Fong show

National Review, Sept 28, 1998 by John J. Miller

Modesto, CALIF.

At Modesto's annual Harvest Lunch on August 27, three flag-bearing teenagers marched in line to an outdoor podium and prepared to lead nearly eight hundred of their neighbors in the Pledge of Allegiance. One of them approached the microphone, glanced at Old Glory, and said ''Please turn to the . . . the . . .'' Awkward pause. Suddenly, from the crowd: ''The American flag.'' Everyone burst out laughing, including the embarrassed boy. California Treasurer and Republican senatorial candidate Matt Fong began his remarks a few moments later by saying: ''It's okay to flub a few lines -- I did it yesterday in my first debate. It's the values you represent in bringing the flag up here that count.'' Applause all around.

Fong's self-deprecation at once comforted and uplifted the crowd of mostly conservative farm Democrats -- the kind of voters he'll need to attract in his neck-and-neck race against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. It also came as a big surprise. In the three months since Fong won a hotly contested GOP primary versus self-financed car-alarm magnate Darrell Issa, he has done nothing to refute his reputation as a Republican version of Al Gore: wonkish, wooden, and balding. In his televised Hollywood debate with Sen. Boxer on August 26, the bespectacled Fong was positively amateurish: reading from notes, repeating himself, botching lines (''Barbara, you're not soft on crime,'' he said at one point, meaning the exact opposite). Yet there was also something endearing about his performance; in the era of Slick Willie, Fong's unpolished demeanor has a refreshing ring of honesty.

Furthermore, although the 44-year-old candidate is not a spellbinder, his campaign is of more than usual interest. The California GOP has the reputation of being terminally unpopular among racial minorities. Fong, as a fourth-generation Chinese-American, could change all that. It's tempting not to dwell on Fong's ancestry because he doesn't make much of it himself. Yet it's an important feature of his candidacy. Exit polls reveal Asian-Americans to be among the most reliably Republican voters in the country. In 1996, they were more likely than whites to support Bob Dole. With non-Hispanic whites soon to become less than 50 per cent of the California population, the state GOP believes it will need a different kind of candidate to succeed. ''The conservative message doesn't have to change,'' says the California GOP's political director, Mike Madrid, ''but we need to put a new face on it.'' A Fong victory in November will show that conservatives have less to fear about growing minority participation in politics than they might think.

If Fong doesn't win many points on style, he scores on substance. No other candidate this year is running so aggressively on a pro-defense platform. At a July meeting with journalists at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., Fong quickly raised the subject even though everybody else wanted to talk about his views on Monica Lewinsky, abortion, and taxes. He hopes to boost military spending dramatically and in his speeches places a special emphasis on the need for an anti-ballistic-missile defense system. Although he is best known for his expertise on economic matters -- as state treasurer, he manages an investment portfolio valued at $32 billion -- Fong could immediately become one of the Senate's most influential members on military issues. This graduate of the Air Force Academy and lieutenant colonel in the reserves is an eyewitness to the post - Cold War evisceration of the armed services. His hawkish attitude frankly confounds Sen. Boxer. The day that Fong provided a detailed outline of his military priorities, Boxer spokesman Roy Behr retorted: ''Today it sounded as if Matt was reading out of a twenty-year-old briefing book prepared for Ronald Reagan.'' He intended it as an insult.

This looks like a good year for incumbents, but Barbara Boxer may be the Senate's most vulnerable Democrat. A recent Field Poll showed the race to be in a dead heat -- a very bad sign for an incumbent at this stage. Fong's advisors believe that if their candidate can raise $10 million or so for television commercials, he's a shoe-in. For a candidate who emerged from the June primary in debt, however, that may be a tall order. Then again, maybe not. ''My campaign now takes Visa, MasterCard, and American Express,'' Fong helpfully explains at his fundraisers.

Matt Fong still has the reputation of a cautious conservative. He won't comment on President Clinton's personal behavior other than to call it ''disgusting'' (yet he clearly enjoys watching the arch-feminist Boxer, whose daughter is married to Hillary Clinton's brother, get hammered by the media for her hypocritical silence on Zippergate). For years he avoided answering questions on abortion by saying, correctly, that the offices he sought and held had nothing to do with it. Today he won't identify himself as either pro-life or pro-choice, a refusal that pleases neither side.