Challengers Dragging Both Gore and Bush Away From Center Front-runners could be haunted in the fall by stands taken to please primary voters.

Under pressure from unexpectedly strong challenges, the presidential front-runners in both parties are being tugged away from the political center in a way that may create headaches for them if they meet in November.

Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush both began their campaigns emphasizing centrist themes aimed largely at the moderate swing voters who typically decide a general election. But with Bill Bradley gaining ground on Gore and John McCain advancing on Bush, the two leaders have been forced to shift their focus toward the hard-core partisans who dominate the primary electorates. That change in emphasis has been starkly visible during the three GOP and two Democratic debates over the past week.

In making their adjustments, Gore and Bush have embraced ideologically purist positions that their opponents may exploit if they advance to the fall. Vice President Gore, for instance, has endorsed open service for gays in the military, suggested he would make agreement with that policy a litmus test for appointments to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (before retreating) and said he would consider raising cigarette taxes to fund health care for the uninsured.

Bush Attacks Reform, Offers Huge Tax Cut

Texas Gov. Bush, meanwhile, has denounced campaign finance reform in starkly partisan terms, attacked the political activities of “union bosses” and escalated his anti-government rhetoric while promoting a tax cut that dwarfs reductions passed by Congress last year.

Each front-runner appears to have made a calculated decision to accept more risk as a general-election candidate in the hope of reducing the chance he will be upset for his party’s nomination.

“It doesn’t matter what happens in November if you don’t win in February,” says Bill Miller, an Austin-based political consultant who works for both parties.

The two front-runners have shifted course for opposite reasons. Gore has drifted left mostly to blur differences between him and Bradley, who has taken aggressively liberal positions on a wide range of domestic and foreign issues. Indeed, key Republicans believe that, even after Gore’s recent lurches leftward, Bradley would be even more vulnerable to an ideological attack in the general election.

Bush, for his part, has moved to the right to sharpen differences between him and McCain, a senator from Arizona who, of all the leading contenders in both parties, has been the most resolute about sticking to the center.

Bush’s first policy speeches last summer highlighted centrist priorities: “rallying the armies of compassion” in faith-based charities to help the poor and reforming federal education programs, especially those aimed at low-income students. But by early November, the Texas governor was talking about measures to toughen discipline in schools and increase federal spending on abstinence counseling. Then he delivered a stern foreign policy speech in which he promised to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty “within months” of taking office if Russia attempted to block deployment of an American missile defense system.

As McCain surged in New Hampshire, the process accelerated. In a mid-December debate in Iowa, Bush aggressively attacked McCain’s campaign finance reform package--which would ban unregulated “soft money” contributions to the two parties--as a threat to the GOP and endorsed a measure to make it tougher for unions to use members’ dues for political purposes. In that same debate, Bush cited Jesus as the philosopher who has had the most effect on him--drawing applause from religious conservatives but raising eyebrows among more centrist commentators.

Most important, Bush on Dec. 1 released a plan for sweeping cuts in marginal tax rates whose 10-year cost has been estimated at $1.1 trillion or more--a sum greater than the currently anticipated federal surplus over that period. In debates, Bush repeatedly stressed the size of that tax cut as a “fundamental disagreement” with McCain, maintaining that the senator from Arizona is too willing to let Washington spend the surplus.

In making that argument, Bush has used the conventional anti-government conservative rhetoric that he earlier avoided. In October, he drew fire from the right when he said: “Too often, my party has confused the need for limited government with a disdain for government itself.” But at a forum with students in New Hampshire on Sunday, he defended his tax plan in these terms: “I believe that a bloated government will take away freedoms over time. The best way to make sure Washington stays lean is to not let it take money.”

Bush hasn’t abandoned centrist themes: He still talks about reforming education and helping charities uplift the poor, and he emphasizes parts of his tax plan aimed at working-poor families. His camp believes those positions will allow him to regain the center if he wins the nomination.

But McCain advisors argue that Bush has myopically weakened his potential strength as a general-election candidate in his bid to rally the right against the senator. “Bush has dropped a year of laying a foundation of being a ‘New Republican’ and has become the kind of Republican that could gain only 40% of the vote in the last two presidential elections,” charged one McCain strategist.

Gore has undertaken a comparable journey that’s raised similar questions among Democrats.

Bradley in June endorsed registration of all handguns; Gore in July called for licensing all handgun owners. After Bradley in September denounced a California ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage, Gore did too. Gore matched Bradley again by saying he would support Medicaid funding for all abortions, after opposing such funding in Congress.

In September, Bradley came out for allowing gays to serve openly in the military; in December, Gore echoed that view. With Bradley charging that Gore’s health care plan did not move quickly enough toward universal coverage, the vice president recently said he would consider raising cigarette taxes to pay for covering more of the uninsured. And in a debate last week, Gore stirred a furor by insisting he would impose a gay service “litmus test” on potential Joint Chiefs of Staff appointments, although he quickly backed off.

Like Bush, Gore has not abandoned centrist themes: He stresses fiscal discipline and paying down the national debt, aggressively defends the 1996 welfare reform law and supports more defense spending. But even some supporters worry that his efforts to preempt Bradley are providing the GOP with volatile ammunition for the general election--a risk underscored this week when the Republican National Committee said it would air ads criticizing Gore’s initial comments on gays and the Joint Chiefs.

Candidates Seen ‘to Curry Favor’

“What’s most damaging is the impression of pandering,” said Will Marshall, director of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank close to the Clinton administration. “Reasonable people may disagree on the stance he’s taken, but it’s hard to avoid the impression of a competition by these two candidates to curry favor with gay activists. That’s more damaging ultimately than the content of the position.”

Several analysts said the net effect of Gore’s concessions to the left may be to narrow the list of states he can realistically contest in a general election. “If it is Bush and Gore, I would be very surprised if Bush doesn’t win all the Southern states,” said Rice University political scientist Earl Black.

What’s clearest is that Gore and Bush have widened their differences. Earlier, some feared that both were so committed to seizing the center that a general election between them might be devoid of meaningful issue disputes. There appears little risk of that now.

“There is going to be a real choice for the public,” says Miller, the Austin consultant. “They are not so centrist anymore.”