Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 21, 1992 TAG: 9202210476
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE
DIXVILLE Notch has spoken; New Hampshire has spoken. The long presidential primary campaign there is over at last, and no one ever wished it longer.But there is a curious symmetry about the outcome, for both major national parties, that will linger into the spring, summer and fall, and it suggests, if it does not prove, that the nation faces another election year in which many of its most troubling problems remain unaddressed.
For both Pat Buchanan and Paul Tsongas, the putative "winners" of the primary, the results of their struggles must seem, at least for now, promising.
For Buchanan, the feisty but clear-headed television commentator and syndicated newspaper columnist, winning 40 percent of the Republican vote against incumbent George Bush is a sweet "victory" in itself, a feat few of his own party, and certainly not Bush himself, believed possible.
Though he has no experience of either campaigning or public office, Buchanan succeeded in articulating the resentment of many of New Hampshire's recession-crippled voters and directing it against Bush, whose apparent indifference to what everyone else saw as serious, even grave, made him a likely target.
Buchanan's message - putting "America first" - was a blend of protectionism and xenophobia, and it contained a racial element, against aid to Israel and against the ongoing immigration of men and women whose origins are not Western European. That may not be what New Hampshire voters had specifically in mind, but it focused their anger and discontent on Bush, and that, plus the palpable horrors of the recession that has made New Hampshire one of the hardest-hit states in the nation, was enough to make Bush's official "victory" a hollow thing indeed.
In accomplishing it, Buchanan proved himself not only a persuasive spokesman for his own brand of "conservatism" but a tireless campaigner gifted at concentrating and clarifying a "message" that exposed his rival's weaknesses and forced what proved to be a weak defense from Bush.
On the Democratic side, Paul Tsongas also defied predictions. A former one-term U.S. senator from Massachusetts, he entered the presidential lists early but offered no glamour, no performance and no pleasant platitudes or promise.
His message was that the national economic recession will yield only to incentives to business that will revive production, and then only slowly.
And Tsongas offered no quick solutions. He predicted economic recovery could be purchased only with sacrifice and further pain and refused to sugarcoat his gloomy news with conventional pledges he knows he could not, as president, keep.
New Hampshire voters liked what they saw, nevertheless, and in giving him a plurality of Democratic votes showed once again that they are among the most thoughtful voters American democracy can boast.
What Buchanan and Tsongas never discussed, however, was as revealing as what they emphasized.
Neither talked about the widening ranks of the American poor.
Acknowledging the pain of the recession clearly acknowledges closed factories and unemployment, but neither addressed, even by implication, the immensely larger problem of widespread national poverty or its consequences: homelessness, child neglect, infant mortality, degenerating schools, etc. Both stuck safely to the woes of the "middle class," whoever the "middle class" are.
Neither offered any true attention to the complex problems of a health-care system that is acknowledged by everyone to be out of control.
Neither addressed - and Buchanan deliberately ignored - the question of America's role in a bewildering post-Cold War world.
The benefits of their "victories" to both candidates are clear, of course. Both leave New Hampshire with more money coming in, more press attention, more public interest. But one can hope New Hampshire also has enabled them to broaden their appeal.
Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.
Keywords:
POLITICS