
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 20, 1991                   TAG: 9103200419
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-13   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CONGRESS/ WILL GOP GAIN FROM BUSH'S POPULARITY?

PRESIDENT Bush has an opportunity, rare among presidents, to change the face of the American political landscape well into the next century. To do so he will have to ignore suggestions by aides to sit on his high approval ratings and let them carry him to a second term in 1992. He can choose to be a lone horseman, or he can lead a wagon train loaded with Republicans to Congress and transform Washington and the country.

Ronald Reagan's advisers preferred the high ratings, perhaps because it made them look good. In the final days of the 1984 campaign, they scheduled Reagan to go to Minnesota in hopes of a 50-state sweep.

He should have gone to Nebraska where he might have made the difference in a tight Senate race. The GOP lost the Nebraska Senate race by fewer than 6,000 votes - and also lost Minnesota. In the 1986 congressional races, the Republicans lost the Senate because the White House pursued a "Rose Garden strategy," keeping the president in Washington until his effectiveness on the stump was minimal.

The Bush people need to be reminded that approval ratings are not an end but a means. What does it profit a party if its president wins a second term while enjoying 90 percent approval ratings but fails to pick up a single Senate seat and dooms the country to another four years of legislative gridlock?

The Democrats have neither a presidential candidate nor a compelling platform. The Republicans have their candidate but no domestic platform. If President Bush had a House and Senate majority, what would his agenda be? He should formulate that agenda now and then ask the country to give him the Congress to enact it.

In the months leading up to the 1992 election, President Bush and other Republicans ought to be sharpening the differences between the two parties. According to a nationwide survey conducted after the 1990 election, 55 percent of the voters don't care whether they are represented by a Republican or a Democrat in the House. That's because many voters do not perceive "a dime's worth of difference" between the parties, as former Alabama Gov. George Wallace used to say. And, speaking of Wallace, who was a third-party presidential candidate, failure by Republicans to stake out their differences with Democrats will make it easier for fringe candidates like Louisiana's David Duke, who thrives on polarization.

The White House ought to send a steady stream of legislation to Capitol Hill that illuminates the differences between the parties and, when it is opposed by Democrats, make that point in the '92 campaign.

Gary Bauer, who was Reagan's domestic policy adviser, thinks Bush should "go into the cities and talk to poor and working-class families, explaining why he wants to give them a choice of where to send their children to school . . . ." He also thinks Bush should use his popularity to begin a debate on what has happened to the American culture. "Are we happy that Madonna is a role model for 11-year-old girls?" asks Bauer.

Housing Secretary Jack Kemp believes we need "a conservative war on poverty." Kemp wants to see one million new homeowners and expanded ownership of businesses.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan laid out a clear agenda and told voters where he wanted to take the country. Republicans won the White House and captured control of the Senate by deposing five liberal Democrats.

Voters must have a reason to vote for Republicans, and President Bush can give them that reason by driving a wedge between the distinctly different philosophies of the two parties. He should then exploit those differences in local races and fund-raising events for GOP candidates around the country.

While the Democrats have little chance of capturing the White House next year, they can still make things difficult for a second Bush term by consolidating their hold on Congress. Los Angeles Times Syndicate

by CNB