Can He Beat Bush

Nearly eight months before Election Day, and four months before the Democrats’ convention in New York City, the general election campaign against George Bush has begun. Clinton still must deal with Jerry Brown, the kamikaze candidate. There was the Connecticut primary this week, where Brown could inherit much of Tsongas’s support, and a skein of big-state primaries ahead. But with Tsongas out, with Clinton’s victories last week in Illinois and Michigan, and with nearly half the delegates he needs in hand, voters will begin to ask the tough questions: Is this erstwhile “boy governor,” eerily articulate and only 45, ready for The Show? Does he have the strength-personal, political, organizational-to unseat a president? Can he rise from a poor, obscure state to do what only one Democratic presidential candidate has done since 1964: defeat a Republican? Above all, can he surmount the “character” questions that, fairly or not, make his toughest race the one he must run against himself?

The early evidence is that a Bush-Clinton race could be close. A NEWSWEEK Poll finds Bush leading Clinton 48-44, the strongest early showing by a challenger since Jimmy Carter geared up to face Gerald Ford in 1976. Clinton, like Carter, might have the regional knack for cracking the GOP’s Southern base. “Clinton shouldn’t have a chance, but he does,” says GOP polltaker William McInturff. “It’s the economy. Bush is in a very vulnerable position-if Clinton doesn’t blow it.”

So far, many have strong doubts about Bill Clinton. The NEWSWEEK Poll shows that those surveyed view him, by a 2-1 margin, as far less honest than Bush, and one in four still thinks questions raised about adultery and the draft should remain “significant issues” in the fall campaign. But in the primaries, voters put aside questions about Clinton’s personal character and focused on his political persona: the energy, the charm, the carefully crafted vision of stern social empathy and interracial healing.

The country’s mood may also help Clinton, if for no other reason than that he’s not George Bush. In Illinois last week, long-term incumbents were defeated in Democratic primaries-fresh evidence of the public’s distemper. A recent sounding by Public Opinion Strategies, McInturff’s polltaking firm, shows an astonishing 78 percent of Americans think the country is “off on the wrong track.” The NEWSWEEK Poll shows Bush’s approval rating at 39 percent, the lowest point yet. In a tight race victory will belong to the candidate with the shrewdest strategies and the means to make them work. A guide to the long campaign ahead:

Clinton’s strategists are obsessed with the lesson of Michael Dukakis’s losing 1988 campaign: don’t let Bush define you. “We’ve got to define him this time,” says one top Clinton aide. The hoped-for portrait: Bush as an out-of-touch, failed economic manager who clings to the obsolete trickledown policies of the ’80s. Even if the recession ends, Clinton aides argue, Bush is incapable of addressing Americans’ deep fears about long-term economic decline. “Bush’s economic stewardship has been a failure,” says Clinton attackmeister James Carville. “The message is: it’s time for change and the other guy is not up to managing it.”

Republicans are preparing their own plan to “define” Clinton. As in 1988, groups allegedly “independent” of the Bush campaign will attack on issues such as the draft and the Clinton family business dealings. “We have so much stuff, it’s just a matter of packaging it,” says Craig Shirley, a former Bush campaign adviser who will be involved in the effort. The Bush campaign itself will focus on Clinton’s reputation as a smooth-talking “Slick Willie.” “Bill Clinton is a chameleon,” says one Bush aide, previewing the line and overlooking Bush’s own numerous ideological flip-flops. “He says what he has to say to please any audience.” They will focus on Clinton’s Arkansas record, which shows the champion of a “middle-class tax cut” has also supported regressive taxes on food and fuel.

Bush will stress his globe-spanning experience and performance as commander in chief during Desert Storm. He’ll belittle Clinton as a governor whose only foreign-policy experience is begging overseas firms to invest in Arkansas. “They’re going to try to paint him as a small guy from a small state-a rube,” says one Clinton aide. Democratic insiders urge countermeasures: foreign-policy speeches, even overseas trips. “Clinton has to use the next few months to begin speaking out on foreign policy,” says former Dukakis campaign manager John Sasso. “He’s got to deal with the commander-in-chief factor.”

Clintonians will try to turn the Bush attack upside down. They’ll showcase their man as a youthful, energetic leader. Using a tactic first employed in New Hampshire, they will put Clinton and Hillary in theater-in-the-round sessions that stress their willingness to talk with voters up close: it won’t be “Morning in America,” it’ll be “Donahue” in America.

Clinton’s shrewd political skills-the traits that also engender the Slick Willie label-will be offered as assets that can help forge a sense of unity and renewal. He will be portrayed as a Democrat with the maneuverability of Lyndon Johnson and the vision of Robert Kennedy: a Democrat who heartily embraces the political arts. “The great leaders are great communicators,” says Clinton media adviser Frank Greer. “And Bill is the best communicator we’ve had since John F. Kennedy.”

Clinton and Bush already are tussling over the flag of “change.” “If swing voters say to themselves, ‘These guys are not that far apart on the issues, but the nation needs new blood, new leadership,’ then we are in deep trouble,” says a top Bush adviser. In the White House last week, Bush set the tone of his campaign with a speech excoriating the “status quo” Congress-a distant echo of Harry Truman’s 1948 campaign against the “do nothing” 80th Congress. He used the words “change” and “reform” no fewer than 22 times as he pushed a warmed-over list of domestic initiatives. When Congress actually did something, enacting large portions of the economic program he had asked for, Bush vetoed the measure because it contained a tax increase on the rich.

