THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 1, 1995 TAG: 9509300001
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
Some coyness to the contrary, Colin Powell apparently wants to run for president. He should do so, and as a Republican. If it chooses a ``big-tent'' strategy - and Ross Perot's return underscores that need - the GOP can be the nation's ruling party. But its credentials for being such should be established by something more than the collapse of Democrats or the given-as-gospel orthodoxies of the Republican right wing.
That means using the primaries for open discussion and resolution of issues rather than as a collective spectacle in which candidates compete by rolling over for pressure groups and yielding in advance longstanding beliefs and the right to policy options. Bob Dole, for example, has bartered away so much of himself that he appears as a pea in a pod: Because money and single-interest fervor are concentrated on the right, Dole apparently concluded he had to campaign on the basis of Phil Gramm's convictions.
That was his choice. Unfortunately, it works to foreclose opportunities for moderate Republicans, independents and migrating Democrats to put in their two-cents' worth about Republican policy. Powell has different views and has wasted no time in laying them out. On many issues - gun control, abortion and affirmative action included - his sentiments diverge from the predominant party line. And he's not afraid to touch third rails - spurning, for example, the axiom that Social Security should have automatic exemption from budget cuts and waving off the no-new-taxes oath New Hampshire Republicans like to impose on candidates.
That the general has said so much so soon is refreshing - and potent. While Phil Gramm says Powell sounds more like a Democrat than a Republican, it's not Powell but Gramm himself who exclaims (to the Des Moines Register): ``I can assure you if I become president, there will never have been a president who is more relentless in the pursuit of civil rights than I would be.'' Who would have thought it?
A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll projects powerful potential for a Powell candidacy. Given a choice between Powell as the Republican candidate and Bill Clinton as the Democrat, respondents chose the general 48 percent to 33 percent. Notwithstanding the fact that no certified Republican comes close to that showing or demonstrates much depth of support, some conservatives fret that the Powell phenomenon is a threat to the much-touted Republican ``revolution'' of 1994.
Columnist George Will says a candidate Powell, as a newcomer to electoral politics, would paramount personality over issues and undercut the so-called Contract With America which, he opines, has made ``promise-keeping central to political life.'' That would be a better point if Will could demonstrate that a majority of Americans approved the content of the Contract or even that the plurality that tossed out the Democrats meant to embrace it.
It's also worth noting that contracts reflect an absence of trust and serve in politics as a poor substitute. Where is it written that Americans want a tax-cut bribe to balance the budget?
Enthusiasm for Powell as president will decline from current levels. His own interest may wane. But while it lasts, why not savor the moment of a might-be candidate standing on his own feet and speaking without much regard to which interest group might take offense? And why not consider how such a person might strengthen a party that claims a moral right to revolutionize government while making the usual payoffs to its constituents. There's a reason that Dole and fellow candidates of the system are running, one and all, like dry creeks, and a reason that millions of Americans are politically homeless.
George Will argues that Powell's life story is only ``marginally relevant to judging fitness for high office.'' Try telling that to William Jefferson Clinton. If we are still looking for leadership in the White House, life stories are critically important. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot.
by CNB