Why It Was So Sour

“It is better to be defeated battling for an honest principle than to win by a cowardly subterfuge.”

Those words were President Grover Cleveland’s coda after he narrowly lost the 1888 election to Benjamin Harrison on the issue of tariff reform. A century later, it is dismaying to contemplate the nation’s march of progress toward the perfection of its democratic institutions. Imagine George Bush or Michael Dukakis having the temerity to claim that his campaign was waged on the battlefield of “honest principle.” Or better yet, picture either candidate rising above “cowardly subterfuge.”

Such is the sour legacy of 1988, an election year that was to substance what cold pizza is to a balanced breakfast. Think of the words and phrases that 18 months of nonstop electioneering have underlined in the political lexicon: Monkey Business, the character issue, attack videos, plagiarism, wimp, handlers, sound bites, flag factories, tank ride, negative spots, the A.C.L.U., Willie Horton and likability. Match them with all the pressing national concerns that were never seriously discussed: from the Japanese economic challenge to the plight of the underclass. As the voters trudge off to the polls with all the enthusiasm of dental patients, one can almost hear their collective lament: “What has America done as a nation to deserve an election like this?”

Whatever the verdict on Tuesday, whatever the margin of victory, that lingering question has already marred the mantle of legitimacy that would otherwise surround the new President. Nothing, for example, could be more specious than Bush’s desperate claims in the waning days of the campaign, “If I win, it will be a mainstream mandate — that’s what this election is all about.” A mandate represents a covenant between the candidate and his constituency about what he plans to accomplish. But almost all the causes Bush embraced were both negative and irrelevant to the White House; it would be a bizarre ritual, to say the least, if a President Bush solemnly recited the Pledge of Allegiance each time he stepped into the Oval Office. Dukakis’ presidential agenda was almost as shadowy. Even as an underdog presumably liberated from crass campaign calculus, he chose sound-bite slogans over a last chance to talk sense to the American people.

As conspicuous as the flaws of Bush and Dukakis may be, it would be a serious mistake to blame the soulless cynicism of 1988 entirely on the character of the two nominees. There are deeper forces at work as well, and understanding them may be the only way to prevent the 1992 race from becoming so ugly that it will even make voters nostalgic for this year’s second debate. The collective responsibility for the sour campaign rests with what might be called the Five P’s of Poison-Ivy Politics: the public, the process, the packagers, the polls and the press.

THE PUBLIC. From the outset, there were few signs that the nation was breathlessly anticipating this year’s campaign. Lulled into passivity by an era of peace and paper-thin prosperity, the voters never displayed much interest in confronting the largely abstract problems, from environmental hazards to the trade deficit, that could threaten America’s well-being in the 1990s. When the national mood is I’m-all-right-Jack complacency, it is unrealistic to expect political leaders to play Cassandra. Even public concerns, like crime and drugs, that consistently ranked high in national polls contributed to this air of unreality. Crime has always been a local problem largely beyond a President’s purview, while drug usage remains so embedded in cultural attitudes that it virtually defies political remedies.

Americans are also paying a price for their easy tolerance of negative campaigning in the 1986 elections. Sad to say, irrelevant and inflammatory attack ads work, and they played a major role in helping the Democrats regain control of the Senate.

THE PROCESS. Perhaps the fall campaign alone is indictment enough of the way the nation chooses its presidential nominees. It is somewhat embarrassing to recall that the whole baleful journey began with the unwarranted media frenzy that surrounded the Iowa caucuses early last February. But it is hard to blame Iowa for Bush and Dukakis: both candidates limped home third. More telling is the sad truth that the contenders in both parties who took the most + provocative and sometimes courageous positions — Democrat Bruce Babbitt and Republicans Pete du Pont and Jack Kemp — were among the first casualties. The problem with most suggested reforms, such as more regional primaries, is that they would reward the candidates with the greatest ability to raise campaign funds. And in 1988, that was none other than the Gold Dust Twins, Bush and Dukakis.

Perhaps the greatest failing of the current system is that it magnifies the power of ideological true believers in both parties. It can be argued that Bush as the heir to Reagan may have in any case embraced the President’s read- my-lips gospel on taxes, but the unyielding fervor of the Vice President’s position was shaped by his need to placate the right wing of his party. Similarly, no matter how Dukakis had chosen to position himself on the spectrum, it was probably inevitable that Bush would have gravitated to divisive issues like the Pledge of Allegiance. Still, the overheated liberal atmosphere of Iowa certainly made Bush’s task easier, if no more palatable. It was, after all, in Iowa that Dukakis boasted that he was “a card-carrying member” of the A.C.L.U.

