TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111891/1118100.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 9.0 KB | 184 lines

                m                              r=                            ╚NATION, Page 22

ELECTIONS

Wake-Up Call


A Democratic upset in Pennsylvania and a nationwide revolt
against incumbents send Bush a message: 1992 may not be so easy

By MICHAEL DUFFY -- Reported by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington
and Elizabeth Taylor/Philadelphia


    As voters across the country trooped to the polls last
week, George Bush voted with his feet. He canceled a two-week
swing through Asia, set for later this month, in the face of
scathing complaints from Democrats about his lackluster handling
of domestic affairs. The decision was draped in an unusually
flimsy pretext: Bush said he needed to remain in Washington to
"protect the American taxpayer" during the last days of the
congressional session. Explained a more candid aide: "Given the
choice between upsetting Americans and upsetting the Japanese,
we'll take the latter every time."

    Bush's expedient conversion to domestic priorities did not
prevent voters in Pennsylvania's Senate race from sending him
a chilling message. They demolished former Attorney General
Richard Thornburgh, a Bush surrogate for whom the President
campaigned actively, 55% to 45%, and elected liberal Democrat
Harris Wofford, a campaign neophyte who had hammered away at the
Administration's poor economic performance. The voters, Wofford
declared, "are fed up and want action to get our economy off
dead center and get us moving out of this recession. It's time
to take care of our own."

    Elsewhere the message was mixed, but dissatisfaction with
the status quo was the unifying theme. In Mississippi, Texas,
New Jersey and Virginia, incumbents were washed out of office
by a wave of antitax, antirecession, antigovernment sentiment.
Though both parties posted gains as well as losses, the results
reflected a sour, throw-the-bums-out mood that threatened
officeholders everywhere. Only Washington State seemed to buck
that trend by turning down a ballot initiative that would have
imposed strict term limits on the state's congressional
delegation. But milder term-limitation measures applying to
local officials were approved in Houston and Cincinnati, and at
least a dozen states will consider variations next year.

    At a bizarre 6:40 press conference the morning after the
elections, Bush tried to put the best face on the results.
"There is a message here for the Administration," he said, "and
a message here for the U.S. Congress." He admonished the press
not to "look at the part of the glass that is only half full."
But the fact that he had called the sunrise gathering just
before departing for the NATO summit in Rome suggested, like his
abrupt cancellation of the Asian tour, that the President was
starting to worry about his political future. For the first time
since his Desert Storm triumph last February, Bush's hammerlock
on a second term seemed to be slipping.

    Even the part of the Republican glass that was half full
contained muddy water. In Mississippi businessman Kirk Fordice
ousted Governor Ray Mabus, a progressive Democrat. But Fordice's
anti-liberal, antiquota, anti-welfare campaign had a strong
racial undercurrent that could prove embarrassing to the
national G.O.P. -- especially since ex-Ku Klux Klan leader David
Duke, running as a Republican, may well ride the same themes
into the Louisiana Governor's mansion in this week's runoff.

    Fearing that a Duke victory could discredit and divide
their party, some of Bush's advisers urged the President to
campaign for Democrat Edwin Edwards, a former Governor who was
indicted twice on charges that he had conspired to rig
state-hospital approvals while out of office. "You've got to put
a stop to this now," said one leading G.O.P. official. "Duke is
to Republicans what Jesse Jackson was to the Democrats ten years
ago." Though he refused to stump for Edwards, Bush went so far
as to say he would vote for him if he were a Louisianian.
Although the President had hedged his criticism of Duke at
first, he described him last week as "an insincere charlatan"
who "has a long record, an ugly record of racism and of bigotry
that simply cannot be erased by the glib rhetoric of a political
campaign."

    But nothing did more to shake Bush's complacency last week
than the Pennsylvania outcome. Wofford, a former John F.
Kennedy adviser, successfully turned the White House's inaction
on health care and other domestic matters into a powerful
Democratic issue. Appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by
the death of John Heinz in April, Wofford held his party's
traditional blue-collar wards and reached deep into suburban
Republican strongholds to erase a 46-point opinion-poll deficit
and beat Thornburgh, a two-term former Governor.

    Thornburgh, who exudes the aura of a man who hasn't got
into a cold car in two decades, played right into his
opponent's hands. He reveled in his Washington experience and
boasted of returning to the "corridors of power." Paul Begala,
Wofford's campaign manager, later quipped that Thornburgh's
eagerness to identify with Washington was like "running on a
pro-leprosy ticket at the time of Christ."

    Wofford's most effective pitch was to convert the public's
low-grade concern about affordable health care into a palpable
anger over what the squeezed middle class is not getting from
government. His stunning victory effectively ended the internal
White House feud about whether to propose a health-care reform
package before the 1992 election. Budget Director Richard
Darman, who has backed such a plan for months to no avail, will
now have wider berth to draft a Bush proposal.

    In Congress, meanwhile, both parties were vying to seize
the initiative on health care. Nineteen Republican Senators,
headed by minority leader Bob Dole, proposed a package that
would provide medical services to the 34 million uninsured
Americans by offering them tax incentives to purchase private
insurance. In the House more than 60 Democrats called for a
Canadian-style system providing universal health care through
a publicly administered program. Yet both parties must explain
to voters how they plan to lower medical costs and provide
quality care without raising taxes or increasing the deficit.

    The most formidable threat to Bush's re-election chances
remains the economy, which had begun to recover in July and
August but sputtered again in September. Bush has recently
attempted a precarious balancing act, acknowledging that "people
are hurting" from the recession, while reassuring Americans that
"this is a good time to buy a car." He has also sought to boost
consumer confidence by calling on lawmakers to reduce the tax
on capital gains -- a political non-starter that unfairly favors
the wealthy. The Democrats have countered with proposals for tax
cuts that would mainly benefit the middle class, whose
discontent was the only common thread in last week's elections.

    As Bush appeared increasingly vulnerable on key issues,
the Democrats saw their 1992 prospects brighten. Many began to
speculate aloud that Bush might actually be defeated. James
Carville, the Louisiana consultant who engineered Wofford's
Pennsylvania upset, insisted that the Democrats could turn
Bush's habit of changing his mind to their advantage. "You can
move him around real good," said Carville. "If I were running
against him, I'd be like a mosquito in his face." Said
Democratic pollster Geoff Garin: "Just two months ago, a lot of
us looked at 1992 as a positioning exercise for 1996. Now we're
looking at next year as a chance to elect a President."

    Many Democrats were looking to Albany, where New York
Governor Mario Cuomo continued to play his tedious maybe-yes-
maybe-no game. Cuomo's entrance, into the Democratic race would
make him the instant front runner and draw increased attention
to the six other contenders. But Cuomo cannot wait much longer:
his indecision is becoming a lampoonable liability in a contest
for a job that requires far harder judgments than the one he's
wrestling with now.

    No matter who runs against him, Bush retains tremendous
advantages. Though his approval ratings have dipped to 63%, they
remain higher than Ronald Reagan's a year before his 1984
landslide re-election. Polls also show that the Democratically
controlled Congress, not Bush, still receives the largest share
of the blame for the limping economy. More worrisome for the
White House, however, are pollsters' findings that 57% of
Americans believe the country is on the wrong track.

    Bush's position seemed unassailable after Desert Storm.
But popularity born of foreign crises has never been a
guarantee of support once a country's attention turns inward.
Consider the fates of Woodrow Wilson at the end of the First
World War and Winston Churchill at the end of the Second: within
months of great triumph abroad, both men suffered stunning
defeats at home. Nothing says such a reversal is inevitable, or
even likely, for Bush. Nor does anything say it is impossible.