AROUND THE TIME of the political conventions in August, voters were asked in a Gallup poll to take another stab at the 1992 election. This time, President George Bush defeated Bill Clinton by 53 percent to 42 percent. Then, assuming Clinton could run for another term, they were asked if they preferred him or George W. Bush. The answer was Bush, 51 percent to 45 percent. Finally, this same group of voters registered a verdict on Clinton’s presidency. A whopping 68 percent said it’s been a success, 29 percent a failure. The meaning of all this: The Clinton bifurcation lives! Voters still like Clinton’s performance as president but they don’t want him around. And so in the 2000 election, voters want a new president who’s the opposite of him personally — and especially morally — but not a strong critic of his policies.
Until a month ago, that person was George W. Bush. His compassionate conservatism isn’t a radical departure from this administration’s policies, but he’s quite unlike Clinton personally. Now, Al Gore has changed things by pulling off a strategically brilliant political transformation. Gore re-mains vice president in name only. He’s disconnected himself from Clinton and shaped his image to meet the requirements of the Clinton bifurcation. His policies are roughly the same, but he’s presenting himself as morally separate. How’s he done it? First by picking a religious person and critic of Clinton’s morals, Joe Lieberman, as his vice presidential running mate. And then by talking up religion, playing the family man by showing off his wife and children at the Democratic convention, and emphasizing the future rather than the Clinton-Gore past. Also, says chief Bush strategist Karl Rove, Gore’s kissing his wife after she addressed the Democratic convention “worked . . . unbelievably.”
So, eight weeks out, the presidential race comes down to a single question: Will Gore’s separation from Clinton endure? Bush and his advisers recognize how difficult Gore will be to defeat if he’s no longer seen as an extension of Clinton, indeed as the vehicle for a third Clinton term in the White House. Their goal is, in Rove’s words, to “re-link Gore to Clinton.” The job won’t be easy. Gore has gained spectacularly on the moral issue in the campaign. A month ago, voters who said morality is a top issue preferred Bush by 68 percent to 24 percent, according to pollster John Zogby. But a post-convention survey by Newsweek found Gore leading Bush by 7 percentage points on who can best promote moral values. That poll was skewed by sampling too many Democrats. But a Washington Post/ABC News poll released last week showed Gore, after running 11 points behind before the conventions, has pulled even with Bush on the moral issue.
Worried, the Bush campaign conducted two focus groups in early September with what it calls “new Gore voters,” ones who migrated to the vice president after the conventions. When a White House scandal involving Gore was cited, “there was a lot of nervous laughter,” says a Bush aide who observed the sessions. In response, the Gore voters spontaneously began to mention other controversial Gore activity. This was obviously encouraging to the Bush camp. Now, the Bushies expect to raise at least a half-dozen of these embarrassing episodes in ads, Bush speeches, or the debates. These include Gore’s alibi that “no controlling legal authority” barred fund-raising calls from the White House, his appearance at a fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple, his none-too-credible insistence it wasn’t a fund-raiser, his excuse he was in the men’s room when allegedly illegal money-raising tactics were discussed at the White House, and his claim that Clinton will be seen as one of America’s “greatest presidents.”
For sure, the Bush campaign will be accused of dwelling on the past, being negative, and focusing on Clinton, who’s leaving office. Bush has said he wouldn’t attack the president, but he doesn’t need to. His task is simply to connect Gore to Clinton and to Clinton-related wrongdoing. True, this would stress the past. But contrary to conventional wisdom, most presidential elections are about the past. In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected in reaction to the tired Eisenhower administration. Ronald Reagan won in 1980 because the Carter presidency had failed in economic and foreign policy. In 1988, George Bush Sr. won because the Reagan administration had succeeded on those issues. Four years later, Clinton was elected because the Bush administration seemed adrift. And so on.
The importance of the past makes Gore’s feat of disassociating himself from Clinton, for the moment at least, all the more impressive. “Everything Gore’s doing is working,” says Republican strategist Jeffrey Bell (coiner of the term “Clinton bifurcation”). The architect of this strategy was pollster Stan Greenberg, who worked for Clinton in 1992 but didn’t join Gore until early August. Greenberg spent most of the 1990s thinking and writing about how Democrats could attract middle-class voters. Just last month, he wrote in the American Prospect that Democrats should “re-enter the values debate.” Voters like candidates who “put the family at the center of political discussion,” Greenberg wrote, “and who devote themselves to a policy agenda that will help families meet the myriad challenges they face.” This leads to the “middle-class populism” of government aid for college tuition, child care, prescription drugs, and health insurance that Gore proposes.
But that’s not all of it. “Voters are drawn to Democrats who respect the public’s religious faith and belief in personal responsibility,” Greenberg wrote. “Reading Greenberg’s article,” says Marshall Wittmann of the Hudson Institute, a Republican, “you can see Greenberg telling Gore, ‘You must choose Lieberman as your running mate.'” Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, certainly has delivered the goods, speaking incessantly about religion and morality. Gore “had to have” Lieberman to distance himself from Clinton, argues Wittmann. “No one else would have made it real.”
For his part, Bush has de-emphasized religious faith since the Republican primaries, notably since his appearance at Bob Jones University in South Carolina became controversial. The Bush strategy assumed religious faith was useful politically with GOP voters, but wouldn’t help in the general election. This left a void that Gore and Lieberman have filled.
In one way, touting faith is a cynical ploy. Lieberman didn’t yap this much about religion until quite recently. In fact, reporters who covered Lieberman had a tacit agreement not to ask him about religion. No more. The message from Gore and Lieberman is: We’re religious, we’re moral, we’re not like Clinton. Now, it’s time for Bush’s counter-message.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
