The 1998 election was about as good as it gets for George W. Bush. He was already the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, and his landslide reelection as governor of Texas strengthened his lead. Better yet, his brother Jeb was elected governor of Florida, which means George W. has all but locked up the third and fourth biggest states. He also showed his prowess as a votegetter. By winning 69 percent of the vote, he far exceeded what any other Republican, and few Democrats, have achieved in Texas. Plus, he had coattails, pulling in the entire statewide GOP ticket and bringing Republicans to the brink of controlling both houses of the state legislature for the first time. And he got almost half of the Hispanic vote, no small feat for a Republican.
What’s next for Bush? Not much as a national candidate. As front-runner — and with no one gaining on him — Bush has every reason to delay a formal candidacy and avoid attacks by rival candidates and intense press scrutiny. So, in the likely event that he runs, Bush won’t announce until late next spring. In the meantime, he will appear at a meeting of Republican governors just before Thanksgiving. He won’t deliver a major speech, though, hasn’t scheduled other trips outside Texas, and doesn’t plan to appear on national question-and-answer shows for the foreseeable future. Instead, he’ll concentrate on pushing his program through the Texas legislature early in 1999.
Yet he wants to make an impression nationally, especially on conservatives. They’re the dominant force in the GOP presidential nominating process, and Bush is eager to persuade them he’s more conservative than his father, the former president. That’s why he insisted in his election-night victory speech that his reelection was a triumph for his “conservative philosophy” and “a mandate for tax cuts.” Bush believes his Texas agenda — a tax cut of nearly $ 3 billion and an end to social promotions in public schools — will appeal to conservatives. And he intends to spread the word quietly that prominent Republicans in his father’s orbit — James Baker, Richard Darman, Rich Bond — won’t be advising him. That should delight conservatives.
Bush does benefit from being President Bush’s son. He’s got name I.D., connections all over the country, and the experience of having worked in presidential campaigns. And there’s an unusual way in which he’s helped by his father. GOP strategist Jeff Bell calls it buyer’s remorse. Polls have found that if the 1996 election were held again, President Clinton would still beat Bob Dole. But if the 1992 election were re-run, President Bush would be overwhelmingly reelected. Obviously, that’s a strong nationwide statement that many voters feel they erred in ousting Bush and electing Clinton in 1992. This spills over into support for Bush’s son now.
In his reelection drive, Bush matched the profile — the theoretical profile, that is — of a Republican who could win in 2000. He has a strong base and the ability to raise big money. He attracts Reagan Democrats and Hispanics. He’s a conservative with compassion, or at least styles himself as such. He has charisma, having grown up in wide-open Texas rather than straitlaced Connecticut like his dad. He’s acceptable to all segments of the Republican party. The result? He looks electable. Yet two things are missing. Bush lacks both a strong national message and a convincing game plan for winning the nomination.
So does the other Republican who got a lift (though not as much as Bush) on November 3 — Sen. John McCain of Arizona. He was reelected with 69 percent of the vote and with 52 percent of the state’s Hispanics. McCain, a POW in Vietnam, resembles Colin Powell in that he has an appeal across party lines. (Powell’s made it clear he’s not running.) But after siding with Clinton on campaign-finance reform and a large tobacco tax, McCain is sure to encounter resistance among GOP conservatives. Even so, he’s no Clinton. Says GOP consultant Mike Murphy: “McCain is a lot of things Bill Clinton isn’t. He’s a hero with courage. Clinton is a coward. He’s a blunt-spoken guy. Clinton is word-twister. He comes from the merit system of the military. Clinton rose in the spin and deception of conventional politics.”