THE PACKAGERS. Every campaign is less spontaneous than the last, as the candidates — some eagerly and others grudgingly — submit to the discipline of their handlers. The growing sophistication of such research techniques as focus groups and audience meters enhances the underlying cynicism of modern politics. As on Wall Street, success is measured solely by the bottom line — never mind such idealistic notions as conducting a dialogue with the electorate.

In early October, Dukakis ran a controversial series of television ads deriding Bush’s handlers. But, in truth, the differences between the two campaigns were more those of competence than electoral philosophy. The Dukakis spots, laughs a campaign insider, were mostly “a case of handler envy.” The Bush team had a dirty job, and, in a technical sense, they did it well. The Vice President fueled the politics of resentment because his handlers calculated that this was the only way he could appeal to swing voters. “Some voters will go for you because of your positive message,” argues Lee Atwater, Bush’s unabashed campaign manager. “But most of the swing voters are ‘aginners’ — they tend to vote according to who’s on their side against the common enemy.”

THE POLLS. When Dukakis recently agreed to a 90-minute interview on ABC’s Nightline, it was the first forum since the debates that held the potential to add substance to the campaign. But what issue took center stage during Ted Koppel’s initial questioning? Dukakis’ laggard position in the polls. Columnist Russell Baker even groped in vain to find a phrase to describe a candidate like Bush who had been anointed President-elect “by our poll- besotted media four weeks before Election Day.” Never before have the voters been offered such a barrage of information about the one question they are well equipped to answer on their own: how they feel about two candidates.

Not too long ago, the press covered the horse-race aspects of a presidential campaign by knocking on doors, interviewing local party officials and taking whatever informal soundings it could. Such unscientific methods did not always predict winners, but they often provided readers with some telling impressionistic portraits of the nation. Most of this type of journalism has been replaced by the sophisticated techniques of survey research. Not only do these polls often drain the suspense out of the waning days of a campaign, but they also invariably strip politics of its essential humanity. It is, of course, simplistic to blame polls for the lassitude of the electorate. Still, they do contribute to the football-like ethos that winning is the only thing that matters in politics.

THE PRESS. Television — and the short attention span that it fosters — may be a primary cause of the nation’s political malaise. Even with the best of intentions, TV news all too rarely transcends daily snippets of the candidates hurling invective at each other. Bush and Dukakis may have had little to say, but the fast-paced dictates of television routinely edit it down to even less. It is not only the nightly news; no answer in recent presidential debates lasted more than 120 seconds.

The sad truth is that campaign coverage is a burnt-out genre; the old forms are there, but none of the magic. Newspapers are not immune to the banalities of daily candidate coverage in which hyperbolic charges are repeated with little analysis of their inherent distortions. Discussion of the issues is to the press what satire is to the theater: what closes Saturday night. Make no mistake, issue stories are frequently printed with dutiful reverence; the problem is that few of them find a way to make the underlying substance in any presidential choice come alive for readers. Small wonder that most voters will ; come out of this campaign knowing far more about the candidates’ children than about their records on the environment.

WHAT CAN BE DONE. In the months ahead, the op-ed pages are certain to be filled with well-intentioned proposals for reform. On the following page, Congressman Lee Hamilton calls upon the political parties to agree that the 1992 candidates will formally submit to in-depth interviews on a pressing issue each week. New York Governor Mario Cuomo has his own suggestion for a form of marathon press conferences that would establish the candidates’ baseline issue positions. In theory, reforms such as mandatory freewheeling debates could be legislated by Congress as the price for candidates’ receiving public financing. One notion might be to cede the debate questioning to a panel of voters instead of journalists; during the primaries, average citizens often posed more provocative queries than jaded political reporters.

But there remains a nearly impenetrable barrier to reform: an incumbent President who almost certainly will be running for re-election in 1992. Beginning with Dwight Eisenhower, almost all incumbents have tried to follow some form of a Rose Garden strategy to avoid giving their lesser-known rivals a free platform. The President’s political party is unlikely to agree to any rule changes that cut against his self-interest. And any legislative remedies must somehow surmount the President’s veto power.

In short, probably the only way that presidential politics will ever again rise to a higher plane is if there is a real backlash against the type of campaign waged in 1988. Then some smart politician will come along and tap that resentment. He will defy the conventional course of submitting to handlers and instead answer questions that voters find relevant. He will use the novel tactic of laying out what he believes. Fortunately, every established campaign style is eventually challenged by someone who figures out that he can win by rebelling against the system. Keep an eye out for the next guy who tries.