His to lose - campaign advice for Bob Dole - Editorial

National Review, August 12, 1996

EARLY in May, NR offered Bob Dole some friendly advice. "The way for him to climb back" from his dismal poll numbers "is to highlight his differences with Bill Clinton on vital issues like taxes and cultural fragmentation." Dole has still failed to highlight such differences -- and his poll ratings remain dismal.

The campaign so far has been marked by a misguided effort to conciliate "moderates." Witness Dole's gyrations on the assault-weapons ban. He intended to abandon his pledge to repeal it. Then, at Newt Gingrich's urging, he said only that he wanted to "move beyond" the question. Then, when the media hooted at his cowardice (i.e., his failure to do their bidding), he shamefacedly announced that he opposed repeal after all. Witness too his courtship of Colin Powell, as running-mate, keynote speaker, or just plain speaker. Dole considers Powell a magic totem, who will mollify blacks and moderates simply by breathing at his side.

If Powell is the touchstone of this strategy, Pat Buchanan is the scapegoat. Hence Dole's decision (still in place as we go to press) not to let Buchanan speak at San Diego. Dole professes to admire Richard Nixon, who always thought of himself as the "man in the arena." Buchanan (unlike Powell) entered the arena of the primaries, and won a quarter of the vote. Blowing him off is folly. Buchanan will speak at San Diego, whatever happens -- in the hall, or outside it.

Even as he defensively pursues moderates, Dole has defensively fended off a swarm of issues and non-issues, symbolized by Buttman, a figure out of Craig Livingstone's prop box. Here and there, the candidate has given good speeches: calling in Milwaukee and Minneapolis for private-school vouchers; in Philadelphia for arming the Bosnians and expanding NATO; in Dallas and Los Angeles for developing and deploying ballistic-missile defenses. These are worthy causes. But they are not hot buttons. Until Dole finds and presses some, he will not make any headway.

Dole's stall-out has not occurred in a vacuum. It has depressed the GOP and conservatives generally. Rich Lowry details (p. 25) how downcast Republican congressmen have become. They scramble to save themselves. In their desperation, some talk of separating themselves from the top of the ticket. This is a fantasy. The Republican resurgence in 1994 was the result of a "nationalized" election. A bad campaign by the party's only national candidate will have bad effects down the line. The keening of Beltway pundits, meanwhile, is like the sound of 17-year locusts. Some consider scenarios whereby Dole pulls out at the convention, or (even more fantastically) is compelled to pull out.

NR does not share this despair. Bob Dole is the party's nominee --chosen in trial with his peers, in part (ironically, it now seems) because of his electability. He is a decent, patriotic public servant -- and electable. He can still deserve the enthusiastic support of conservatives. But to do so, he must rethink and recast his campaign.

We believe that he should put forward a thoroughgoing program of tax reduction, together with proposals to cut the government's share of gross domestic product, so as to lift America's economic spirits. But the larger political reality of 1996 (Pat Buchanan's and the New York Times's anxiety over "downsizing" notwithstanding) is that Americans are more perturbed over the country's moral decline, social disorder, and disintegration into warring ethnic tribes. As Michael Barone pointed out in The American Enterprise: "Violent crime is a greater threat to most Americans than short-term unemployment. Divorce is a far greater threat than job loss to the typical person's lifetime project of accumulating wealth . . ." Dole must address America's cultural and moral anxieties.

Here he faces a political vexation. President Clinton has appropriated conservative rhetoric, made symbolic conservative gestures (supporting school uniforms and victims' rights), endorsed conservative measures (if only briefly in the case of Wisconsin's welfare reform), and even promised to sign conservative legislation to "end welfare as we know it." (We shall see.) This has blunted any GOP attack before it was launched.

Which means that the Republican challenger will have to emphasize those very issues where Clinton cannot endorse conservative policies even for a day. Policies unacceptable to the President are ones that defend localities and states against federal intrusion, reflect traditional moral standards rather than the new morality of the New Class, protect the American nation against the solvent of multiculturalism, foster a responsible citizenry rather than bureaucratic clients, and divide the liberal coalition.

Bob Dole can dredge up his own examples from the depths of his Kansas subconscious. But a random sample might include: restricting the powers of the federal judiciary and thus restoring self-government to the American people; ending (not "mending") race and gender quotas; making English the official language (and so outlawing bilingual ballots and gradually winding down the structures of bilingual education); extending school choice, via vouchers, to parochial schools; withholding federal funds for the anti-national "national history standards"; enforcing laws against illegal immigration and reducing legal immigration to a level acceptable to the American people (approximately 300,000 arrivals annually, according to opinion polls); signing the bill to outlaw partial-birth abortions (and entitling it the Prohibition of Infanticide Act?); passing legislation to keep servicewomen out of combat and exempt civilian women from the draft; abolishing the exclusionary rule, which protects only the guilty; further reforming welfare to discourage illegitimacy; and reversing those recent decisions of the Supreme Court which have imposed its moral whims on communities under the pretext of interpreting a Constitution which had never in two hundred years been thought to require such reformation.