McCain will soon confer with advisers — ex-congressman Vin Weber, former Reagan aide Ken Duberstein, pollster Bill McInturff, Murphy — and decide by December 1 whether to run. Chances are, he won’t. In fact, he likes Bush and may endorse him. But should McCain decide to seek the nomination. Murphy has a scenario for winning. He calls it the “big bounce.” The idea is for McCain to wait for the press and Republican activists to tire of the GOP candidates, including Bush, by early next fall. Suddenly, McCain would announce, do well in Iowa, win New Hampshire, and be catapulted as a powerful front-runner into the later primaries. Sounds plausible — except McCain won’t have much of a fund-raising base, and the Iowa caucuses usually require a year or more of organizing if a candidate is to finish in the top three. If McCain finished lower, he’d get no bounce.
But let’s assume McCain does decide to run, performs okay in Iowa, and finishes first in New Hampshire. Then, the big bounce might work. To use a Democratic analogy, McCain would play Gary Hart to George W.’s Walter Mondale. Only this time, because of the way the primaries are scheduled, Hart would win. The California primary has been moved up to March 7, no more than two weeks after New Hampshire. Other primaries are set the same day. Bush would not have time to exploit his superior resources over the months-long haul of the primaries to wear down McCain, as Mondale did Hart in 1984. The race would be over in early March, with McCain the nominee.
Yes, yes, it’s only a theory. But it’s an intriguing one.
Broadly speaking, the Republican field consists of three types of candidate: governors or former governors, conservative ideologues, and celebrities. Bush, Lamar Alexander (who was once governor of Tennessee), and outgoing California governor Pete Wilson are of the first type. They’re fairly conventional Republicans. The question is whether a Bush candidacy would steal the bulk of Alexander’s support and deny Wilson an opening. At least in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Alexander was well organized when he ran in 1996, maybe not. Alexander has already run TV ads this year in New Hampshire, boosting his polls. Still, practically no Republican strategist believes Alexander or Wilson can defeat Bush (and neither do I).
The ideologues — Sen. John Ashcroft of Missouri, Gary Bauer, former vice president Dan Quayle, Steve Forbes, perhaps Jack Kemp and Newt Gingrich — may have benefited from the timid posture of Republicans in the 1998 elections. They think so, anyway, if only because they have pointed messages. Forbes zinged Republican leaders for “passivity.” “No message is no way to win an election,” he said. “If you don’t give people a reason to vote for you, don’t be surprised if they don’t.”
He and Ashcroft have outlined in detail their positions on social and economic issues. Bauer, who runs the Family Research Council, gets credit for having championed (and funded to the tune of $ 25,000) the Alaska referendum that rejected same-sex marriage. As things stand now, Bauer will step down as FRC head in January, form an exploratory committee, and begin raising money. Forbes may beat him to the punch as a candidate. He intends to turn down matching federal funds, which will allow him to exceed spending limits.
The ideologues may fight one another in the Alaska and Louisiana caucuses before Iowa. In 1996, Pat Buchanan badly damaged Sen. Phil Gramm in those contests. This time, Quayle plans to go after the social-conservative bloc that Ashcroft and Bauer are also angling for. Quayle should not be underestimated. “He’s famous and is a lot more popular with Republican voters than with the press,” says Mike Murphy. Quayle has hired Kyle McSlarrow, a top Senate aide, as his campaign manager.
Given his war record, McCain belongs in the celebrity category, along with Elizabeth Dole and John Kasich, chairman of the House Budget Committee. My guess is Dole won’t run, though her allies have urged some GOP operatives not to jump on board with other candidates. Kasich has had a book ghost-written for him, Courage Is Contagious, designed to boost his candidacy. He told the Washington Post he’s “a cutting-edge guy” who doesn’t have to appeal to any particular niche in the Republican coalition. “The niche is me,” he said. (Or, as Louis XIV might have said, La niche, c’est moi.)
The meaning of the 1998 election isn’t likely to spark the first big debate among Republican presidential contenders. Impeachment is, especially if there’s an effort to short-circuit the House inquiry and censure Clinton in some fashion instead. The ideologues are certain to object. As for the celebrities, who knows?
It will be George W. Bush whose opinion everyone will want to know. Whatever he says, even if he says nothing, he’ll be attacked — which is the price of being the front-runner.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
