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                                                                                U.S. POLITICS, Page 34

The 34% Solution


Faced with the Perot challenge and a rejiggered electoral map,
Bush and Clinton abandon the center to shore up their traditional
bases

By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON


    It is an axiom of politics that running for the White
House involves a zig and then a zag: during the primaries,
candidates of both parties normally concentrate on wooing the
liberal or conservative wings of their parties; once nominated,
they pivot toward the broad middle of the American electorate,
where the White House is lost and won.

    Dan Quayle's attempt to energize conservatives by
attacking Murphy Brown shows just how different the 1992
campaign has already become. Ross Perot's pending entrance in
the race -- and the possibility that he might attract between
a quarter and a third or more of the vote this fall -- has
George Bush and Bill Clinton paying unusually heavy tribute to
their parties' core constituents. Instead of moving their
candidates toward the center to win, both camps are seriously
mulling over how to win the White House with just the thinnest
plurality of voters. Call it the 34% solution.

    The central calculation that Democrats and Republicans are
now testing is whether it is possible to capture the presidency
this fall with just their most ardent supporters plus a sliver
of help from the independents, who seem increasingly devoted to
Perot. Ultimately Bush and Clinton may have little choice: with
Perot drawing most deeply from independents and matching Bush
in national polls, it seems increasingly possible that the next
President may win as little as 34% to 45% of the popular vote.

    If a three-man race means a three-way split, that requires
both Bush and Clinton to shore up their base support at all
costs. "The question we're asking ourselves is whether there are
enough conservatives and Republicans to make up 35% of the
electorate," explained one Bush official. "Is our base big
enough to win an election in a three-man race?"

    Slow to realize Perot's potential, Bush's lieutenants are
still split over the answer. White House chief of staff Sam
Skinner, Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady and campaign chief
Bob Mosbacher continue to doubt that the Perot challenge will
survive past Labor Day. But Quayle, campaign chairman Bob Teeter
and manager Fred Malek, stunned that Bush is dropping in the
polls even while the economy is improving, are starting to hedge
their bets.

    The Vice President's attack on a fictional TV character is
only the most blatant attempt by the White House to highlight
issues dear to conservatives. Fearful of mouthing Quayle's
controversial line, Bush will instead continue to sound
law-and-order themes in the wake of the Los Angeles riots and
will appease conservatives by vetoing a measure this week that
lifts a four-year ban on federal fetal-tissue research. While
such stands may not please a majority of American voters, Bush
is not playing to the majority anymore. "The Murphy Brown thing
is a big winner for us with our base," said one Bush official,
"and holding on to our base is what we're concentrating on now."

    The minimalist strategy will make it easier for Bush to
manage his coalition of right-wingers and yuppie moderates. In
1988, after running to the right in the primaries, Bush reached
out to independents in the fall with the "kinder and gentler"
clean-air and child-care initiatives, and he won easily. But in
a three-man race, such overtures may be unnecessary, even
unwise. Conservative Republicans have never really liked or
trusted Bush, and they could bolt to Perot if the President
starts sounding moderate again.

    For example, when the G.O.P. holds hearings this week in
Salt Lake City on the party's 1992 platform, the Bush forces
believe they can more easily ignore the demands of three
Republican organizations that will call on the party to back the
right to an abortion. Ann Stone, who leads Republicans for
Choice, thinks Bush must again become pro-choice -- a position
Bush himself once held -- to prevent disgruntled moderate
voters from casting their lot with the pro-choice Perot. Stone
also fears an anti-Republican backlash should the Supreme Court
overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1974 decision that guaranteed abortion
rights.

    But the men at Bush headquarters are, if anything, heading
in the other direction. "You really have to go after the
pro-choice vote in a two-man race," said a senior adviser to the
Bush campaign, "but you need less of it in a three-man race."

    Perot's emergence has been most difficult for Clinton, who
has been shunted to third place in most national polls. Clinton
had recruited a number of political consultants who are experts
at turning old-fashioned liberals, particularly from the South,
into hard-headed moderates. Now, instead of moving to the
center, Clinton may soon be quick-marching to the left. Should
Perot's support hold, Clinton too will be squeezed into a 34%
strategy and may have to run instead as a relatively unrefined
liberal in order to hold his base and win.

    If so, Clinton's first challenge is to cling fast to black
voters, who are among the Democratic Party's most loyal
followers but who have turned out in far lower numbers this year
than in 1988, when Jesse Jackson was on the primary ballot.
Clinton will almost certainly reinforce his appeal to blacks
more than he might otherwise have intended.

