizen’s general complaint eight to 12 years ago was that it took too long to elect a president. If England can elect a leader in a few weeks, why do Americans, who are so busy that they microwave roasts and brush their teeth in the shower, take a year to elect a president?

So experts came up with the “front-loaded” political schedule of 1996, which shortened the primary season from about four months to less than two. The idea was that it would stem any of the internecine party bloodletting that weakens the candidate just when he or she has to go into the big ring with the champ from the other side. And it was a plan that most people figured would hand over the nomination to the front-runner, the pick for the party regulars.

“It was the great brilliant idea for 1996, the front-loaded system that allowed the candidates to get organized for the fall campaign,” Hart says of the changes. “It was so front loaded, in fact, that it essentially torpedoed the whole campaign.”

The problem with the 1996 primaries was that Dole had a great deal of expensive competition. Buchanan, Forbes, Alexander, Texas Sen. Phil Gramm--it was a Republican mud wrestle. And when it was over in mid-March, Dole was the nominee.

It all happened so fast that virtually no voters, except those in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, had a chance to see any of the candidates. Dole had little opportunity to make a favorable impression on anyone. And he was now broke.

So the Republican campaign went on hold while the Democrats spent their allotted campaign funds and more on ads that cut into Dole’s support. Most of the ads linked Dole to House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose popularity ranked lower than even that of the media in some national polls. And the ads continued for more than a year--from September 1995 until the election on Tuesday.

“If Clinton wins, as everyone expects him to do, it could mean that the next campaign will start even sooner, a year early, probably just like the Democrats did this time,” says Ben Wattenberg of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.

In other words, the attempt to shorten the season may have actually lengthened it. This is not encouraging for the Republican National Committee, which is working to stretch out the primaries so that candidates have more time to introduce themselves to voters.

Republicans have proposed offering states bonus delegates at the convention if they will hold their elections later in the season--a 5% increase if they vote between March 15 and April 14, a 7.5% increase if it’s between April 15 and May 14 and a full 10% bonus if the primary occurs after mid-May.

But the new system may be hard to bring into being, given the inertia about such matters in most state legislatures. Moreover, there are indications that the Democrats, who still control many state houses, may not want to change the rules just as they are getting used to them. A front-loaded system worked just fine for Bill Clinton this year. Maybe it could work just as well for Al Gore in the year 2000.

“Most states are reluctant to change,” says author Barone. “They want to run on a fail-safe basis, which is KISS--keep it simple, stupid.”

“I suspect if there is any movement in the primaries, it will be to the front, and very little movement backward,” says Tad Devine, a Democratic political consultant in Washington, D.C. “For most states, there is a fundamental recognition that these nominations get decided early, and if you want to play a role in the process, you need to be up near the beginning of it.”

But like others, Devine says the schedule and the rules don’t matter so much as the money. “What’s clear from the nominating process is that if you want to do well in it, you need to raise more money than your opponent,” he says. “Money equals victory.”

How much money? Ellen Miller, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C., which distributes financial data about elections, is in the business of charting the precise bill.

For the entire presidential election in 1996, counting public and private financing as well as independent expenditures, the total for all candidates will come to about $800 million, the center predicts. In 1992, it was $311 million. “It’s obscene. It’s just obscene,” she says. “And for the year 2000, are we going to spend even more if this [system] doesn’t change? You bet we are.”

How much? Figure maybe $2.4 billion, she predicts.

A good percentage of this money is spent on ads, particularly negative ads. And there were plenty of them this season, eroding the public trust, enhancing public cynicism and winning elections. But for all the focus on negativity--few experts are studying another issue that might turn out to be just as debilitating to the poor American voter trying to figure out who’s the good guy: the speed of charges and countercharges.

“I fear that what we might see is technology driving the message,” says John Deardourff, longtime Republican strategist and advertising expert in Washington, D.C. Ad merchants can create political ads overnight--commercials that once took weeks to produce and get on the air, he notes. Within one week, you can have an ad, a reaction and even a reaction to the reaction.

“What happens is that the faster the turnaround, the less people seem to be thinking about what they are doing. The shelf life of some of these commercials is about 72 hours, and a lot of time they presuppose that viewers have a lot more time and are a lot more focused than they really are,” Deardourff says.

He clearly is bucking the winds of change, hoping for a system that would allow political advertising to move a little more slowly and more thoughtfully. But who’s to say? The nice thing about the future is that anything’s possible, even something old-fashioned.

*

THE FUTURISTS’ FUTURE -- Most of what you have already read is pretty realistic stuff, except perhaps the part about Bill Gates running for president. It may be time to look beyond the experts to find the new political trends buried in some of the bigger pictures.

There are a lot of futurists who see a warmer “Soylent Green” style planet, a Waterworld, a sudden burst of Saturn’s bad vapors, the arrival of bad aliens or decent ETs--all of which could alter the political landscape quite dramatically.

Gerald Celente, director of the Trends Research Institute in Rhinebeck, N.Y., sees the bigger picture along with the smaller one. The next presidential election will be a watershed election year, he predicts, but there may be other forces to consider.

“There is a millennium fever that is beginning to grip the nation,” he says. “And it is broken down into two camps.” First, there are the Armageddon types--either the prophets of doom or religious believers convinced that the end is near. Celente cites a U.S. News & World Report poll that says about 44% of Americans expect the Apocalypse by the year 2000. “And as we get closer to the year 2000, those who believe in the Apocalypse will gain more followers,” he adds, explaining that these people genuinely believe that the world will end at the stroke of midnight, 1999. Or they believe that their religion is tolling the end of time.

Already there are signs on the campaign trail. At a Kemp rally in Union, N.J., last month, 62-year-old Judy Graham explained her view about Kemp’s presidential prospects. “I believe Jesus is coming before the year 2000,” the retired businesswoman said. “But if he doesn’t, I’d be for Jack Kemp.”

The other faction sees the dawn of 2000 as the new day of a new age, Celente continues. “The New Agers believe this will mark a cycle of peace, love and understanding,” he says. Whether you chart the era in time or stars or zodiac signs, this group believes that it will bring “a period of renaissance as the industrial age dies.”

Celente confesses that he tends to be a New Ager of sorts. “I believe future historians will look at the industrial age as the dark age of modern times when we cared for money and production and wasted our heritage,” he says. “The coming renaissance, I believe, will put a much higher value on all living things.”

Which, if you tend to think this way, can bring you back to politics and the question of which political party believes in which version of the millennium. Which party will try for Apocalyptics and who will court the New Agers?

It is a difficult question, of course, but we have almost four years to figure it out.