THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508050001
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
A Mason-Dixon poll of Virginians indicates Bob Dole would beat Bill Clinton for president, but Clinton would win if Gen. Colin Powell made it a three-man race.
The poll may contain interesting detail, but the surface is not surprising: The president can't hack it on his own. Dole's support is broad but not deep. Powell's positive ratings, here as elsewhere in the country, are sky-high, more than 20 points higher than Dole's or Clinton's.
But, then, what's not to like? The general's political record is pristine. No one ready to tell knows anything for sure about his views on the issues that roil and divide Americans while Dole and Clinton, shifting from side to side, run the risk of offending everybody one way or the other.
A more interesting poll would pit a Dole-Powell ticket against a Clinton-Gore reprise. Perhaps the Dole camp already has taken such a poll and maybe shown the results to Powell. Why would he be interested? Why not? Third parties remain vehicles of protest unlikely to elect their leaders while Dole's party has taken control of Congress after decades of dominance in the White House. The Republicans are setting the national agenda.
Powell has not declared a party preference, but he has served Republican presidents: If he wants to be president, he'd best move now at the peak of his popularity, and the GOP vice presidential slot is the only one that seems to be open.
Who could better fill that slot or, in the old phrase, bring more to the ticket? Not Phil Gramm whose personality repels a lot of people including Dole. There's Gov. Pete Wilson, of course, who arguably could deprive Clinton of indispensable California, but he, too, is a pill. There's the insider posing as outsider, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, but his country-boy shirt has not proved out as a flying carpet. And then there's House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the party's ideological leader, but it's easier to think of him as competing with Dole than playing second fiddle to him.
All these able politicians could bring something to the ticket, of course, but could they bring something decisive? Here's guessing Powell would outrank any of them in appeal to the sort of swing voters who proved crucial in the last election. In the Bush-Clinton contest, more than 20 percent of voters went over to Ross Perot, a Texas eccentric with no more political experience than Powell. The general pulls that percentage in the Virginia poll and takes more away from Dole than from Clinton.
It's early days, of course; even the primaries are a long way off, and Dole is not assured of nomination. But it's never too early to consider the energy of the Powell aura. Absent a political record, he is what any admirer wishes him to be. Just now one surmises most admirers see him as a leader, a patriot and a success story in which right thinking and hard work transcend the impediments of race and poor prospects - a story the Republican Party is offering as antidote to any number of social and economic ills. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
Kerry Waghorn
COLIN POWELL
by CNB