    To woo women, Clinton will perhaps take more of a leading
role in the fight for abortion rights, which he backs but for
which he has in the past let others fight. "Tactically," said
Harrison Hickman, a Democratic pollster, "you want to focus on
getting those people out to vote. Strategically, you have to
take a leaf from Perot's book by establishing your leadership
credentials."

    That's what Clinton was doing Tuesday in Los Angeles when
he appeared before an audience of gay campaign contributors and
activists. After dressing down members of the militant gay
group ACT UP in New York last month for misstating his record,
Clinton last week pledged that someone infected with the AIDS
virus will speak to the nation during the Democratic Convention
in July. Bush campaign officials chortled privately at this
gimmicky pander, happy to see Clinton on the verge of alienating
Southern evangelical Christians.

    A three-way race may force Clinton to abandon some of the
free-market economic ideas that he has been lab-testing for
several years as a way to appeal to disaffected Democrats and
independents. John Breaux, a Louisiana Senator and a Clinton
operative, last week told the Democratic platform committee, "We
have to show that the new Democratic Party has learned from the
mistakes of the past." But if moderates are no longer important
to Democrats in 1992, Clinton may want to put those lessons off
indefinitely.

    Meanwhile, like Middle Age cartographers who have just
learned that the world isn't flat, officials in both parties are
frantically redrawing the old maps by which they have charted
strategy for presidential campaigns during the past 30 years.
Traditionally, Republicans begin a two-man race with a solid 25
states in the South and West, while Democratic nominees have
counted on easy wins in a dozen relatively populous Northeastern
states. As the campaign nears the stretch in October, both
candidates fight it out in half a dozen or so Midwestern states
and California.

    But the Perot candidacy, says Republican pollster Bill
McInturff, "takes the Electoral College map and throws
everything up in the air." Perot's front-runner status in most
Western states, as well as California, Texas and Ohio, has Bush
shifting his sights from the West and South to the North and
East. Republicans generally draw a solid 30% to 40% of the vote
in those regions, but rarely a majority. States that seemed
unwinnable a few weeks ago -- Minnesota, Wisconsin,
Pennsylvania, even Massachusetts -- are now within reach.

    Two top Bush campaign advisers, after practically giving
California up for lost six weeks ago made a special trip to the
Golden State in mid-May to reassess the President's new and
improved chances there in a three-way race. "The incredible
thing," said a Bush campaign official during a closed-door
strategy session last week, "is that we're ahead in New York and
behind in Idaho" -- a reversal of the normal alignment.

    Clinton, who previously had to hold the Democratic
Northeast and fight for the border states, the Midwest and the
West Coast in order to win, now has a better chance of winning
the South outright. In such states as Mississippi, Alabama,
Georgia, South Carolina and Louisiana, where blacks account for
between one-fourth and one-third of the vote, winning becomes
suddenly feasible for Clinton if he can carry all of the black
vote and a fourth of the white vote.

    With Perot siphoning votes from Bush among conservatives,
Clinton can now contend honorably in Texas and Florida. Notes
Tad Devine, a veteran Democratic number cruncher: "Perot's
presence pulls Bush off the electoral Mount Olympus he would
otherwise be perched upon and deposits him onto a much more
competitive level playing field."

    On the other hand, early Clinton advantages over Bush in
such populous states as New York, Illinois and Penn sylvania
have evaporated as Perot has mounted his independent challenge.
Still up for grabs are the pivotal states of Ohio, Michigan, New
Jersey, Missouri and California. The problem for both Bush and
Clinton is that in most of these places, Perot is pulling ahead.
And in some states, such as Oregon, nearly a majority of both
Clinton and Bush backers say they would be likely to vote for
Perot if the election were held today.

    Of course, the election isn't until November, by which
time the billionaire businessman may have failed miserably at
presidential politics. In the meantime, most of the base tending
taking place now is good politics for either a two-man or a
three-man race. As a Bush official put it last week, "The
question is, Are we fleet enough, are we agile enough to drop
back into a two-man strategy if Perot proves to be a flash in
the pan?" In that event, the White House will go to the party
that does the best job of lurching back toward the center.

    Such calculations, however, go a long way toward
explaining why that is unlikely to happen. If Bush and Clinton
stood stoutly for something in this curious campaign rather than
seeming to shift with the winds, they would not have generated
the public discontent Perot is now exploiting.