ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 7, 1996 TAG: 9611070031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: Ray L. Garland
SOURCE: RAY L. GARLAND
A WISE politician envisions the probable landscape of the next election and shapes it as best he can to survive.
In 1991-92, Bill Clinton perceived the center of gravity in American politics had shifted too far right for a conventional liberal to have much chance. You will recall his promises to "end welfare as we know it" and cut taxes on the middle class that were jettisoned as soon as the election was safely behind him.
After the scare he got when his national-health scheme fizzled and Republicans won control of both houses of Congress for the first time in 42 years, the president did everything possible to convince voters he wasn't a liberal. But after the mainstream press spent six months hailing the inevitability of his election, it still wasn't enough to convince even half of those voting to trust him for a second term, or to give Democrats back even one house of Congress.
While Clinton becomes the first Democrat in 60 years to win a second term, this is the first back-to-back GOP victory in Congress in 66 years! It's hard to believe this won't be extended in 1998.
The outcome is mildly astounding given the issues (Medicare, education and the environment) Democrats felt confident they had working for them. It had long been carved in stone that no politician could lay a finger on middle-class entitlements and live to tell the tale. That is now subject to revision, and the country is better for it.
Of course, Democrats were in a false position demagoging Medicare because most understood it could not keep growing at nearly twice the rate of federal tax revenues without crowding out all the other things they wanted money for. Clinton will now be open to a deal on Medicare, and possibly reducing the cost-of-living adjustment on Social Security into the bargain. While GOP leaders are likely to grab it, poetic justice would have them say, "You won by fear-mongering. If these things are to be done, on your head be it."
The influence of opinion polls on this election will long be debated. Some will argue they worked against Democrats by holding down the turnout. Others will say they hurt Republicans by giving Bob Dole a loser's aura he could never shake. But sensible citizens will recoil in disgust from their appalling inaccuracies, and from the fact they have become the chief feature of campaign coverage.
Most will now conclude Dole never really had a chance. Certainly he had much to overcome: the mainly negative spin the media placed on the GOP Congress, the hard fight for the nomination that exhausted his campaign treasury by April 1 and the repeat performance of Ross Perot giving anti-Clinton voters a convenient halfway house. Think back. Was there a story about Dole in 1996 that did not cast him in some way as a loser desperately seeking traction?
It is fitting that Dole will now be remembered as the candidate who gave it all he had, made a respectable showing against long odds and saw his party retain Congress in successive elections for the first time since 1930. Would Buchanan, Gramm, Forbes or Alexander have done any better?
It would have been better, of course, had Dole not allowed himself to be persuaded to resign as Senate majority leader - swapping the second most powerful elected office in the country for the dubious title of former senator. We may now expect Clinton to try to co-opt Dole for some difficult chore such as campaign-finance "reform" or "saving" Medicare. Republicans will rightly be wary of both. Given the ability of Democrats to tap the great resources of the AFL-CIO, the National Education Association, etc., any limitation on what parties and candidates can spend will likely work to the detriment of conservatives.
It will not be popular today, but Dole suffered in this campaign from a lack of sufficient funds to make his case. For all the hysteria over campaign spending, it might be said that total spending on behalf of all candidates for federal office in 1996 will be less than one-fifth of what will be spent advertising cigarettes - and they aren't even allowed on radio and TV!
The most obvious casualty of the GOP effort was none other than the man widely expected to be its star, Jack Kemp. Dole's original estimate of Kemp as a lightweight proved sounder than his decision to put him on the ticket.
Kemp's strong suit was supposed to be extolling the virtues of lower tax rates that pay for themselves by gathering more revenues from a larger pie, and he may have done that before small audiences in the hinterlands. But given the chance to make the case before 40 million people in the vice-presidential debate, he failed miserably.
Imagine letting Al Gore repeatedly call Dole's tax plan a "scheme" without retorting, "Note their choice of words: It's a `scheme' when you get to keep more of your own money. A growth of 800 percent in federal spending since 1970 isn't enough for these bloodsuckers." Kemp has now proved, one hopes conclusively, that nice guys really do finish last.
Sen. John Warner may find scant solace in the fact that in a two-candidate race he ran less than 100,000 votes ahead of Dole's showing in a three-candidate race. You can argue that had he made a more energetic defense of his own voting record - and that of the Republican Congress generally - it wouldn't have been so close. But a better case can be made that he was saved only by his celebrated rebellion against GOP orthodoxy.
Had John Warner played the party game in 1993-94, keeping his mouth shut on Mike Farris and Oliver North, there would have been no anchor to keep the "salty survivor," as he called himself Election Night, from slipping out to sea when his opponent's millions and youthful bravado were thrown upon the scale.
With youth and wealth on Mark Warner's side, the future may be also. As he said, conceding defeat, "Our time will come and we will be ready." But it will have to wait, at least until the governor's race in 2001. Meanwhile, there could be a Cabinet or sub-Cabinet post to fortify his already powerful bone fides. Certainly, Democrats owe him a lot.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times columnist.
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