He's Got Issues: How Bush climbed back

National Review, Nov 6, 2000 by Richard Lowry

At the time, the title of George W. Bush's September 16 speech to California Republicans seemed wishful thinking: "Issues Win."

Almost all the pundits interpreted Bush's resort to substance as a sign of desperation, because "the issues favor Gore." It did seem an unlikely turnabout-the determinedly nonideological Bush campaign trying to polarize the election on ideological grounds, against the sitting vice president of an administration that since 1994 had neutralized many conservative issues. But the September speech would prove one of the most important of the year, setting up a contrast between Bush's agenda of individual choice and Gore's of governmental command that would help tip the race in Bush's favor. It may not be 1980 or 1994-years of antigovernment backlash-but neither is it safe yet to be a "big government liberal." Even one who loves his wife passionately.

In his September speech, Bush made a limited-government case against almost every aspect of the Gore agenda. He criticized Gore's tax cuts for excluding too many taxpayers and relying on government controls: "You may get a break on transportation-but only if you drive around in a hybrid electric/gasoline engine vehicle." He attacked Gore spending programs for threatening to "run the government back into the red": "My plan has spending discipline. His just has spending." Gore's Social Security program would mean "massive government debt" and "a staggering tax increase," his health-care plan would "force you to join a government-run HMO." In a speech two weeks later in Green Bay, Wis., Bush sharpened the critique, warning that "if Gore gets elected, the era of big government being over is over."

That, of course, was a reference to the most memorable (non-Monica-related) phrase of the Clinton administration. Gore was vulnerable to having it turned against him because, in an overreaction to "Clinton fatigue," he had declined to run as Bill Clinton without the sex. Gore could have been the centrist who kisses his wife. Instead, he became the critic of business and advocate of dozens of new spending programs who kisses his wife. Gore essentially was throwing the Clinton political legacy out with the Oval Office trysts-a grievous mistake, once the Bush campaign discovered how to exploit it.

Which turned out to be by separating Gore from the president. Clinton scourges on the right had hoped Bush would launch a national anti-Clinton crusade, matching Sean Wilentz op-ed for op-ed in the battle to vindicate impeachment and prove the perfidy of the president once and for all. Instead, the Bushies essentially decided: "If you can't beat him, join him." They used Clinton as a wedge to pry Gore away from the center. In his Wisconsin speech, Bush knocked Gore for proposing three times the amount of spending that Clinton did in 1992, and for spurning Clinton's New Democrats. Worst of all, Gore would threaten the nation's prosperity, the Clinton administration's proudest bragging point.

The Bush big-government assault exposed a fundamental miscalculation of the Gore team. Gore strategist Stanley Greenberg had theorized that if Democrats identified themselves with religion and middle-class values (the purpose of the Lieberman pick), they could more easily sell economic populism: A spoonful of cultural conservatism helps the new entitlements go down. There is something to this idea. The long-lingering whiff of "acid, amnesty, and abortion" has helped keep working-class whites suspicious of the Democrats, even as they pose as their economic champions. This is why it was a mistake for the Bush campaign not to challenge more aggressively-with issues such as the Boy Scouts, gay marriage, and partial-birth abortion-the Gore-Lieberman ticket's rightward feint on social issues.

But Greenberg & Co. failed to account for one small thing: Economic liberalism itself is still unpopular, at least in the abstract (if not exactly in Congress-see Stephen Moore, page 32). In an early October Washington Post poll, voters said they favored smaller government with fewer services over a large government with many services by an almost a 2-1 margin. Given this broad preference, it hurt Gore when Bush drove higher the number of people who associated him with larger government. In the Post survey, voters thought Gore favored large government over small by 69 percent to 16, and Bush small government over large by 60 to 23. Advantage Bush. No doubt, it was some version of these numbers that prompted Gore in the second debate to announce his intention to "shrink the size of government," and, a few days later, to assail Bush for supposedly wanting to expand government. Can you say, "Me too"?

Bush's attack on Gore for being too liberal (although that particular word is anathema to Austin and Bush rarely uses it) represented a new phase in his "compassionate conservatism." The limited-government aspect of compassionate conservatism had (except when Bush was beating back John McCain in the primaries) been muted. Now, Bush was leading with it in a way his campaign probably wouldn't have imagined just two months earlier. There were other shifts as well. Compassionate conservatism had always been linked with Bush's "positive" message. He was relentlessly sunny and optimistic, which made for an appealing political personality. But, when it comes to winning votes, keeping fear alive is as important as hope. Importantly, Bush began to try to scare people about Gore, raising the prospect of IRS agents run amok and a dreary future of bureaucratic forms and lines at government offices. Bush changed the tone-not of Washington, but of his own campaign, in a more negative and effective direction.