The Center Moves Left

Attention, those of you just getting over your New Year’s hangover. The presidential campaign is already in high gear. There’s good news and bad news for liberals. The good news: The political environment looks friendlier for liberals than it has been in 35 years. The bad news: It may not matter because people aren’t voting the issues.

Remember the “L-word”: the ideology that dare not speak its name? Get thee behind me, Michael S. Dukakis!

Well, in Wednesday night’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire, a questioner asked Vice President Al Gore and Bill Bradley, “Do you reject the notion that you are a liberal?” Bradley’s response: “I’ll accept whatever label you want, because that’s who I am.” Here’s Gore: “I don’t really care what kind of label people apply to my positions and views.” As Popeye would say, “I y’am what I y’am.”

What they are is pretty liberal. Both are running to the left of President Bill Clinton. Even Gore, who first ran for president in 1988 as a critic of the liberal tilt of the Democratic Party. There was Gore last week, proudly accepting an endorsement from the Lion King of Liberalism, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

Gore now opposes the Clinton administration’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military. So does Bradley. But Wednesday night, Gore went one step farther and said he would “make it a requirement” that any military leader he appoints to the Joint Chiefs support his policy of allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Meanwhile, Bradley advocates the registration and licensing of all handguns, the sort of policy Democrats paid dearly for in 1994. He has spelled out a plan for universal health care, the sort of policy that failed under Clinton. And he is calling for an ambitious antipoverty program, the sort of policy that was supposed to have died with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. That doesn’t sound like liberalism in retreat.

The idea of more government spending is simply not as poisonous as it used to be. For one thing, there’s a surplus. It lets Democrats be Democrats again. Republicans say, give the money back to the people. But the people don’t seem to want it. Tax cuts rank low on voters’ agenda. The people say they would rather see the surplus spent on priorities like health care and education. Look what happened when Clinton vetoed the GOP Congress’ huge tax cut last year: nothing.

Resentment of government has been driving the political agenda since the tax revolt of the late 1970s. But recently, according to the Gallup poll, trust in government has been going up. In 1994, only 17% of Americans said they trusted the government in Washington. In 1999, the figure was 34%. Under Clinton, Democrats have proved their credentials on economic management. Maybe, people are beginning to believe, the federal government can do something right. Look at the issues voters are most concerned about now: education, health care, Social Security, Medicare, gun control. All issues on which Democrats have a solid advantage, according to a recent poll.

Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP front-runner, asserts he is a “compassionate conservative,” downplaying his differences with Democrats. He insists he’s not antigovernment. “I believe government should only do a few things, but do them well,” Bush says in his ads. That sounds like the campaign of a defensive conservative, exactly what Gary L. Bauer accused Bush of being in Thursday night’s GOP debate. “Why should conservative voters believe that you will seriously defend our values?” Bauer asked Bush.

Well, for one thing, Bush has made tax cuts his signature issue. “This is not only ‘No new taxes,’ this is ‘Tax cuts, so help me God,’ ” Bush said in the debate. (Memo to candidate: It is not wise for anyone named Bush to go around making tax pledges.) Why tax cuts? Because they unify the GOP. Because they are the policy least objectionable to those outside the party. And because tax cuts are an affirmation of faith to conservatives. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) challenged that faith Thursday when he said, “Don’t spend all the surplus on tax cuts . . . . Don’t give tax cuts to the rich.” He might as well have said to conservatives, “And don’t vote for me.”

But outside the GOP, tax cuts aren’t selling. What GOP message is? The Cold War is over. Crime is down. The economy is good. Republicans are split over abortion and gay rights. As for a balanced budget and welfare reform--been there, done that. Bottom line? Republicans don’t have any agenda. That’s why liberals are driving the agenda in this campaign.

In the primaries, Democrats face a choice between left and lefter, while the Republican race looks like a face-off between a defensive conservative (Bush) and a maverick conservative (McCain). For the first time in 40 years, hard-line conservatives have no serious contender. Dan Quayle? Out. Steve Forbes, Bauer, Alan L. Keyes? Getting nowhere.

This year’s primary contests are following a familiar pattern: the party establishment versus an alien invader. The self-styled “outsiders,” McCain and Bradley, are mounting serious challenges to their respective party establishments in New Hampshire. They even signed a pact to support the same antiestablishment cause: campaign-finance reform.

McCain and Bradley stand a good chance to upset the establishment in New Hampshire on Feb. 1. After all, New Hampshire gave us Eugene J. McCarthy, Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart and Patrick J. Buchanan. When it comes to alien invasions, New Hampshire is the political equivalent of Roswell, N.M.

Then what? The same thing that always happens: The empire strikes back. The Southern primaries have saved the party establishments in the past, and Gore and Bush are relying on the South to do the same again. Clinton and Gore have deep reserves of strength among Southern Democrats. The governor of Texas, whose brother is the governor of Florida, ought to be able to count on Southern Republicans.

Will front-loading change things this year? California has moved its primary up to March 7, and Californians are always attracted to aliens. That’s why Bradley and McCain have been paying so much attention to California. But New York will also be voting on March 7. Bush and Gore have been building up strength there, as a firewall against California. They don’t call New York the Empire State for nothing.

OK, say Bush and Gore are nominated. If liberals are driving the agenda, Gore ought to be an easy winner. Why is it, then, in every poll this past year, Bush has been running ahead of Gore, usually by double-digit margins? How is this happening if issues favor the Democrats?

Because people aren’t voting on the issues. They’re voting on personal qualities, like character and style. Voters are looking for a change of leadership, not a change of direction. That’s why Republicans may be better off without an agenda. They don’t scare people.

Bush certainly doesn’t. He comes across as a fraternity president, a laid-back guy who’s not driven by politics. Unlike Clinton, a man totally driven by politics. Or Gore, who’s so tightly wound you’re afraid he’ll blow a gasket on national TV.

What about the good economy? Won’t that pay off for Democrats? Right now, voters say Bush is more likely than Gore to keep the nation’s economy prosperous. That’s Bush, son of the man who was president when the economy tanked. And Gore, vice president during the longest economic boom in the nation’s history. Yet, Bush leads on the economy. What’s that about?

The current boom looks different from those of the past. It isn’t being driven by a war like the 1940s, or public-works spending like the 1950s or a defense buildup like the 1980s. It doesn’t look like it’s being driven by government at all. So when Clinton and Gore try to take credit for the economy, a lot of voters wonder what they did. Balance the budget? The GOP Congress forced them to.

You know how Clinton is always stealing Republican issues, like the balanced budget and welfare reform? Last week, he went one step farther. Clinton stole Alan Greenspan, the Republicans’ federal reserve chairman. Has the president no shame? Well, let’s put that question aside. Has he no rationale? Of course, he does.

Democrats want to make Greenspan the symbol of their successful stewardship of the economy. Appropriating a bipartisan symbol for partisan purposes--there’s a name for that: triangulation. It worked for Clinton in 1996. But there’s a risk for Clinton in reappointing Greenspan. It could promote the idea that the good economy really is bipartisan. Voters may conclude that it doesn’t matter whether the president is a Democrat or a Republican. The economy will be OK either way.

What Democrats have to do is try to get people to vote the issues. They’ll try to paint Bush as a right-winger. They’ll warn people of what could happen if Republicans control everything--the White House, the Senate and the House.

Republicans will try to make the election as personal as possible. That means at the presidential level, a vote for a easygoing guy versus an uptight overachiever. And at the congressional level, a vote for the status quo. No heavy ideology.

What a spectacular irony it would be if liberals control the agenda and the country elects a Republican president and a Republican Congress for the first time since 1952.*