The Campaign Spectator/Canards of '88 (So Far)
Gold, Victor
THE CAMPAIGN SPECTATOR CANARDS OF '88 (SO FAR) Q ix months to go until the presidential election of 1988 and the canards pile up. Not simply those issuing from the candidates and their...
...Forty years later Gallup predicted an overwhelming victory for Dole in the New Hampshire primary...
...Imagine now, if you can, a campaign in which the presidential candidate doesn't have to answer merely for the divergent statements of his running mate, but of her husband's as well...
...8. Elizabeth Dole would be just the running mate George Bush needs...
...When Gallup was caught with its polls down in 1948, predicting a Dewey victory, the explanation was that they had failed to track the numbers right up to election day and missed the shift to Truman...
...As for Jackson's "broadened" base, the only evidence offered to support this thesis is that he carried anywhere from seven to ten percent of the white vote in certain primary and caucus states...
...7. Jack Kemp will be Bush's foremost rival for the Republican nomination...
...With that in mind, as a needed public service, the following is my list of the top ten campaign canards fostered by the cognoscenti, up to early spring, 1988...
...Dan Rather can be expected to beat this dead canard right up to the first Monday in November...
...And Ronald Reagan was the candidate Democrats most wanted to run against in 1980...
...He must know how to organize a campaign, to get the right people into the right places at the right time, and to delegate responsibility, e.g., Bush, Dukakis, both of whom were criticized by the cognoscenti for lacking "vision" but who nevertheless managed to out-distance their rivals...
...Published, with a straight face, by Time magazine after Super Tuesday...
...Not simply those issuing from the candidates and their campaigns, but those spawned and nurtured by the political cognoscenti, i.e., the reporters, commentators, and expert observers assigned to keep the country abreast of how the race is shaping up...
...When the victory went to Bush, guess what Gallup's explanation was...
...Where do the experts get these harebrained notions...
...but his impact on the race was vastly overrated, like Anderson's eight years ago...
...But as an issue high on the voters' agenda, Iran-contra has long since gone away, Arthur Lyman's charisma notwithstanding...
...You know—amiable Bob, everybody's team-player...
...But when the cognoscenti misspeak, quis custodiet ipsos custodes...
...Fill in the blanks, any campaign, any year, chances are good you've got a canard...
...Last uttered and written on the Monday before Super Tuesday, when the "invisible army" turned out to be just that...
...If there's an answer, it's that by Victor Gold Kemp's entire campaign was based on making the leap from congressman to the White House with no intermediate step...
...Where does Post-ABC do its polling...
...Nevertheless, the people have a right to know—to be reminded—that the reporter, commentator, or expert who now speaks so authoritatively about what can be expected in the months ahead is the same tout who buried George Bush in the Iowa snows and alerted us to the growing groundswell for Bruce Babbitt...
...Reagan, after all, was nothing but a cue-card-reading Hollywood actor . . . ^ 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1988...
...Republican presidential candidates have carried that percentage of the country's black vote in virtually every election this century, and no one has yet to describe that as a "broadened" base...
...Not that Gallup is the only pollster off the mark in his predictions...
...3. In order to win, a presidential candidate must give American voters some idea of his "vision of the country's future...
...All of which added up to the fact that unlike the Bourbons, who learned nothing and forgot nothing, our political pollsters have learned nothing and forgotten everything...
...A Washington Post-ABC survey in late March showed Dukakis, whose name—not to mention his record—is hardly known in the South, Southwest, and Far West, defeating Bush...
...They had failed to track, etc...
...whooping about wimps, preppies, and lambs...
...Thanks to a vigilant news media, the public is well protected against the misand-disinformation spread by any errant candidate or member of his staff...
...This canard is one of their favorites, ranking alongside the one about Ronald Reagan's being only a cue-card-reading Hollywood actor, not someone to be taken seriously...
...To the extent that the media wish is father to the thought, true...
...Certainly not the candidates...
...9. The latest Gallup poll says...
...The explanation now given is that the candidate suffered from lack of name recognition in states like Iowa, as if Jimmy Carter in 1976 and George Bush in 1980 were household words when they won that caucus vote...
...Boston Common...
...In the wake of Kemp's dropping out of the race, the experts are left to wonder what went wrong...
...2. Iran-contra won't go away...
...1. George Bush is a wimp, a preppy, a poor campaigner, and, in the words of one Washington columnist a "lamb" being led to political `slaughter...
...Had he taken that extra step, a Governor Kemp or Senator Kemp from New York state could have been a formidable candidate to oppose, even for a sitting Vice President...
...George Bush is the candidate the Democrats most want to run against in 1988...
...Wrong...
...They were right, too...
...And we know what happened to Kennedy and his "vision...
...The only difference between the Jesse Jackson of 1988 and the Jesse Jackson of 1984 is that he's ridden out the "Hymietown" storm (without recanting the sentiments expressed) and succeeded in sensitizing his opponents and the press on the subject of "racism," i.e., any criticism of the Jackson candidacy, in any respect, is, ipso facto, "racist...
...Beyond that, his effectiveness as a national politician, like Ted Kennedy's before 1980, is a matter of mediaconjecture, no more...
...Not that Robertson doesn't have a following...
...Give the cognoscenti time to catch their breath, they'll be back hacking and Victor Gold is The American Spectator's national correspondent...
...5. Pat Robertson, with his "invisible army," will be a factor to be reckoned with in the South...
...To the media, Robertson was the John Anderson of the '88 campaign, the random variable who gave a subplot to the Republican story line...
...Their complaints about media misstatements are generally dismissed as self-serving and may even, if the candidate persists, be construed as yet another canard (or at the very least, a gaffe) on his part...
...To paraphrase what A. J. Liebling once wrote on another subject, New York politicians, like corn, do not travel well...
...Cuomo's entire national reputation is based on one speech, his keynote at the 1984 Democratic convention...
...4. Mario Cuomo could have won the Democratic nomination hands-down had he entered the race...
...6. Jesse Jackson has "matured" as a candidate and broadened his appeal to take in non-black voters...
...In order to win, a candidate must be able to do more than spout Onward-and-Upward rhetoric, quoting Tocqueville and setting forth his 112-point program to save the nation's infrastructure in the Spirit of the Lady with the Torch...
...Indeed, next to Reagan, Bush has been the most mis-stereotyped, underrated national candidate of modern times...
...Imagine, if you can, Cuomo as a presidential candidate tramping through Iowa, then New Hampshire...
...The accepted wisdom in Washington media circles for the past seven years, despite the fact that Kemp couldn't seem to break out of single-digits in his appeal to registered Republican voters...
...Pay no attention to the confessions of error made by Bush's press critics, post-Super Tuesday...
Vol. 21 • May 1988 • No. 5
