Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 3, 1992 TAG: 9203030187
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HOWELL RAINES
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Medium
The battle between President Bush and Patrick Buchanan is a mean-spirited, low-road contest featuring - in Buchanan's attacks on "quota bills" and the 1965 Voting Rights Act - the most forthright appeals to white racial animosities seen in Georgia since Lester Maddox's 1966 campaign for governor.
The Democratic contest today in all four primary states - Georgia, Colorado, Maryland and Utah - is less brutish, but the disappointment of the party's voters and its Washington establishment over their five-candidate field has become a cloud that seems to follow the five all around the country.
In Georgia, the dyspeptic mood contrasts sharply with the bright splashes of pansies and daffodils on greening lawns. On such a lawn at the Carter Presidential Center on Sunday, a well-groomed woman with a Tsongas sign confronted two equally well-groomed, but somewhat younger, women wearing Clinton buttons. "Don't vote for him," said the Tsongas supporter. "He's an adulterer."
Well, politics does tend to be plain-spoken in these parts. The candidates and their advisers are nerved up, too, because they know that the four primaries today and the 11 contests on March 10 will determine the first casualties in the Democratic field and, to a less certain degree, the future of the Buchanan insurgency.
Among the Democrats, Gov. Bill Clinton is trying to use this moment of maximum advantage - based on his presumed strength in the South - to shape the Democratic field and debate. On the economic front, he is stepping up his pummeling of former Sen. Paul Tsongas as a de facto Republican who shares Bush's view of the sanctity of capital and is willing to spend $10 billion in investment-linked tax breaks for businesses and individuals.
The Clinton forces believe that the best cure for their troubles with the infidelity and draft issues is to get as quickly as possible to a two-man contest with Tsongas. Toward that end, they are spreading the word that a loss in Colorado will doom the hopes of Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska. They are eager to get Kerrey out for a simple reason.
Even though his on-the-job training as a candidate has been painful to watch, his opponents still fear that if allowed to linger he could live up to his early billing as the Democrats' first New Age superstar.
Right now, Tsongas is basking in the glory of making the first cut, but his querulous performance in last weekend's debates has given senior Democrats a bad case of Dukakis flashbacks. Tsongas' pursed-lip challenge to other candidates to "take the pledge" against mean talk and his whining about Clinton's "attack-dog" adviser, James Carville, were distinctly Not Presidential.
Even so, it will be a legitimate coup if Tsongas can sneak out a victory in Colorado before his ambivalent stand on nuclear power starts undermining him in the West.
Georgia will be a good test for how much damage Clinton has suffered in the South. Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights hero from Atlanta, says Clinton will finish first with more than 40 percent.
The concern over the unimpressive Democratic field rests on a strong foundation of feeling among Democrats, independents and a surprising number of worried Republicans that Bush can be had in the fall.
The 1988 Bush campaign team had the spunk and the organizational muscle to drive a stake through the heart of any threat. But from all the signs in Gerogia, if Bush cripples Buchanan today, he can lay it more to luck than to what is fast establishing itself as a memorably lackluster White House campaign team.
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB