WHEN GEORGE W. BUSH aired a TV ad in mid-March criticizing “Al Gore and Bill Clinton” on education, he had an obvious purpose in mind and one not so obvious. The obvious aim was to assert himself on education, normally thought of as an issue aiding Democrats. Less obviously, Bush and his chief strategist, Karl Rove, were eager to see how Vice President Al Gore would answer. They anticipated an instant response attacking Bush’s education record in Texas — and they got it. “I loved the Pavlovian reaction,” Rove insists. Why? Because it prompted the media to compare — favorably — Bush’s record on education with Gore’s. The next week’s Time trumpeted Bush as “the reformer who really does have results.” On Bush’s watch as governor, “public schools in Texas have improved dramatically.”
By grabbing a Democratic issue, Bush isn’t playing political jujitsu. There’s nothing tricky about it. He’s simply making a virtue out of a necessity. Bush has two conventional Republican issues in his campaign repertoire: rebuilding the military and cutting taxes. He swears he’ll stick with both, particularly because they appeal to his conservative base. “I’m not going to abandon conservatives,” he told me. On reducing taxes, “the Eastern press is trying to get me off it, but I’m going to stay with it.” Bush also touts two broad conservative themes, restoring honor to the White House and reviving moral values across the country.
But the hardy perennial wedge issues of Republican campaigns — crime, welfare, balancing the budget — are no longer paramount. So Bush must come to grips with four Democratic issues prominently on the 2000 agenda: education, Social Security, health care, and the environment. How Bush handles them will probably determine whether he defeats Gore in November. Against President Clinton in 1992 and 1996, Republicans were blown away on all four. Now “the dynamic is changing,” Rove claims. Voters are wary of preserving the status quo, want reforms, and aren’t being offered any by Gore. Besides, Bush doesn’t have to triumph on all four issues, according to Rove. “We win Democratic issues by fighting them to a draw or coming close.”
Bush is off to a good start, but ultimate success could be a mirage. He hasn’t felt the full brunt of the Gore attack machine yet. For now, however, he is only 2 percentage points behind Gore in the bipartisan Battleground Poll on who would “do a better job” on education. At this point in 1996, Bob Dole trailed Clinton by 26 points on education. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake says Bush “maintains personal credibility on education.” Lake’s GOP partner in the Battleground Poll, Ed Goeas, says Gore “must have the upper hand on his lean-Democrat issues of education, caring for people, and guns. Even at this point, he does not.”
Bush believes he’s already “turned” the education issue to his advantage. “We’re way out there already on education,” says a senior adviser. “We’re showing Bush as a reformer, Gore as status quo.” In fact, Bush is routinely praised by normally Democratic groups for his education reforms in Texas. And the centrist Progressive Policy Institute looks kindly on his education plan, if only because it matches PPI’s own. The Bush plan calls for higher standards, more testing, stringent accountability, and, if schools fail, extra state aid to help them improve and optional vouchers for their students to try private schools.
On Social Security, Bush has a tougher task. He doesn’t intend to release a comprehensive reform scheme, only a set of principles. Otherwise, Gore would pick apart the details. For his part, Gore says the Social Security system isn’t broken but merely in need of more money. Bush admits that if a majority of voters believe this, “I’m in trouble.” Among the principles Bush will cite for reforming Social Security are no payroll-tax hike, no reduction in benefits for current retirees or those near retirement, and “personal investment accounts.” These accounts would allow people to invest a portion of their payroll taxes in stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. “Public opinion is changing about Social Security,” says Rove. “Personal savings accounts are a popular issue. We have an investor class out there, an investor society.” And on this and other issues, Gore is, in the new Bush mantra, an “obstacle to reform,” while Bush is a compassionate conservative.
Health care? That’s tougher still for Bush. The Battleground Poll found Gore ahead 51 percent to 36 percent on “improving health care.” Bush has yet to package his views in a single speech, but he will, stressing market solutions. To help the uninsured, he favors no-frills, basic health insurance that would be far less expensive than current plans. Bush would not only scrap federal impediments, he would “incentivize” states to offer cheap insurance. On Medicare, he wants the elderly to have the choice of sticking with the old program or choosing among private insurance plans, most with a prescription drug benefit. This is exactly the plan Clinton rejected when a commission headed by Democratic senator John Breaux proposed it. On both health care and Social Security, the Bush camp feels he must persuade a good chunk of those for whom the issue is the top priority. Bush’s advisers think this is doable, but they’ve got a good way to go in achieving it.
Finally there’s the environment. Even the most optimistic of the Bushies don’t think this issue is winnable. “The best we can do is show we’re reasonable,” says one aide. “As long as we’re greener than we’re expected to be,” says Rove, the environmental issue won’t cause serious harm. Bush says he wants to be “pro-active with smart ideas” on the environment. He favors “using technology and bringing people together to achieve clean air and clean water objectives.” Bush says he’s “thought about Kyoto,” the treaty signed by Gore that would require drastic reductions in oil and coal use and thus threaten economic growth. But his advisers think it’s too abstruse an issue to exploit. They’re probably right.
There’s a way we’ll know, aside from polls, whether Bush is making headway on Democratic issues. If he keeps talking about them, he is. But if he quietly drifts back to the old GOP strategy of ignoring issues identified with Democrats, then he’s clearly failed to gain ground. At this point, Bush has nothing to lose by taking on Democratic issues. And if all goes well, Gore’s nightmare will come to pass — that is, Bush will be taken seriously enough that attacks about jeopardizing public schools and threatening Social Security and bankrupting Medicare will fall on deaf ears.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
