A BUSH ADVISER was asked recently what’s likely to happen in the months leading up to next November’s presidential election. “Nothing,” he said.
The idea is that George W. Bush is such a strong front-runner he’ll glide through the Republican primaries, then defeat a damaged Democratic nominee with relative ease. So long as Bush avoids mistakes, victory is all but inevitable. The Bush camp cast his adequate but hardly impressive performance in the New Hampshire debate on December 2 in the context of this rosy view of Bush’s prospects. Bush didn’t blunder, his opponents barely nicked him, so the march to the White House remains on track.
Maybe it does. But we’ve learned a lot about Bush and his campaign in November and December that suggests otherwise. True, Bush continues to rack up endorsements, the latest from senators Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. He’s raised more than $ 60 million. He has the luxury of losing an early primary or two, which his strongest challenger, John McCain, doesn’t. His policy statements and proposals are sound and politically attractive. Now, however, we know these positives aren’t the whole story.
For one thing, even Bush acts as if the GOP nomination is not simply his for the asking. Why else would he go out of his way to zing Steve Forbes, his chief critic, in the debate? Bush read from a 22-year-old article in which Forbes said the age threshold for Social Security might have to be raised — exactly the position Forbes had been attacking Bush for. Soon after Bush spoke, his aides handed out copies of the Forbes article to reporters. One reason Bush delighted in embarrassing Forbes is that he intensely dislikes him. He laughs off criticism by Alan Keyes, but he watched a tape of a November 21 debate in Tempe (Bush didn’t participate) and was offended by Forbes’s sneering attacks. There’s a larger motive, too. Bush wants to deter further assaults by Forbes, which might harm him and wind up aiding McCain.
In his Meet the Press interview on November 21, Bush tilted to the right on nearly every issue where he didn’t have a pre-cooked position. Rather than cause political heartburn for social conservatives, an important constituency in the primaries, Bush said he wouldn’t meet with gay Republicans. More telling still is the Bush tax cut plan. He soothed conservatives by cutting marginal income tax rates and eliminating what Lawrence Lindsey, Bush’s chief economics adviser, calls “the biggest supply-side constraints in the tax code.” These affect lower income workers as they earn more and give up benefits from the Earned Income Tax Credit. The tax plan, says Lindsey, is one Bush “can run on, win on, and enact.” Like his foreign policy, it aims to please conservative voters who dominate the primaries.
We’ve also learned that Bush, at the moment anyway, is not a skillful or appealing debater. He needs practice. Before New Hampshire, he’d been in only two gubernatorial debates in Texas. Those were snaps. Against five GOP presidential candidates who’ve been sparring for months, Bush looked cautious and programmed. His goal was to put across his personality, market his agenda, and respond amiably to criticism. He failed on the first two counts. Anyone who’s spent time with Bush knows he’s relaxed and extremely likable. But little of his personality came across in the debate. Nor was he effective in spelling out his tax plan, which he’d announced just two days before. Here’s something to think about: If Bush can’t shine in a debate with his Republican foes, imagine what will happen in a one-on-one matchup next fall with Al Gore, a clever and ruthless politician who’s never lost a debate.
A final thing we’ve discovered about Bush is that he suffers from not having played the national political game as long as McCain, Forbes, Keyes, Gary Bauer, and Orrin Hatch. They’ve been yapping about domestic and foreign policy issues for decades. Bush spent the ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s in the oil business and running a baseball team. Even as Texas governor, he hasn’t been deeply involved in the national political conversation. This shows when he’s on his own in a debate. He’s not as quick or comfortable in answering questions as the others. He doesn’t have much to say. Bush supporters have likened him to Reagan: Both were governors who gained political office as a second career. But Reagan had been obsessed with national issues since his days as an actor. Long before he ran for office, he debated these issues with national figures like William F. Buckley Jr. and Robert Kennedy. Bush’s debates were with Ann Richards and Gary Mauro.
Bush’s greatest strength is that he has staffed up like a shadow government, with a strong team of experienced, savvy, smart advisers. With their help, his policy speeches have been dazzling. His economics advisers spent eight months working up Bush’s tax plan, and it fits nicely with his claim to be a compassionate conservative. His address delivered a month ago at the Reagan Library in California was the most impressive foreign policy statement of 1999 by any candidate, Democrat or Republican. When McCain outlined his own foreign policy views on December 1, they were an echo of Bush’s.
But his advisers can’t help him during nationally televised debates. No, debates aren’t everything in a presidential campaign, but they matter enormously. And here’s the threat Bush faces. So far, he’s been largely an idea to most voters, not a flesh-and-blood candidate. What they knew about him was that he was the son of a former president and a very popular GOP governor who appeared likely to beat any Democratic opponent next November. Now, people are beginning to see him in action. And at least in his first debate, he didn’t awe anyone. He has plenty of time to recover. There’s another debate on December 13 and at least two more in January. And he’s helped by the fact that voters want to like him. They’re just not sold on him yet. To complete the sale, Bush will have to do more than just avoid mistakes.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
