Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 15, 1992 TAG: 9203160155
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEOFF SEAMANS ASSOCIATE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
On the other hand, trend-oriented historians seem to concentrate on the river only, rather than whole watersheds, as their geographic image of choice. The past for them isn't a series of ridges, dividing one epochal watershed from another. Instead, it's a continuously flowing stream: The speed of the current may vary from time to time, but it's impossible to separate the water into discrete units.
Me, I am of the amateur-oriented "banana peel" school. The past is one painful slip after another. It's a dour outlook perhaps, but also comical if you're not the one taking the pratfall.
Can there be any better evidence for the "banana peel" thesis than the recent history of the Democratic Party and the process, if it can be so dignified, by which the party chooses its presidential candidates?
As 1988 approached, the invincible Ronald Reagan would soon be leaving office; the presumably vincible George Bush was his heir apparent. The Democrats, figuring it was an excellent time to retake the White House, came up with the idea of an early-season Super Tuesday of Southern primaries. The point was to screen out prospective nominees, the Northern labor-liberal types, who would be anathema in the South.
The party was right about one thing: It's nigh unto impossible for a Democrat to win the presidency who can't carry at least some of the South.
The same, of course, could be said of the Republicans. For that matter, the same also could be said of any other region of the country, with the possible exception of the West. The West, despite its population growth and the presence of huge California, still has fewer electoral votes than the South, Midwest or Northeast.
Also, the Democrats seemed to have forgotten that the same Southern Democrat who won his home region and the presidency in 1976 lost both in 1980.
But I digress. The point is that, even assuming the wisdom of the Democrats' goal, the Super Tuesday strategy didn't work.
In '88, the Southern black Democratic vote went to Jesse Jackson; the Southern white Democratic vote went to Tennessee Sen. Al Gore; the nomination went to mechanical Mike of Massachusetts; Dukakis, creamed in the South, went down to defeat in November.
Oops.
Fast forward. A few months ago, when presidential aspirants had to decide yea or nay about seeking the Democratic nomination, incumbent Bush was riding high in the polls. The most prominent of them, the first team, opted out.
But lo! The collapse of Soviet communism diminished the importance of the foreign-policy advantage that GOP presidential candidates had held in recent elections. The fiscal follies of the Reagan years began paying America back in the form of stubborn recession on Bush's watch. The Democratic nomination started looking to have some worth.
Oops.
Meanwhile, Super Tuesday had been downsized on the theory that if it didn't work as intended in '88, it wouldn't work in '92.
But lo again! This past week, Super Tuesday worked.
For starters, it forced the traditional Northern labor-liberal, Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, out of the race.
Harkin had carried his home-state caucuses and done well in the caucus states of Minnesota and Idaho. But he lacked the money to overcome what inevitably would've been poor showings in the South. Instead of looking beyond Super Tuesday to next week's primaries in Illinois and Michigan, where a labor-liberal from the Midwest might stand some chance of success, Harkin withdrew on Super Tuesday eve.
There remain non-Southern candidates in the race, former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas and California's Jerry "Gov. Moonbeam" Brown. Both are hard to pigeonhole, but it seems safe to say neither is a traditional Northern liberal.
And Super Tuesday worked this year by giving a Southern candidate, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, a raft of delegates and a big lift toward the nomination. With Jackson not running this year, Southern Democrats united behind a single candidate.
Except that Clinton is no Al Gore, Lloyd Bentsen, or any of the other Southern prospects who decided last year to sit out '92.
Maybe Clinton would make a better president than Gore, Bentsen or, for that matter, George Bush. But in an era made puritanical by the aging of the Baby Boom generation, and whose politics have been made personal by the TV-fostered illusion that we can know well people we've never met, Clinton is a problematic candidate who would be a problematic nominee.
Oops.
Having picked up 432 nominating-convention votes on Super Tuesday, Clinton awakened Wednesday with a total of 707, a big lead over former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas (347) and an even bigger one over California's Jerry "Gov. Moonbeam" Brown (81).
But it's not over. It'll take 2,145 delegate votes to nominate. About 2,800 delegates remain to be chosen. Some 400 of those already chosen are uncommitted or pledged to candidates no longer in the race.
Moreover, Democratic primary and caucus voting so far has exhibited a distinctly regional air. Clinton's lead is based more on the calendar than on strong evidence of his popularity among Democrats nationally. Even with this year's shrunken version of Super Tuesday, a disportionate number of delegates chosen so far are from Clinton's region, rather than Tsongas' Northeast or Brown's West.
If Clinton is no Al Gore, neither is Tsongas - despite his Greek ancestry and Massachusetts residence - another Michael Dukakis. On the plus side, Tsongas has a sense of humor, which Dukakis didn't, and Tsongas doesn't have a gubernatorial record to be picked over, which Dukakis did. On the minus side, he has neither the financing nor the organization that sustained Dukakis on his path to the nomination four years ago.
Yet there are haunting similarities. Whatever the merits (and there are many) of Tsongas' economic nostrums, they're offered in a technocratic way reminiscent of Dukakis. Like Dukakis, Tsongas voters outside his native New England have generally been upscale suburbanites rather than the blue-collar and black Democrats from whom a Democratic nominee must get strong support in November.
Just to make it clear he's not another Dukakis, taking it but never dishing it out, look for Tsongas to rev up the attacks on Clinton. Look for Clinton to return the favor. Look for Brown, a champion fund-raiser in his previous campaigns for governor and the U.S. Senate, to continue his hypocritical chorus that big money has corrupted the system.
Then look for George Bush, whoever the damaged-goods Democratic nominee might be, to win re-election.
Oops.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB