CAMPAIGN ’98

Sorry, but no. Republicans are not on the verge of a repeat of 1994 (52 House seats, 8 in the Senate). But they may get the next best thing: moderate pickups of 15 or more in the House and as many as three in the Senate (plus a governorship or two). This is nothing to sneer at. It’s less than normal for the sixth year of a presidency of the other party. But there’s a reason for this: Sixth-year gains consist partly of recapturing House seats that were lost in a presidential landslide two years before. However, as President Clinton coasted to reelection in 1996, Democrats added only two seats in the House (and lost one in the Senate). So any serious Republican gains will have to be carved out of Democratic territory.

As recently as six weeks ago, few Republicans aside from House speaker Newt Gingrich and representative John Linder, chairman of the GOP congressional campaign committee, believed even moderate pickups were possible. Clinton was enormously popular (and still is). The performance of GOP leaders in Congress had disappointed many Republicans. Democrats were talking up their chances of retaking the House (now 228-205) and making enough gains in the Senate (55-45) to set the stage for capturing it in 2000. With the economy booming, most political analysts were predicting a bland, pro-incumbent 1998 election. Republicans might win or lose a handful of seats. But either way, they’d keep control of the House and Senate.

The conventional wisdom hasn’t changed, but the political environment has. After trailing Democrats by as many as 10 points in polls of voter intentions in next year’s congressional races, Republicans are now roughly at parity with them. The NBC/Wall Street Journal survey in October gave Republicans a 40 percent to 39 percent edge. Add to that the continuing GOP undertow in American politics, freshly confirmed by the elections last month. Assessing the political climate in an open letter to Clinton in The Hill, former Clinton adviser Dick Morris predicted 1998 will be “a disaster” for Clinton and the Democrats. Noting the sixth-year pall over presidents, Morris told Clinton: “The way things are going, you’ll be no exception.”

What causes sixth-year distress? It occurs chiefly because the president and his aides run out of energy and ideas. Clinton, while still vigorous, is frantic to craft an appealing agenda for 1998. He’s been using fund-raising speeches to test new themes, but hasn’t come up with much. His aides have leaked a variety of new programs, none of them grabbers. In the end, he’ll probably be stuck with proposing a tax cut far less sweeping than what Republicans will be promoting, along with spending increases on health care, education, and the environment, kept to a minimum by the mandate for a balanced budget. In other words, a tame agenda.

Morris argues Clinton’s loss on fast-track trade authority and cave-in to Republicans on curbing the Internal Revenue Service are “symptomatic of the onset of the sixth-year doldrums.” And things are likely to get worse when the first team of White House advisers departs (George Stephanopoulos, Harold Ickes, and Leon Panetta are long gone) and second-stringers take over. Republicans look forward eagerly to the day press secretary Mike McCurry leaves. “I think McCurry has done more to hurt Republicans than any person working for Clinton,” says a Republican strategist. “The women just believe him.” A half-dozen top aides may be gone by early 1998. The new team is bound to make rookie mistakes or act too cautiously to keep the political focus on Clinton. “The process tends to make the president irrelevant,” says a Clinton adviser. The press corps and politicians grow increasingly interested in who the next president will be, not what the current lameduck one is doing.

Already the issue mix has shifted to the GOP’s advantage. Senate hearings on IRS abuses and successful use of the tax issue in 1997 races have revived tax cuts as the prime Republican talking point. “Republicans have always done well on taxes,” concedes a Democratic consultant. Republicans have also learned from Clinton they can’t slough off education as a national concern anymore. In winning the governorship of Virginia, Republican Jim Gilmore invoked this slogan: “Education first, then cut taxes.” More than his promised elimination of the state car tax, this appeal swung moderate Northern Virginia to Gilmore. Now, House Republicans are drafting a full- blown education program including mandatory transfer of 90 percent of federal education spending to local school districts. If Republicans trumpet a strong plan for education — not just school choice — “they’re really going to help themselves,” says a Democratic strategist.

For Democrats, the issue shift has linked them to unpopular positions on sensitive social issues. “All the pressure points move them to the left as the public is moving to the right,” insists Gingrich. Gay rights? Clinton tied Democrats to the homosexual movement by addressing a dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, the national gay and lesbian group. Affirmative action? To assuage blacks, Clinton has attacked California’s Proposition 209, which bars racial and gender preferences. And, far from following Clinton’s instruction to initiate a national dialogue on race, the president’s race commission has concentrated on heaping fresh blame on whites. Partial-birth abortion? To placate feminists, an important Democratic constituency, Clinton is pledged to veto a ban on it again next year.

Then there’s the role of money and organized labor. Here, scandals and congressional inquiries will have an impact. Sen. Fred Thompson’s hearings on campaign-finance abuses in 1996 may not have tarred Clinton, but they did dampen fund-raising by the Democratic National Committee. (The party’s Senate and House committees haven’t been hurt, however.) By nearly everyone’s reckoning, Republicans will have more money than the Democrats in 1998, especially in October, when TV spots have the most clout. Paid media in the month before the election aids Republicans more than Democrats, both because the GOP spends more, and because the press, which tilts toward Democrats, has less influence then. The October spike in spending unquestionably helped Republicans this year in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York. And next October, the GOP money advantage may be all the more pronounced. Meanwhile, union spending on behalf of Democrats may be less. House hearings on the AFL-CIO and the Teamsters, along with federal investigations into labor’s campaign spending, are bound to detract from the union effort in 1998. Also, if James Hoffa wins the Teamsters’ presidency next year (and he’s favored), Democrats will suffer. He’s vowed to cut Teamster ties to the Democratic party.

John Morgan, the GOP election guru who predicted the 52-seat pickup in 1994 months beforehand, sees yet another favorable sign: the rural and exurban vote. The trends in 1997, he wrote in a November 19 memo to Gingrich, “are highly reminiscent of the 1994 elections in which the Democratic party died in rural America.” In Virginia this year, he said, “it made no difference if the rural county was traditionally Democratic or Republican, the GOP prevailed.” The same was true in judicial races in Pennsylvania. And in New Jersey, Gov. Christie Whitman “did best” in rural and exurban counties. ” Rural America,” Morgan said, “detests New York and the Megapolis and does not believe the liberal message coming out of Washington.” Morgan recommended going after more rural and exurban House seats “than we are currently looking at.” He provided a list of 43.

There’s one person who could cut Democratic losses or produce a Republican landslide, depending. It’s Clinton, of course. If he put together an attractive agenda, promoted it heavily, and spent week after week raising money — and if the Clinton scandals petered out — Democrats might break even in 1998. As for Republicans, Linder said he’s never taken seriously the idle chatter about another 1994. “I never did see the 40 to 50 seats,” he said. “I don’t now. That would happen only if the White House collapsed.”

True, this could occur if one or more scandals ripened, the economy soured, and Clinton’s popularity plummeted. But my advice to Republicans is, Don’t hold your breath.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.