The issue of '88 - next president may appoint 3 members of Supreme Court

The Issue of '88

GEORGE BUSH is never going to rouse conservatives the way Ronald Reagan did in 1980, and he'd be unwise to try. On the other hand, with so many of them tempted to site this election out, needs to convince them, without histrionics or implausible pledges, that there are important stakes in the Bush-Dukakis race.

And there are. To wit, the three Supreme Court seats now occupied by octogenarian liberal activists: William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, and Thurgood Marshall. All are likely to be replaced during the next four years. It's inconceivable that Michael Dukakis -- pro-gay, pro-busing, soft on crime -- would appoint anything but three more liberal activists to succeed them.

This is a winning issue for Bush. Not only can he use it to convince conservatives that there is a simple, objective reason for preferring him to Dukakis: he can send singals to other voters who may be drifting back to the Democrats after having voted for Ronald Reagan. The South should already be soild for Bush. The key bloc for him is the Catholic vote, ancestrally Democratic but lately estranged.

Catholics, of course, don't vote as a cohesive bloc. But they do form the nearest thing to a swing vote in presidential elections. The Democrats all but ran them out of the party by nominating McGovern in 1972. Jimmy Carter reassured them in 1976, while Gerald Ford displayed idiocy in their eyes by denying that Catholic Poland was Communist-dominated; Carter won, narrowly. In 1980 and 1984 Ronald Reagan went out of his way to bid for Catholic support by opposing abortion and favoring tuition tax credits for private schools; he won two landslides. (He has also appointed two Catholics to the Court.)

Dukakis seems aware of his party's recent blunders. He's playing down his liberalism by posing as a technocrat (offering non-ideological "competence") and playing up his para-Catholic ethnicity (idenifying himself as "Greek Orthodox," although his active membership lapsed decades ago). He understands the lesson of the last five presidential elections: sharp ideological differences work against Democrats.

So Bush's task is to sharpen them. The simplest way to do that is to make the judiciary a central theme of the campaign. It's an issue Dukakis can't run away from.

Still, there are hazards for Bush too. Brennan and Blackmun were appointed by Republicans. the Democrats picked up a lot of polemical sophistication during the Bork fight, and it won't do for Bush simply to sloganeer about "original intent." He'll have to do some serious intellectual homework. But if he's prepared to make a sustained argument for limiting judicial power without seeming to denigrate the courts' legitimate and traditional role as a cornerstone of liberty, he can define the terms of the election to his own advantage.

COPYRIGHT 1988 National Review, Inc.
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