A New Majority?

A hostile takeover? If McCain loses the nomination, it will be in part because he allowed this idea to take root. Political parties, and the coalitions they shelter, are groupings of disparate interests, united for one of two reasons: because the interests involved have a common goal that overrides their differences; or because they find that together they all can have more power than any one could have on his own. In 1792, small farmers and the southern slave-holding gentry joined the New York machine of Aaron Burr to found the Democratic party (then the Democratic-Republicans), bound by their dislike of the Federalists’ policies. As Dr. New Deal, Franklin D. Roosevelt assembled a motley crew of urban ethnics, crypto-Communists, and southern Bourbons behind his domestic agenda. When his main concern became foreign policy, he broke apart that coalition and assembled a new one, including businessmen and the Stimson Republicans. Ronald Reagan joined the Goldwater backers to the neoconservatives who had voted against them, and linked both to lunchbucket Democrats. Coalitions are often unlikely, impure, messy, and difficult, and tend to annoy true believers of any description. They are also crucial, if one wants to hold power.

Consider the three-way split in the electorate. In presidential elections, the core vote of each party is around 37 percent, with an unaligned 25 percent moving between them. During impeachment, Clinton’s core defenders were about 30 percent, his core critics another 30 percent, with the rest hostile to both, or indifferent. Ideological breakdowns are similar, with the electorate self-defining as roughly a third conservative, a quarter liberal and two-fifths moderate. No party can win without its base, but no party can win with only its base. In 1992 and 1996, Republicans nominated establishment figures, who placated the base of the party but excited no one outside it, and lost twice to Bill Clinton, who made deft verbal appeals to the center.

Learning from this, McCain has ignited the center, and even disarmed many Democrats, showing the fine touch of Reagan and Roosevelt. But he has also done something both of this century’s great coalition builders would have tried to avoid: annoyed and ticked off his party’s base. Astonishingly, he has failed to make an issue of any of their core concerns. Has he still time? We will know later, but the stresses could have been lessened by a little better planning early on; they could be lessened still.

Surely there are some bridge issues that can join the right to the common-sense center, and mark both of them off from the left. Quotas could do it. So might the devastation wrought by this administration upon the armed forces, which would surely get worse under Al Gore or Bill Bradley, who have made clear that they will take their advice about unit cohesion not from Colin Powell but from Patricia Ireland and Barney Frank. Coalitions are creatures of discord, but they survive via balance: No one bloc gets it all, but no one is wholly neglected. McCain has let the Republican base think he is giving it nothing. And it has shut him out in return.

Politicians like to go back in time, searching for scenarios that suit their wishes. Democrats like 1988, with Al Gore cast as George H. W. Bush, the vice president. Republicans like 1984, with Al Gore cast as Fritz Mondale. Candidates trailing in the polls like 1948, with themselves cast as Truman. Some Bushies like to think about the 1896 election, when William McKinley ushered in an age of Republican dominance. But for Republicans facing the 2000 election, the Year-to-Fear is 1912, when the establishment broke with the hell-raising center, and let Woodrow Wilson slip in. If McCain now seems in danger of becoming TR in his Bull Moose incarnation, George W. Bush has to guard against becoming President Taft, with establishment backing, and damned little else.

If McCain should guard his right, Bush has to move to the center. He would do well to stop whining about independents trying to kidnap “his” party, and start trying to appeal for their votes. He should stop referring to his party as a closed corporation, and independents as interlopers. (They might remember this later.) This is not the way a great party grows, and renews itself. This is not the language of a Ronald Reagan, who would have welcomed “intruders,” wooed them, and then charmed their socks off. This is the language of a Walter F. Mondale, who said in his 1984 fight with Gary Hart that he wanted only “real” Democrats. He got them, and not one vote beyond them, on his way to losing 49 states. He was wiped out by Reagan, who was not as fastidious, and was also a great politician. Reagan’s self-described heirs could learn a lot from him. If McCain does not connect with the right, his crusade will not flourish. Bush should realize that McCain’s appeal is authentic, and not a ruse dreamed up to distract him. If Bush cannot appeal to “intruders” (even some Democrats), he will inherit a party that is quite pure and quite small and quite dead.

A Gallup poll taken in December 1999 showed core Republicans at 29 percent of the population, Democrats at 32 percent, and independents at 31 percent. A Pew poll last month showed conservatives at 31 percent, moderates at 47 percent, and liberals at 22 percent. Clearly, conservatives or core Republicans come nowhere near being a governing party. But allied with the moderates — those who lean in their direction — they become an unstoppable force.

There is a governing majority in this country that is right of center, but not one that is truly right-wing. There is a majority for cutting the scope of the government, but not one for no government. All the efforts since the 1994 election have failed to make a libertarian consensus emerge. Unless one enjoys being marginalized, it is better to join, or to construct, a winning coalition. This is the case that McCain hasn’t made. He has not explained, in these terms, why it is better for the conservative base to belong to an inclusive party that can enact some of its measures, than to see liberals rule, and get nothing. He has not explained to conservative critics why his way is better for them. When cries of a liberal plot to nominate McCain went up after New Hampshire, he should have been quick to address them directly.

Addressing these fears should not be so difficult. Are the Democrats, who managed to lose both houses of Congress, and who haven’t delivered a clear majority for a presidential candidate since the 1976 election, really capable of controlling in a Machiavellian way hundreds of thousands of voters? Do they control the independents, who vastly outnumber the Democrats who voted for McCain in this season’s primaries? And what about the stunning infusion of new, first-time voters? Are they, too, directed by the Democrats? Or are they more like the Jesse Ventura contingent, who helped the flamboyant ex-wrestler streak past the respectable but unexceptional Republican, and some of the Democratic party’s best-known brand names in Minnesota? If Democrats are making mischief in Republican primaries, why are they supporting a man who has Gore’s people frightened, and who leads Gore by 24 percentage points in recent polls? Are these numbers made up by the press? By pollsters? Is there a second gunman on the grassy knoll?

Building a coalition of the center-right should be possible, as both Republicans are conservative moderates, close to the center of public opinion. But coalition building is an art, not a science; a function of talent, not intellect. There is a reason why so many fail at it, why success is so fleeting, why Reagan and Roosevelt are viewed in political circles with such reverence. McCain and Bush so far seem to be suffering from largely self-inflicted wounds. Why did the man who took Goldwater’s seat provoke and ignore the core of his party? Why did the inclusive, new-model, New Conservative governor of Texas find himself fighting inclusion and novelty, and more or less boxed in by the very far right? Each of these men could build a great coalition. Each has part of one now. If either can’t figure out how to build a whole one, an administration steeped in lies will hold on.

Noemie Emery is a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD.