PRESIDENT CLINTON has given George W. Bush (or whoever wins the Republican presidential nomination) a taste of what’s to come. Now it can be told, Clinton informed a crowd of Democrats in Los Angeles on January 22. Bush “doesn’t believe in Roe v. Wade,” and thus if he’s elected, legalized abortion will be “scrapped.” Democrats “should make sure that everybody knows where everybody else is coming from in this deal,” Clinton said. And the deal is that, should Bush win, what Democrats call “a woman’s right to choose” — they never say the word “abortion” — will be gone.
Clinton was actually being gentle, but that won’t last. His message was that Democrats should pummel Bush (or John McCain) on abortion. And you can bet they will. Sure, Bush has never declared, publicly anyway, that he wants to see Roe overturned. All he’s noted is that the Supreme Court “overreached,” a common view. Though pro-life, he’s made it clear he doesn’t want to get ahead of public sentiment on abortion. True, he’s for banning abortion, but only when a solid pro-life majority emerges in America and not a moment before. This fine-tuning of his position won’t matter to Clinton, Al Gore, and practically every other Democrat. They’ll attack him for trying to force women into back-alley abortions or worse. The assaults will be crude, dishonest, and relentless.
Here’s the point: Bush isn’t ready to fight off such attacks, much less turn the abortion issue to his advantage. The same is true for McCain. Both appear uncomfortable in the extreme discussing abortion. Their response is to cite their “pro-life record” and mention their tolerance of those who disagree. They describe their position without justifying it or seeking to persuade anyone of its rightness. In a New Hampshire debate on January 26, McCain gave the same defensive response twice (“proud of my pro-life record”) when questioned by Alan Keyes. Bush was every bit as robotic, insisting he’s been “a pro-life governor” who has promoted abstinence and adoption and recognizes “good people can disagree on this issue.”
There’s a larger point in all this: Republican prospects for the presidency are worse than they appear. After Gore’s smashing victory over Bill Bradley in the Iowa caucuses, it became conventional wisdom that he’ll be a strong challenger to Bush or McCain in the fall. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showing Bush ahead by a mere three points reflected this. But the poll did not reflect how the issue agenda, the campaign strategies, the skill of the candidates, and the condition of the country now favor Gore.
Roe, race, and recklessness — those are the tools of attack for Gore. Bush and McCain aren’t any better at deflecting attacks on race than they are on Roe. They’re so lame, in fact, that Gore now includes in his stump speech a riff condemning them for refusing to call for removing the Confederate battle flag from atop the South Carolina capitol. Like Clinton’s mild criticism on abortion, this is a precursor to inflammatory, race-baiting attacks by Gore and other Democrats. In 1998, they blamed Republicans for church burnings and said GOP candidates intended to roll back civil rights laws. The attacks were over the top, but they worked. Now, neither Bush nor McCain seems ready to reply aggressively.
McCain may think he’s off the hook on economic recklessness because his proposed tax cut is so puny, but he’s not. Gore will simply turn to McCain’s boast that he’s voted for every tax cut possible as a member of Congress, notably the $ 792 billion cut that Clinton vetoed last year. As for Bush, Gore is already raising a stink about his tax cut. It’s a “scheme” to enrich the wealthy that would put America’s prosperity at risk, Gore says. There’s a response to this that scores of Republican candidates could give. But Bush, at the moment, isn’t one of them. Rather than defend his tax cut, he’s chosen to go after the flaws in McCain’s and insist that he, Bush, is for paying down the national debt, too. He’ll have to do better than that against Gore.
And he’ll have to do better on the Democratic staples of health care, education, Social Security, and Medicare as well. Unfortunately for Republicans, these issues will be front and center this fall. Gore’s positions are hardly unassailable. What Clinton did in his State of the Union address, Gore does in his standard campaign speech. For Gore, one policy fits all: No reform, no belt-tightening, just throw money. This makes Gore vulnerable, but only if Bush or McCain offers compelling alternatives and rips his policy apart.
Neither has a capacity to do that now, and it wouldn’t be easy in any case. The political mood in the country has shifted to the left, slightly but perceptibly, in the past several years. The public’s animus against federal spending and Washington has diminished. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism” is a clever adjustment to the new mood. The trouble is, Bush hasn’t been very adept at fleshing it out in an appealing way — or in any other way, for that matter. Just uttering the phrase “compassionate conservative” isn’t enough. Bush has occasionally been good at explaining his education reforms, though you’d never know it from his feeble response in the January 26 debate to Steve Forbes about his record as Texas governor. As for McCain, he is largely uninterested in domestic policy, and it shows.
Alan Keyes thinks Bush and McCain stumble because they lack a “digested” set of principles. Liberals like Gore have that, he argues, and it means they’re never lost when policy discussions go beyond their talking points. They have an ideology to fall back on. “Somebody like George Bush can take a stand, but he can’t defend that stand,” says Keyes, who cites Bush’s rambling answer to a question about what Jesus Christ would do on the death penalty, which Bush supports. Either Gore or Bradley, says Keyes, “has the ability to clean George Bush’s clock, wipe up the floor with him.”
Keyes overstates the problem, but there is a problem. This isn’t 1980 or 1994, years in which a candidate needed only an R beside his name to win. Some Bush advisers liken him to Ronald Reagan, and the analogy isn’t entirely farfetched. Each came late to politics, has a glowing personality, was elected governor, and is constantly underestimated. But Reagan ran in a year when the nation was hell-bent on getting a new president. Jimmy Carter was wounded by a bitter primary fight with senator Teddy Kennedy that stretched all the way to the Democratic national convention. Gore isn’t likely to face that problem with Bradley. Also, Reagan was aided by the fact that the United States was losing the Cold War to the Soviet Union and was suffering from double-digit inflation.
Which leads to another question Bush or McCain will have to answer: How exactly would he improve on the Clinton-Gore economic record? It’s true that Clinton and Gore don’t deserve the credit for the strong economy. But they have bragging rights. Bush has a tax cut to talk about, but he’ll need a lot more to offset the dazzling numbers that Clinton tossed around in the State of the Union and Gore mentions in his speeches. As for McCain, he’d better change the subject to foreign and defense policy.
Despite Gore’s advantages, don’t count Bush or McCain out yet. What they’ve got to do is become tougher, better candidates and seize the initiative. This is possible. After all, three months ago, Gore was a laughing-stock as a candidate, stiff, boring, and given to ridiculous claims. Now, he’s the best candidate in the field — ruthless and resourceful, and not quite as grating as he once was. Bush has improved, too, particularly in debates, but he still has a long way to go to match Gore. So does McCain.
Defeating Gore will require Bush or McCain to go on the offensive and stay there. Against him, Bill Bennett’s adage applies: In politics, when you’re not on offense, you’re on defense. They’ve got to take the fight to Gore on every issue, not just the moral lapses of the Clinton-Gore White House. Make Gore explain why he wants tax cuts for everyone but actual taxpayers. Make him justify his refusal to help black and Hispanic kids escape terrible inner city schools. Make him present a case for racial preferences.
And Bush or McCain must flip the abortion issue to his benefit. Hedging will only make things worse by raising doubts about his own character. And endlessly restating a position won’t do either. The Republican candidate has got to force Gore to defend his position, especially his opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortion, to parental notification, and to a 24-hour waiting period. Otherwise, Gore wins the issue and probably the election.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
