George Bush has the chance in the next few days both to make history and to assure himself the presidency.
All he has to do is to name Colin Powell as his running mate.
No, it`s not my idea. It is a direct steal from my conservative colleague, George Will, although Ed Asner, the actor, and Rep. Jack Kemp have urged the same thing.
But it is a brilliant idea-one that could cure virtually every weakness the Republicans face as they head off to their nominating convention in New Orleans.
Is the party considered dull and faintly bigoted? The nomination of Gen. Powell, President Reagan`s national-security adviser and the first black man to hold that post, would make the recent Democratic convention seem lackluster by comparison. And it would lay to rest the notion that the GOP is the white man`s party.
Is Bush perceived as weak? Powell`s nomination would endow him with a reputation for imaginative boldness and add a dash of tough-guy machismo to the ticket, without in any way diminishing Bush.
Is the Republican nominee lagging in the polls? Naming Powell as his running mate would turn that around in a matter of hours. It could, in fact, transform the New Orleans convention into a coronation.
The 51-year-old Powell is far more than an attractive black man. He is a military man and a foreign-policy expert who takes seriously the need to stand up to the Soviets. He is smart, conservative, self-effacing, intensely loyal and, in Will`s phrase, ”bright as a new nickel.”
His resume and personal characteristics would make him a reasonable bet even if he were white. But it is his blackness that transforms him into a can`t-miss proposition.
Black Americans represent the potential victory margin for the Democrats- which is why Gov. Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, looks to Jesse Jackson to deliver the black vote.
Under ordinary circumstances, the charismatic Jackson could do it: not because Dukakis himself is that attractive to blacks but because the Republicans have permitted themselves to be cast as the enemies of blacks.
Could Jackson deliver the black vote to Dukakis if the Republicans put Powell on the ticket? No way. Jackson himself understands the potential of a Powell nomination.
”It would,” he said this week at a breakfast session with Washington Post executives, reporters and editors, ”change the political equation in this country as profoundly as the shift under Roosevelt in 1932.”
He is right, for three key reasons.
The first is that black voters continue to be frustrated by the Democrats` inclination to take them for granted and the Republicans` to ignore them. Putting a black vice-presidential nominee on the GOP ticket would eradicate that sense of neglect.
The second reason why Powell`s nomination would break the Democratic lock on black votes has to do with the tenuousness of the black commitment to Dukakis.
The Massachusetts governor, viewed at best as the lesser of evils, succeeded in offending blacks on two occasions: when he allowed Jackson to learn from reporters, rather than from himself, that he had chosen Texan Lloyd Bentsen to be his running mate, and when, in a recent campaign speech in Philadelphia, Miss., he neglected to make any reference to the one thing that has etched that Southern town in the American memory: the murder there of three civil-rights workers.
The third reason has to do with Jackson`s own recent candidacy, which succeeded in rendering at least ”thinkable” the election of a black to high national office. As Jackson put it, ”the sociology of the campaign, as opposed to its political impact, is that the reasonable expectations of the American people have changed.”
Would white conservatives vote for a Bush-Powell ticket? I think they would, and so would a host of non-conservative blacks and whites, who might find irresistible the chance to rewrite American history.
The Republicans have the opportunity to fashion a dream ticket that not only would assure victory but create a historical realignment at the same time. The only people who would abandon the GOP as a result of a Powell nomination would be the unabashed racists.
Are there enough of them to make any significant difference? I doubt it, but wouldn`t it be fascinating-and a brilliant gamble-to find out for sure?
