THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 3, 1995 TAG: 9503020024
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By KEITH MONROE
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines
Horrors! Though it's 21 months till the next presidential election, the woods are full of candidates. The woods of New Hampshire specifically.
Recently a Rush of Republicans (like a gaggle of geese) gathered there to throw their hats in the ring. Bob Dole is running - for the third or fourth time. Pat Buchanan has switched from columnist to candidate again, simultaneously bringing into deeper disrepute both politics and journalism.
Phil Gramm is running. Wild Bob Dornan, the one-time California red-meat radio host, is in the hunt. Dick Lugar, Richard Nixon's favorite mayor, is going to go, as is Lamar Alexander, George Bush's favorite governor.
One reason the Republicans are lining up early is the unpopularity of the incumbent. They can almost taste victory. In fact, they may be so overconfident that they figure it doesn't matter who runs against Clinton. Last week, Rich Bond, the head of the party under Bush, said personality is inconsequential in a presidential candidate.
``Since when has meanness or niceness been one of the qualifications? Do I want him to be the god-father to my children? That's not how you evaluate a presidential candidate.''
But wait, this is the guy who helped Bush blow a historic lead and lose to Clinton just two years ago. He's not exactly the head rocket scientist when it comes to winning political strategies.
In fact, people do want their president to be a godfather - if not to their children, then to the country. They want him to be tough and nice at the same time. Personality does matter. Ironically, Bush ran his whole campaign on the premise that character counts. He lost, but that doesn't invalidate the idea.
The first thing people want in a president is strength, particularly in times of foreign-policy stress. The end of the Cold War may make blatant machismo less important, but toughness is still better than weakness, as Clinton's reign demonstrates.
Truman seemed tougher than Dewey, derided as the little man on the wedding cake. Nixon seemed tougher than both Humphrey and McGovern. Until the TV debates, voters weren't sure Kennedy had the gravitas to be president, but his poise and Nixon's sweat changed the electorate's mind about who was presidential.
But if toughness gets you in the presidential game, it isn't all it takes to win. In 1964, Goldwater might have been even tougher than Lyndon Johnson, a famously hard man. But old AuH2O wasn't elected because voters thought he was too far out. They didn't feel safe putting the country in his hands.
Of course, subsequent events led to a famous joke. ``They told me if I voted for Goldwater, the war in Vietnam would get worse. I did, and it did.'' Nevertheless, another crucial dimension in president picking is optimism vs. pessimism, confidence vs. qualms. All things being equal, voters choose strength over weakness and the one who makes them feel upbeat over the one who raises doubts.
Malaise did in Carter and gloomy prophecies about the need to raise taxes destroyed Mondale when they ran against Reagan, the first conservative with a smile in a long time. For him, it was always morning in America. And America responded. This country doesn't go for twilight. Bush's theme song when running against the dour Dukakis was Don't Worry, Be Happy.
Four years later, bumptious Bill Clinton looked like a candidate of activism and hope. He said he felt the electorate's pain and promised to do something about it. Bush, by contrast, was a study in passivity. He seemed not to have noticed the country's problems or to have any solutions to propose. Don't Worry, Be Comatose.
It is no accident that the four most potent presidential candidates of the 20th century have all combined unquestioned strength and unquenchable optimism - the two Roosevelts, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan.
And that's why Republicans shouldn't count their presidents before they're elected, because the current crop of candidates is short on supercharged optimism. Voters may be disenchanted with Clinton because he has seemed weak and indecisive. And after the beating he's taken for two years, he's no longer quite so upbeat.
But Bob Dole is nobody's idea of a walk in the sun. He's notoriously dark. Even his humor is of the black variety. Phil Gramm's band-saw voice and slash-and-burn rhetoric are no picnic either. He's a kind of tall Ross Perot. One Texan has billions, the other is bilious. Both want to deliver four years' worth of economic lectures - showing with pie charts that we're all doomed. They don't call economics the dismal science for nothing.
Lugar and Alexander are naps after dinner, while the apocalyptic Bob Dornan and Pat Buchanan make Dole and Gramm look like the Bobbsey Twins. No wonder the party yearns for Colin Powell. He's strong. He's optimistic. He's as easy to like as Ike, the last general to win high office. And, like Ike, he's not even a professional politician. MEMO: Mr. Monroe is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star.
by CNB