THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 22, 1995 TAG: 9510210002
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PERRY MORGAN
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
When the lights went out during the recent Republican cattle show in New Hampshire, not much illumination was lost.
The candidates are a lackluster group trying out for a starring role with words generated from polling data. Even a statesman like Richard Lugar resorts to a tax-reform gimmick in an effort to gain attention. Bob Dole, as usual, has a crick in his neck from constantly looking rightward. Not much is new about this, and little can be changed.
Dole is obsessed with the right because that's where the money and the fervor lie, and for him it's now or never. He aims to please. Lugar is handicapped because his exceptional qualities can't be translated into political shorthand. He's a star who'll never twinkle. Lamar Alexander and Pat Buchanan are ersatz outsiders, and Phil Gramm is trying to show that he's Mr. Nice - no small task.
Not one among the Republican candidates can offer substantial evidence that he can defeat an incumbent Democratic president with a slight record and a party that continues to implode. This irony, combined with high poll ratings for Colin Powell, has found its way to the desk of Newt Gingrich, maximum leader of the Republican revolution of 1994. (They like to call it a revolution even as they insist they're making only teensy-weensy changes.)
Gingrich, reports say, has been pondering whether Powell, if he runs for the GOP nomination, can be led to fully embrace the revolution and, if not, does Gingrich ``need to get back in it''? The question is amusing in assuming Gingrich's power over Republican politicians is matched by popularity among voters. The latter are wary of the speaker. His ethics bear watching, and his lapses into bullyboy tactics are repellent.
Gingrich might better spend his time peeling thickening layers of self-serving partisanship off the goals of the revolution. There's no question that Americans want to renovate government, but the notion that they've given Republicans a free hand to reward their constituents is another matter. Cutting taxes while professing to shore up the nation's finances is a cynical business the Republican Senate would avoid if Gingrich would relent. But all sorts of forces are active in the revolution - oil drillers, for example, wanting to exploit resources of the Arctic Wildlife Preserve, and gold miners intent on paying the government a pittance for a mountain whose gutted remains will drain into pristine waters in Yellowstone. There was a time when conservatives honored conservationists.
For his part, Powell needs to worry more about his own maneuvering than any direct challenge from Gingrich. It's a long trek from Rockefeller Republicanism, the label Powell chose, to the center of the party and further still to the right. Getting closer without giving up his image as a nonconfrontational leader with some independence of view requires political skills of a high order.
The general's first efforts seem fumble-footed. In a CBS television interview last Monday during which he modified several previous positions, he said this about the $245 billion tax-cut proposal the GOP is pushing while paring various social programs: ``I support tax cuts if they can be done in a responsible way that does not increase the deficit.''
That sort of mushy theorizing not only ducks a hard question before the nation but wraps the general in the rhetoric of politics as usual. And it raises the question of whether Colin Powell possesses what so many have projected for him into the polls - a voice and view of his own. The general, to be sure, has been in a tough spot since he identified himself with an extinct wing of the party. The closer he comes to being a candidate, the greater the need for a new identity. Not even an old pro like Dole can handle conversion with grace. The general is going to have bunions on his tender feet. MEMO: Mr. Morgan is a former publisher of The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB