A Dole Defeat and the Conservative Future
KRISTOL, WILLIAM
A Dole Defeat and the Conservative Future By William Kristol Bob Dole is likely to lose the presidential race to Bill Clinton. He may lose badly. The challenge for Republicans and conservatives is...
...Fully half think they are better off today than they were a year ago...
...The challenge for Republicans and conservatives is to prevent a Dole defeat from derailing the ongoing Republican realignment and from blocking the emergence of a new era of conservative governance...
...It is true that most Americans think the country is on the wrong track, and that a high "wrong track" number is always a problem for incumbents...
...What other options does the Dole campaign have...
...pro-life groups should move ahead on issues like partial-birth abortion at the state as well as the federal levels...
...House members and senators should run their own races...
...But there is one temptation that must be avoided: conservatives must not subordinate all their efforts to the Dole campaign, must not succumb to the siren song of "teamwork," and must not defer to Dole...
...Above all, avoid wishful thinking...
...Liberalism in disguise may win in November, but liberalism can't really govern America, as Bill Clinton learned to his grief in his first two years in office...
...Clinton's job approval ratings are now over 50 percent, as is his so-called "re-elect" number (the percentage of voters who say he deserves to be reelected...
...The fires of Reagan Republicanism remained burning in the embers of the 1992 defeat...
...Dole seems to think the "character" issue may do it for him...
...If Dole remains unable to take advantage of this central GOP issue, the energy behind an assault on Clinton will be lacking-to say nothing of the fact that Ross Perot, if he runs, will surely draw away some of the anti-incumbency vote...
...This year's presidential race may follow a similar course...
...But his second term need not be the end of the conservative realignment...
...Newt Gingrich and Bill Bennett, Republican governors and Catholic bishops, anti-tax activists and judicial critics-all will have an opportunity to advance their agendas and shape the national conversation...
...But only if they do not wait for approval from Dole or the Dole campaign...
...only about a third of Americans say government should do more to solve national problems...
...But it may not signify as much trouble for Clinton as many Republicans hope...
...Activists should press ahead on their issues- making their cases and fighting their fights, through initiatives and referenda and legislative efforts at all levels of government, even through independent expenditures on behalf of candidates (including, perhaps, Dole...
...In fact, Ike's acceptance of the New Deal did much to legitimize liberalism...
...Dole became majority leader in 1994, after all, thanks to an ideological surge and a campaign strategy not of his own making...
...In this respect, as in others, the Dole campaign of 1996 bears eerie similarities to the Bush campaign of 1992...
...Furthermore, Americans are surprisingly optimistic about their own economic situation...
...And despite all the underlying reasons why a statewide race in California should have been closer, and why a Democrat should have had a good chance to win, Brown never really had a shot...
...He may think so, though the thought is an odd one, but polls suggest Dole does not have much of an advantage over Clinton on the issue of character-despite all the damage Clinton has suffered on that score...
...It is, admittedly, an appalling prospect that Bill Clinton may well join Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan as the only presidents of this century to serve two full terms...
...The best thing all elements of the conservative coalition can do is aggressively prosecute their case and advance their cause with little regard to Dole...
...His best chance to win the presidency is if others create a political environment that sweeps him in...
...Our quarterback's name is Dole...
...But Dole seems more inclined to distance himself from Newt Gingrich than to learn from him...
...What is most likely is that Dole will sound moderate some of the time and ideological some of the time, and end up satisfying no one...
...And if that happens, it could actually help elect Bob Dole in November...
...But conservatives would rebel, the Republican convention would be hurled into chaos, Powell probably won't accept the vice-presidential nod in any case, and Democrats in the Senate appear able and willing to frustrate most of Dole's attempts to play legislative leader...
...How can this be done...
...He could engineer a significant "moderation" of the party platform's pro-life language, and could lead a major effort to pass bipartisan legislation in the Senate in the next few months...
...In another poll that had Clinton ahead of Dole by nine points, the president maintained only a two-point edge over congressional Republicans on the question of whom voters trust to do a better job with the nation's problems over the next few years...
...The challenge to conservatives today is to keep both the agenda and the spirit of 1994 alive during 1996...
...Anti-tax groups should push tax cuts...
...two-thirds expect to be better off a year from now...
...Of course, the loss in 1992 was followed by the conservative triumph in 1994, a victory made possible by the fact that conservatives did not regard Bush's defeat as a referendum on conservatism and didn't allow others to characterize it as such...
...But he rallied, and though never wildly popular with the state's voters or fully trusted by them, he built up an acceptable approval rating and a healthy lead by early summer...
...The Dole campaign believes the character issue helps elevate Dole above the rest of his party in national eyes, but if so, why does the GOP trail the Democratic party by only three points in a poll in which Dole trails Clinton by 17...
...Where the Dole campaign wants to piggyback on or coordinate with such efforts, fine...
...Another poll gave Clinton a substantial edge when voters were asked whether the candidates "share[d] my values," and had him trailing only narrowly on "honest and truthful" and "keeps promises...
...The cause of conservative realignment is, in any case, too important to be entrusted to one man, whatever the sports metaphor...
...After all, Dole now trails by double digits, and it is not easy to see how the Dole campaign is going to change the minds of many Americans who now are inclined to vote for the president...
...And conservatives need to move aggressively on all fronts: electoral, intellectual, ideological, and organizational...
...While some contests do tighten, others don't...
...Worse still, the current conventional wisdom in Washington notwithstanding, it is not inevitable that the race between Dole and Clinton will tighten up...
...Like Bill Clinton, Pete Wilson was considered a bad bet for reelection 18 months out...
...For the fact remains that whatever the weakness of that campaign, and despite the errors of the Republican Congress, conservatism remains strong and liberalism exhausted...
...But politics is not football...
...What's more, the tax issue seems to have disappeared this year-and it has been key to every Republican presidential victory since 1980 (and to George Bush's defeat in 1992...
...If anything, it's more like baseball, and if you have a weak pitcher, you need to redouble your efforts at hitting, fielding, and baserunning...
...If conservatives want to look back to a somewhat comparable situation, they might consider 1956...
...The campaign could try to recreate the environment of 1994, by picking clear fights with the Left-on taxes, judges, affirmative action, gay marriage, and the like...
...Can conservatives succeed in shaping the national debate without much help from the Republican presidential candidate in a presidential election year...
...Or Dole could go ideological...
...Those numbers are at historical highs, and just as they are good news for the country's spirits, they are good news for Clinton's prospects...
...His opponent, Kathleen Brown, was never able to get any traction against Wilson, who stayed on the offensive throughout...
...racial preferences should be exposed and challenged...
...But the efforts should go ahead regardless of the particular tactical judgments of the Dole campaign...
...Last week, he put that idea into play in a bizarre way when he said that "if something happened along the route, and you had to leave your children with Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, I think you would probably leave your children with Bob Dole...
...Some races simply settle in...
...In one recent poll, Clinton led Dole in categories such as "can be trusted in a crisis" and "has the right temperament" for the presidency, and the two were virtually tied when the criterion was "strong leader...
...Sixty percent or more consistently say that government is too big and trying to do too much...
...Only 17 percent of Americans identify themselves as liberals today-a historic low...
...They will need to resist the notion, in the words of Newt Gingrich, that "you only have one quarterback at a time...
...Eisenhower, nonetheless, won a big reelection victory in 1956- but the Democrats held Congress...
...Like Bill Clinton, Dwight D. Eisenhower came into office with his party in control of Congress, then saw his party lose control in his first off-year election...
...The presidential race will be less dominant in the period before the party conventions, and there will be a chance to get national attention for certain issues and battles...
...indeed, an Eisenhower-like Clinton (with apologies to Eisenhower for this comparison) could help hasten and deepen it...
...Dole is not suddenly going to improve as a candidate and his campaign isn't miraculously going to become an inspired one...
...The analogy with Clinton and the GOP today is obvious-and after Eisenhower's reelection in 1956, the Democrats won a big off-year victory in 1958, laying the groundwork for a resurgent liberalism under Kennedy and Johnson...
...Take the 1994 California gubernatorial race...
...The same poll that puts Clinton up by 11 points over Dole shows more American than not believing "the changes the Republicans in Congress are trying to bring about will be good for most people...
...Dole could run to the center, with Colin Powell as the vice presidential nominee...
...And Eisenhower's reelection did nothing to energize the forces of conservatism...
...If "character" is not going to close the gap between Dole and Clinton, then what...
...This strategy would, its supporters argue, win over moderate swing voters...
...Can Dole make the election a referendum on Clinton the incumbent, and exploit public discontent with the status quo...
...Voters actually prefer Clinton to Dole on taxes by a slight margin, even though Clinton raised taxes in 1993 and vetoed a Republican tax cut in 1995...
...The next few months will tell the story...
...There is no simple formula for doing this...
...But whether or not Dole wins, the honor and vigor of conservatism will be intact, and it will be alive to fight another day...
Vol. 1 • April 1996 • No. 32
