Relinking Gore to Clinton
BARNES, FRED
Relinking Gore to Clinton Voters want a president who will share Clinton's policies, but not his morals. BY FRED BARNES AROUND THE TIME of the political conventions in August, voters were asked in...
...Their goal is, in Rove's words, to "re-link Gore to Clinton...
...This leads to the "middle-class populism" of government aid for college tuition, child care, prescription drugs, and health insurance that Gore proposes...
...And so in the 2000 election, voters want a new president who's the opposite of him personally—and especially morally—but not a strong critic of his policies...
...Four years later, Clinton was elected because the Bush administration seemed adrift...
...Lieberman didn't yap this much about religion until quite recently...
...The answer was Bush, 51 percent to 45 percent...
...In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected in reaction to the tired Eisenhower administration...
...of Clinton's morals, Joe Lieberman, as his vice presidential running mate...
...Also, says chief Bush strategist Karl Rove, Gore's kissing his wife after she addressed the Democratic convention "worked . . . unbelievably...
...But a post-convention survey by News'week found Gore leading Bush by 7 percentage points on who can best promote moral values...
...But a Washington Post/ABC News poll released last week showed Gore, after running 11 points behind before the conventions, has pulled even with Bush on the moral issue...
...Bush has said he wouldn't attack the president, but he doesn't need to...
...How's he done it...
...Everything Gore's doing is working," says Republican strategist Jeffrey Bell (coiner of the term "Clinton bifurcation...
...Then, assuming Clinton could run for another term, they were asked if they preferred him or George W. Bush...
...Now, it's time for Bush's counter-message...
...First by picking a religious person and critic Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...No more...
...When a White House scandal involving Gore was cited, "there was a lot of nervous laughter," says a Bush aide who observed the sessions...
...In one way, touting faith is a cynical ploy...
...Finally, this same group of voters registered a verdict on Clinton's presidency...
...Worried, the Bush campaign conducted two focus groups in early September with what it calls "new Gore voters," ones who migrated to the vice president after the conventions...
...Voters still like Clinton's performance as president but they don't want him around...
...Ronald Reagan won in 1980 because the Carter presidency had failed in economic and foreign policy...
...His policies are roughly the same, but he's presenting himself as morally separate...
...This left a void that Gore and Lieberman have filled...
...That poll was skewed by sampling too many Democrats...
...Gore has gained spectacularly on the moral issue in the campaign...
...In 1988, George Bush Sr...
...And so on...
...For sure, the Bush campaign will be accused of dwelling on the past, being negative, and focusing on Clinton, who's leaving office...
...His compassionate conservatism isn't a radical departure from this administration's policies, but he's quite unlike Clinton personally...
...But contrary to conventional wisdom, most presidential elections are about the past...
...A month ago, voters who said morality is a top issue preferred Bush by 68 percent to 24 percent, according to pollster John Zogby...
...The importance of the past makes Gore's feat of disassociating himself from Clinton, for the moment at least, all the more impressive...
...until a month ago, that person was George W. Bush...
...The job won't be easy...
...A whopping 68 percent said it's been a success, 29 percent a failure...
...His task is simply to connect Gore to Clinton and to Clinton-related wrongdoing...
...And then by talking up religion, playing the family man by showing off his wife and children at the Democratic convention, and emphasizing the future rather than the Clinton-Gore past...
...won because the Reagan administration had succeeded on those issues...
...No one else would have made it real...
...This was obviously encouraging to the Bush camp...
...In fact, reporters who covered Lieberman had a tacit agreement not to ask him about religion...
...For his part, Bush has de-emphasized religious faith since the Republican primaries, notably since his appearance at Bob Jones University in South Carolina became controversial...
...The message from Gore and Lieberman is: We're religious, we're moral, we're not like Clinton...
...BY FRED BARNES AROUND THE TIME of the political conventions in August, voters were asked in a Gallup poll to take another stab at the 1992 election...
...Gore "had to have" Lieberman to distance himself from Clinton, argues Wittmann...
...This time, President George Bush defeated Bill Clinton by 53 percent to 42 percent...
...Bush and his advisers recognize how difficult Gore will be to defeat if he's no longer seen as an extension of Clinton, indeed as the vehicle for a third Clinton term in the White House...
...The meaning of all this: The Clinton bifurcation lives...
...Just last month, he wrote in the American ^-rospect that Democrats should "re-enter the values debate...
...The Bush strategy assumed religious faith was useful politically with GOP voters, but wouldn't help in the general election...
...The architect of this strategy was pollster Stan Greenberg, who worked for Clinton in 1992 but didn't join Gore until early August...
...But that's not all of it...
...Voters are drawn to Democrats who respect the public's religious faith and belief in personal responsibility," Greenberg wrote...
...True, this would stress the past...
...in response, the Gore voters spontaneously began to mention other controversial Gore activity...
...So, eight weeks out, the presidential race comes down to a single question: Will Gore's separation from Clinton endure...
...Voters like candidates who "put the family at the center of political discussion," Greenberg wrote, "and who devote themselves to a policy agenda that will help families meet the myriad challenges they face...
...Now, the Bushies expect to raise at least a half-dozen of these embarrassing episodes in ads, Bush speeches, or the debates...
...Greenberg spent most of the 1990s thinking and writing about how Democrats could attract middle-class voters...
...Gore re-mains vice president in name only...
...These include Gore's alibi that "no controlling legal authority" barred fund-raising calls from the White House, his appearance at a fund-raiser at a Buddhist temple, his none-too-credible insistence it wasn't a fund-raiser, his excuse he was in the men's room when allegedly illegal money-raising tactics were discussed at the White House, and his claim that Clinton will be seen as one of America's "greatest presidents...
...He's disconnected himself from Clinton and shaped his image to meet the requirements of the Clinton bifurcation...
...Now, Al Gore has changed things by pulling off a strategically brilliant political transformation...
...Reading Greenberg's article," says Marshall Wittmann of the Hudson Institute, a Republican, "you can see Greenberg telling Gore, 'You must choose Lieberman as your running mate.'" Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, certainly has delivered the goods, speaking incessantly about religion and morality...
Vol. 6 • September 2000 • No. 1
