As Labor Day approaches, Bush is in an unaccustomed, uncomfortable new place: the fight of his life. A week after Al Gore’s “I’m My Own Man” roll out in Hollywood, the vice president still holds onto a 46-42 lead in the new NEWSWEEK Poll, a margin only two points below his post-L.A. high. For now at least, Gore has managed to emerge from the shadow of Bill Clinton, to sell himself as the champion of government aid for the middle class and to impress insiders with his relentlessness and strategic savvy. Bush, by contrast, seemed unsure of his message and his game plan and shaky on details of his own sweeping proposals–but also reluctant to attack Gore in the manner many Republicans would like: as a chameleonlike political hack who played the piano for eight years in Clinton’s White House of ill repute.
The numbers portend a down-to-the-wire race, perhaps the closest since 1960. If it is, every minute and every sound bite will count. Bush has been knocked off his stride once before–by Sen. John McCain in the GOP primaries last winter. In that case, Bush relied on political subcontractors to persuade the Republican faithful to flock to him in South Carolina and elsewhere. But now he faces 10 grueling weeks of hand-to-hand combat with Gore for the allegiance of fickle independent voters. Bush will have to win the war of ideas he says he really wants–but for which he sometimes seems less than fully prepared. As he vanished for the weekend to his ranch in the scrubland of central Texas, his aides–still confident–stayed behind in Austin to plot new campaign moves. “We’d still rather be in our position than Gore’s,” said a top insider.
It wasn’t clear why. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, Bush has the barest of leads over Gore on who would better handle the tax issue. Yet when voters were asked about specific tax-cut policies without mentioning the candidates’ names, they favored Gore’s. Bush also trails badly on the questions of who would do a better job of handling the economy, prescription drugs, Social Security and education. In blind “taste test” questions, voters said they prefer protecting and expanding those programs to the kind of extensive tax cut Bush still insists he can sell.
Bush was unhappy with his own salesmanship last week. “I’ve got to do a better job of making it clear,” he said on the plane. More important, his fitful performance in discussing a topic so central to his campaign revived the lingering questions about his seriousness, his intellectual depth and his laid-back habits on the stump.
In a plan he first unveiled last December, Bush proposes to slice and simplify marginal income-tax rates. The lowest would fall from 15 to 10 percent; the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent. Bush says the plan would cut back the role of government, spur growth and let 6 million lower-income Americans off the tax rolls entirely. At a time of mushrooming budget surpluses, he said, the country can easily afford it. Bush didn’t mention the other reason he proposed what is now a $1.3 trillion, 10-year plan. Last winter he and his aides thought his toughest Republican rival would be Steve Forbes, the billionaire tax-cut fanatic.
The plan has been as much an albatross as an aid ever since. Gore, who proposes $500 billion in “targeted” tax cuts, from the start had called Bush’s plan a windfall for the rich that would “wreck” the booming economy. In New Hampshire, McCain called it fiscally irresponsible–and joined Gore in calling it a threat to Social Security and Medicare. In Des Moines, Iowa, last week–ironically, the city where he’d launched his plan in the first place–Bush tried to argue that the still- rising budget surpluses make his plan even more sensible and even less of an either-or choice between lower taxes and “saving” traditional programs. But he jumbled the numbers again and again, and what was supposed to be a weeklong discussion of education (tied to $5 million in campaign ads on the topic) turned into a week of pundit chatter about his ability to handle the higher math that the presidency requires.
What now? While Bush’s aides insist that their candidate was willing to talk taxes “every day,” they are hoping to switch topics–fast. Bush will try again to talk about education this week, while his campaign fills the airwaves with protective cover. Two new ads promise that Bush will protect Social Security and Medicare. Another touts his prescription-drug proposal, which relies on HMOs and which Democrats characterize as a sellout to the industry. Inside the campaigns, the most urgent tactical questions aren’t nearly so substantive. They’re about who will go “negative” first, and how. Neither side wants to be seen as the one who started it. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, voters say that the race thus far is cleaner than in the past, and that they may punish the guy who gets nasty. That’s why the candidates try to let the parties do the dirty work with soft money, even though they tell them what to do. By offering himself as a “fighter,” Gore isn’t really expecting to win the nice-guy race. Indeed, the Democratic Party aired $30 million worth of attack ads before the GOP convention. The genial Bush–former fraternity president that he is–still likes to be liked. And since he claims to be the only candidate who can restore “honor and dignity” to the office, he needs to be.
But with Bush’s numbers shaky, lower roads beckon. While Bush ran a “positive” prescription-drug spot, the party aired a companion ad accusing Gore of opposing reform and caving in to bureaucrats. The question remains: when will it get personal? Bush’s aides have begun to preview a series of ads attacking Gore’s “credibility” on a host of issues, from tax policy to fund-raising to his loyalty to Clinton. Bush, at least last week, made a show of restraint. The GOP had distributed to 350 TV stations copies of a particularly vicious spot. It included news film of Gore haltingly insisting that Clinton had never lied. Some in Bush & Co. were eager to air the ad, but Bush ordered it yanked. The footage was riveting, but from 1994–years before Monicagate–and focus-group reaction indicated it might produce a backlash. Bush’s team shrugged it off. “We’ve got plenty of other spots that go to the question of Gore’s lack of credibility,” said campaign boss Karl Rove. “We don’t discuss our ad strategy.” Translation: there will be new attacks sooner rather than later, and especially if Bush’s next few weeks are like the last.