Clinton calls himself a change agent"–a human chemical reaction waiting to happen. “The best way for the Democrats to win is to offer a real vision of positive change,” he told NEWSWEEK. He says he wants to reject “what people think they’ve gotten from both parties in Washington for the last 10 years.” But Clinton will have trouble selling himself as an outsider. He’s not a congenitally angry man. And his carefully nurtured ties to the Democratic Party establishment in Washington helped bring him within reach of the nomination.

His real “change” message is simpler: that voters’ concerns about the long-term economy warrant a fresh face in the White House, controlled for 19 of the last 23 years by the GOP. His other message is more personal: that he and Hillary are symbols of a baby-boom generation which, for all its self-indulgent faults, is now ready to lead.

Presidential elections are won by centrists, which both Bush and Clinton are striving to become. After tacking to the right to head off the challenge of Pat Buchanan, Bush is tacking back. Last week he lifted the so-called gag rule, which limited the advice doctors could give at federally funded family-planning clinics. Clinton has steered a steadier middle course. Conscious of the need to avoid kowtowing to liberal Democratic interest groups, he has largely avoided making promises to labor, ethnic and minority groups.

Each campaign will try to portray the other as out of the mainstream. Clinton’s minions define the “mainstream” in economic terms. Clinton strategists are said to possess a videotape of Bush spokesman Marlin Fitzwater and budget director Richard Darman driving away from the White House in their Mercedeses-the same brand of car that drove the Buchanan campaign into a ditch.

As in 1988, the Bush team will bore in on the Democrats’ “cultural” world view. One area of possible attack: Clinton’s support for distributing condoms in public schools where school boards have given permission. Republicans will try to force Clinton into the Dukakis box as a defender of the civil rights of the accused. But Clinton, who supports the death penalty and rehabilitation “boot camps,” thinks he can dodge such attacks. “I just know how to handle them,” he asserts.

Even Bush insiders are impressed with the quick response time and aggressive tactics of the Clinton campaign so far. “They have done very well in the minor leagues,” sniffed one Bush staffer. The Clinton camp is young, hungry and geographically diverse: Carville and Greer from the South, media strategist Mandy Grunwald from New York, organizational tactician David Wilhelm from Chicago, chairman Mickey Kantor from Los Angeles. The campaign’s on-board media handler, George Stephanopoulos, was in charge of Bush “opposition research” for Dukakis in 1988.

The Bushies are far deeper in experience-too deep in the eyes of some GOP insiders. Campaign chairman Bob Teeter began as a polltaker for Richard Nixon in 1972; most of the rest of the top echelon have lived and worked in Washington throughout the GOP years. “It’s a bunch of gray men leading a gray campaign,” groused one top GOP strategist. “I’m worried that they’re out of touch-and they take forever to move.”

The conventional wisdom is that, in re-election campaigns, the final issue is the incumbent. But Bush could be so weak-and the desire for change so strong-that the real focus in the campaign’s last days will become the challenger. “The question could well come down to: are you really comfortable with this guy?” predicted McInturff. “Are you willing to take the risk?”

Clinton has an answer to that question. He argues now that his admitted personal failings have led him to a renewed commitment to traditional values–and that his own striving for redemption is a metaphor for the country as a whole. “I think at some point in our lives we kind of lose our way,” he said last week as he rode in his limousine from the mansion to the Little Rock, Ark., airport. “We struggle back to our moorings in a way that makes us better, wiser and deeper than we were before. I think the country lost its moorings [in the ’80s]–but I think they’re yearning to get them back.”

It’s at once a novel and old-fashioned theme-worthy of the sadder, and perhaps wiser, generation he represents. If it works, it would mark a profound change in the mind-set of American public life, and might just get Bill Clinton elected.

Clinton’s Electoral Math: What the Democrats Need to Win

To amass the 270 Electoral College votes needed for a November victory, the Democrats must take all the states they won in 1988, capture several they narrowly lost to George Bush and look for targets of opportunity in the South:

In 1988 Michael Dukakis won just 10 states and the District of Columbia-little more than a third of all electoral votes needed for victory.

TOTAL ELECTORAL VOTES: 106

In another dozen states, Dukakis lost by a margin of less than 10 percent. One was California, which alone will be worth 54 electoral votes.

TOTAL ELECTORAL VOTES: 168

If Clinton’s the nominee, his regional appeal would give the Democrats the first chance to break the GOP’s lock on the South since Jimmy Carter. While the Arkansas governor might not stand a strong chance against Bush in big states like Florida or Texas, he would probably target several border states-with fewer electoral votes-that went for Carter in 1976. These include Clinton’s home state as well as Tennessee, North Carolina and Kentucky.

TOTAL ELECTORAL VOTES: 39

Map: United States

If the presidential election were held today, who would you vote for?

Would the charges of marital infidelity against Clinton keep you from voting for him?

From the NEWSWEEK Poll of March 19-20, 1992

Which of the following phrases applies more to Bush or Clinton?

BUSH CLINTON Strong under pressure 63% 22% Personally honest 52% 26% Committed to his policies 44% 36% Understands people like you 34% 45% Has vision for the future 58% 44% From the NEWSWEEK Poll of March 19-20, 1992

title: “Can He Beat Bush " ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-13” author: “Kate Harris”

Clinton calls himself a change agent”–a human chemical reaction waiting to happen. “The best way for the Democrats to win is to offer a real vision of positive change,” he told NEWSWEEK. He says he wants to reject “what people think they’ve gotten from both parties in Washington for the last 10 years.” But Clinton will have trouble selling himself as an outsider. He’s not a congenitally angry man. And his carefully nurtured ties to the Democratic Party establishment in Washington helped bring him within reach of the nomination.