Campaign Trail Leads Back to Yorba Linda

If you want clues to politics in the year 2000, visit the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda. In their own ways, Al Gore and George Bush are following Nixon’s battle plan.

That figure of speech is appropriate. In his book, “In the Arena,” Nixon wrote: “Politics is battle, and the best way to fire up your troops is to rally them against a visible opponent on the other side of the field. If a loyal supporter will fight hard for you, he will fight twice as hard against your enemies.”

Fifty years ago, Nixon applied this principle in his California Senate contest against Helen Gahagan Douglas. His campaign linked her to Vito Marcantonio, a New York congressman with ties to the Communist Party. A “pink sheet” listed House votes on which she and Marcantonio had taken the same position, suggesting that a vote for Nixon was a vote against “the Douglas-Marcantonio Axis.”

Nixon’s attacks were harsh, but contrary to myth, Douglas was no innocent victim. In “The Contender,” the definitive work on Nixon’s early career, Chapman University professor Irwin Gellman notes that Douglas called Nixon “a young man with a dark shirt”--an allusion to Nazism--and that her campaign ads explicitly compared him to Hitler and Stalin.

Californians found Nixon’s attacks more convincing, and they sent him to the Senate with 59% of the vote.

For George W. Bush, this year’s Marcantonio is Bill Clinton. Bush’s campaign is implicitly framing the campaign as a chance to repudiate Clinton, and his Web site features a clock that ticks off the moments “until the end of the Clinton-Gore era.” So far, the tactic has worked. Republicans dislike Clinton so much they have set aside most internal differences to rally around Bush.

Attacks can backfire, so the GOP campaign must take care not to overdo anti-Clintonism. In 1950, Helen Douglas learned that even Nixon-haters rejected the Hitler analogy. And two years ago, Republicans got a shock when Clinton turned impeachment politics against them.

Gore wants his own Marcantonio. Until 1998, he had been looking forward to using Newt Gingrich. The 1996 Democratic campaign featured Gingrich in its attack ads, defining the opposition as “Dole-Gingrich.” Ever since Gingrich’s resignation, however, Gore has vainly been searching for another Republican who can stir as much bile among Democrats nationwide. But here’s a forecast for the fall campaign in California: Watch Gore try to tie Bush to Pete Wilson--who still provokes a visceral reaction among Latino voters.

Nixon’s art of political warfare also included psychological combat: an effort to confuse and confound the opposition. During his 1946 campaign against incumbent Democratic Rep. Jerry Voorhis, Nixon gained a decisive edge at a South Pasadena debate. When Voorhis asked Nixon to prove a charge that he had made, Nixon dramatically walked over and handed him a supporting document. Voorhis fumbled in response.

Gore has used similar devices. In a 1993 debate on free trade, Gore addled Ross Perot by handing him a picture of Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley, whose protectionist law deepened the Great Depression. Appearing with Bill Bradley on “Meet the Press” last year, Gore offered to shake hands on a deal to give up TV ads in favor of regular debates. Spurning Gore’s hand, Bradley looked flustered. When Bradley spoke, Gore distracted the viewers’ attention with sighs and frowns.

So far, Bush has not shown a knack for such tactics. Before the fall debates, he needs to develop that knack, or at least devise some defenses. If he can’t do that, he might go the way of Jerry Voorhis.

On another front, though, Bush is gaining from Nixon’s example. His theme of “compassionate conservatism,” blending liberal goals with conservative means, owes much to the way Nixon won and conducted the presidency. Consider this passage: “Only if we restore the spirit of voluntarism to its historic place can we heal the deeper troubles we suffer from.” Though it could have come from a Bush speech, it actually came from a Nixon radio address on Oct. 6, 1968.

On issue after issue, Nixon preempted the Democrats. They had hoped to defeat him on environmentalism and poverty--then he established the Environmental Protection Agency and proposed a radical overhaul of the welfare system. In many ways, Bush is following suit. Meanwhile, Gore is trying to preempt GOP issues such as trade, but the challenge from the Green Party’s Ralph Nader might end up pulling him to the left. If Bush wins, it might be because Nader won’t let Gore be Nixon.

Whatever his flaws, Nixon understood practical politics as well as any American leader. That’s why the 2000 campaign trail leads back to Yorba Linda.