And Now, the Political Consequences?
Edsall, Thomas B.
LETTER FFROM WASHINGTON Sorting out the likely political consequences of the Iran-contra scandal is a difficult process. The scandal comes at a time when American politics have become...
...The scandal may give the Democrats the White House and continued control of both branches of Congress after the 1988 election, although neither is by any means guaranteed...
...In the last election, these strategists demonstrated that they are equal to the new generation of GOP consultants who have emerged in the Reagan years...
...but, if the conservative movement is weakened by the scandal, this strategy may continue to falter...
...The Iran-contra scandal is not, however, at the moment a realigning issue, and the damage to the GOP is likely to continue only as long as the scandal dominates the front pages...
...His campaign strategy is premised on gaining substantial support from conservatives to form the base of his challenge to Bush...
...This is already apparent in the debate over the impact of Star Wars on the ABM treaty, a debate in which there is a strong base of agreement among ideologically diverse Democrats...
...He and his staff were either active participants or knowledgeable observers both in the Iran venture and many of the activities surrounding aid to the contras...
...The conservative movement is suffering significant setbacks as a result of congressional investigations of the Iran-contra deal, investigations that are almost sure to place under the light of adverse publicity the network of rich right-wingers who have been channeling money to the contras through tax-exempt foundations and other conduits...
...Among those active in the political process, the controversy has produced a complex mixture of responses: a combination of indignation and delight on the left...
...Some of the consequences of the scandal within that competition are: • The Reagan administration has lost the power to 140 set the national agenda...
...for the first time since the end of the 1981-1982 recession...
...was unable to budge from the 5 to 8 percentage point range in polls of Republicans...
...In fact, it is the prospect that the Iran-contra debate could result in a Democratic victory in 1988 that is most likely to prevent such a Democratic victory from occurring...
...In addition, a new generation of strategists who came of political age in the 1960s and early 1970s has begun to emerge in the rank of Democratic consultants and pollsters—Harrison Hickman, Robert Shrum, William Carrick, and Paul Maslin, to name just a few...
...and some confusion among both Republican and Democratic party loyalists...
...From 1973 to 1976, Democrats gained fifty House seats, six Senate seats, and the presidency...
...At the moment, both the trade and competitiveness issues have been forced onto the agenda by Democrats, and, to the extent that Congress continues support of SDI or the contras, it will be based more on political decisions by congressional Democrats than on the muscle of the Reagan administration...
...At the moment, the Democratic party does not appear likely to fall again into the Watergate trap...
...What makes analysis of the consequences of the Iran-contra scandal particularly tentative, however, is the fact that the country appears to be at an unsettled political stage...
...dismay and anger on the right...
...Although it lags behind the GOP in terms of campaign finance and political technology, the gap is no longer a decisive factor...
...Instead of postponing consideration of questions of direct concern to the voters, party officials are giving serious thought to such issues as trade, competitiveness, and arms control...
...A number of these activists and contributors have their roots in the John Birch Society and assorted far-right groups, and the focus of attention on the extremity of their views will damage the domestic conservative movement...
...For Democrats, damage done to the foreign policy credibility of the Republican party by the scandal has made it easier to force issues of arms control to the top of the agenda...
...The scandal has been a decisive factor in a significant resurgence of support for the Democratic party...
...Washington Post-ABC poll data show a gain in the percentage of voters who identify themselves as Democrats, and, more important, the Democrats as of January 1987 had a clear advantage over the GOP on the question "Which party is better equipped to handle the problems of the country...
...In a larger context, Watergate may well have been a chance event in the political process serving primarily to stall a national shift to the right, a shift evident in the elections of 1968 and 1972, and then postponed to 1980 and 1984...
...Both parties have reached rough parity in the electorate, and continued support for spending on education, health, and Social Security is balanced by continued aversion to tax increases...
...Watergate in the 1970s proved to be of enormous short-term benefit to the Democratic Party, and a disaster in the long term...
...In this context, the Iran-contra scandal becomes part of a much larger competition between the two parties and their candidates...
...Through February Representative Jack Kemp (R–N.Y...
...For all the Democratic candidates, however, the far more important question is whether as individuals, and together as a party, they can regain credibility on economic issues, credibility that was lost during the Carter-Reagan years...
...The presidential candidate most likely to be damaged by the scandal is George Bush...
...The Democrats have become more willing to maintain spending for the military while the Republicans are talking more of "compassion" and concern for the elderly...
...In the competition for the GOP nomination, a beneficiary has been former Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole (R–Kans...
...In early polls Dole was the only candidate to make significant inroads on Bush's lead...
...The scandal comes at a time when American politics have become exceptionally fluid, with the Democrats just beginning to regain their voice and the Republicans weakened by the results of the 1986 election...
...A central claim of the Bush campaign concerns his executive skill and expertise in foreign policy...
...All these advantages, however, proved paper thin by 1980 for a party that had used Watergate as a way of postponing the search for amelioration both of internal racial tensions and of working- and lower-middle-class anger over increasing tax burdens...
...Bush's role has yet to be fully disclosed, but to date the facts serve only to undermine confidence in his authority...
...Compounding this political stasis is the failure of any candidate of either party to become a focal point for the coalescence of ideology and interests characteristic of Democratic party leadership at its high points and of Republican party leadership during the initial days of the Reagan administration...
...This power has been on the wane since 1981, but even in the post-election period of 1985-86, Reagan succeeded in maintaining control over the tax reform debate, won continued funding of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, or Star Wars), and persuaded Congress to give the contras $100 million...
...Instead, the short-term prospect appears to be a kind of trench warfare between the two parties and their candidates, in which the Iran-contra scandal is part of the struggle, but, for the moment, not decisive...
...One way that the controversy could become part of a realignment favoring the Democrats would be for the electorate to perceive Republican willingness to take a long-shot gamble on arms-to-Iran as part of a larger, and more broadly dangerous, Republican recklessness and incompetence...
...If, for example, the economy were to go sour, and if such economic deterioration were to be publicly linked to the deficit, it would offer the Democrats an opportunity to decry Republican irresponsibility in general...
...141...
...The rightward drive has lost much of its momentum, but there is no resurgence of the left or of liberalism...
Vol. 34 • April 1987 • No. 2
