It’s Election Season, So Quick, Hide the Opinions

In 19--, the Republican Party nominated for president a pragmatic conservative who had learned to appeal to moderates. His background had been conservative, yet for this election he felt the need to sound moderate. The party had taken a beating in the media for associating with the “radical right,” and Republican moderates wanted to soften the image. “If we do this,” they said, “victory will be assured, since the Democratic nominee is carrying such heavy baggage.” They concluded on this cautionary note to their presidential candidate: “You can beat this guy easily if you just sound reasonable; stay away from the zealots and don’t get pushed into controversial positions.”

It seemed like excellent advice. The candidate took it, and lost the election. His risk-averse, lackluster campaign failed to hold the Republican base, while the Democrats vigorously appealed to their base. Many Republicans stayed home, and others figured that they might as well support the Democrat, since at least he showed some spunk and fighting spirit.

Fill in the blanks. What was the year of that campaign? The answer is 1960, 1992 and 1996.

In 1960, the heir-apparent for the Republican nomination--Vice President Richard Nixon--had been a hero to the Republican right since his Communist investigations in the 1940s. But already spooked by his media image as a red-baiter, Nixon was thrown even more on the defensive by New York Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, who threatened a floor fight at the Republican convention unless Nixon agreed to parts of Rockefeller’s liberal agenda. At a secret meeting at Rockefeller’s Manhattan suite, Nixon signed on to the liberal planks. Since they were almost identical to those of the Democrats, the resulting campaign was bereft of issues. It became a personality contest, for which Nixon was singularly ill equipped, especially against the glamorous John F. Kennedy.

Much the same thing happened in 1992. Running against a Democrat weighed down with scandals, President George Bush seemed a sure winner. But the 1992 Republican convention in Houston, with its pro-life platform and talk of “culture wars,” deeply offended the media, which unleashed a barrage of criticism--”They were very happy today,” fumed the late Charles Kuralt of CBS-TV. “They got the platform they wanted. No room for a pregnant woman to make any decision at all, even if she was raped.” The Bush camp panicked. Determined to erase all memory of the convention, it implicitly accepted the Democrats’ terms of debate (“It’s the economy, stupid!”), refusing to talk about social-cultural issues. Given the seemingly bleak state of the economy in 1992, this was not a wise move for an incumbent.

In 1996, the Republicans were even more closed-mouthed about social issues. In the primaries, Sen. Bob Dole won the support of social conservatives by reminding them of his solid pro-life voting record and promising continued support. But as soon as he had nomination locked up, Dole abandoned them. Pro-lifers were muzzled at the convention, and on the campaign trail all Dole wanted to talk about were tax cuts, an issue that has never resounded with social conservatives. So once again it was “the economy” --which was doing fine under incumbent Bill Clinton.

The current Republican front-runner, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, is pursuing the same thrice-failed strategy. To every question that probes those moral issues on which Democrats have taken liberal positions, from the appointment of pro-life judges to the use of racial preferences, Bush’s responses are bland and unspecific.

Maybe the strategy will work this time. But should it? Is a Republican victory worth papering over issues that cry out for public debate? For the past seven years the Clinton administration has pursued racial, sexual and biomedical policies that contradict the moral views of a sizable minority, if not a majority, of the American electorate. The two Democrats seeking the presidency, Al Gore and Bill Bradley, have emphatically endorsed those policies. Yet they have gone unchallenged by the Republican front-runner. If, as expected, Bush gets the Republican nomination, we will have a presidential campaign in which only one side of the current cultural debate will be heard.

“Those who won our independence,” wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis in 1927, knew that “the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political” duty. Brandeis was right, but he may have had his causality wrong. If there is a danger of inertia in America, it does not come from “an inert people” but from the failure of political leaders to air grievances that have stirred to action millions of Americans.