It is peaceful at the Chattahoochee Nature Center about an hour north of Atlanta, where Virginia Worth spends her days as a volunteer, selling polished rocks and T-shirts and urging visitors to step out back to see the center`s two bald eagles.
She says she doesn`t want to talk about politics, but she warms to the subject within a half minute or so. She is a Republican and she plans to vote in Georgia`s primary Tuesday, but she hasn`t decided yet whether she will back President Bush or challenger Patrick Buchanan.
”We don`t get the best people, you know,” said Worth, 37.
”You don`t get up that high into politics by sticking to your ideals. You don`t get anywhere if you stick to your principles. I think my options are as good as they ever get these days, and I don`t think politics gives you many options.”
Her cynicism is not a good sign for the state Republican Party, which until the Ronald Reagan era had seemed an endangered species in Georgia. But it is offset by the fact that there doesn`t seem to be much enthusiasm in the Democratic Party, either.
Doug Slaback, 35, who lives here but works at a big, bankrupt retail store in downtown Atlanta about 45 minutes south, is a Democrat. He is
”leaning toward” voting for Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who is likely to take the biggest chunk of Georgia`s 76 Democratic convention delegates at stake on Tuesday.
But Slaback seems more motivated by his anger at Washington and its politicians than by any attraction to the Arkansas governor. A strong anti-Washington sentiment has been noted across the country by many pollsters over the past few years.
”I am just getting fed up with the Washington people. They talk and talk, and never do anything. The main issue for me is health care. That and the economy,” Slaback said. ”We`re all worried. I have friends who work for General Motors, and we don`t know what is going to happen to them.”
Georgia plays what it hopes will be a bellwether role for the South in an unusual primary season that has delivered dissension among the Republicans and confusion among the Democrats.
On the Democratic side, the process seems almost tailor-made for Clinton, who has the backing of Gov. Zell Miller, who engineered the primary shift that will allow his state to vote a week before much of the rest of the South votes on Super Tuesday (March 10).
In the Republican race, Buchanan has continued his feisty, conservative assault on the president. Bush is the obvious favorite to win the GOP primary, but everyone will be watching to see how much more damage Buchanan can inflict.
The White House is worried. In the wake of Buchanan`s charges that Bush was supporting pornography and blasphemy through funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bush campaign at week`s end laid on a string of visits to fundamentalist churches and schools.
Miller shifted the primary to elevate Georgia from the Super Tuesday mayhem. It is no small coincidence that this also gives Clinton his first shot at a big victory and helps seal the perception that he is, indeed, the Democratic candidate of the South.
But nothing seems to be working as intended.
Georgia has become part of a pack of Not-Quite-Super-Tuesday states. Maryland, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Utah, Washington and American Samoa also will vote or hold caucuses Tuesday.
Instead of being the center of attention, whatever happens in Georgia is likely to be offset by developments elsewhere. Instead of sending a strong message about Clinton`s strength in the South, Tuesday may simply continue the process by which each of the candidates has been able to claim regional victory.
Because all the other Democrats know Clinton has a strong edge, they have focused their attention on other states where they might have a better chance. Georgia`s voters really haven`t had much of a chance to look at the field.
The state hasn`t been the backdrop the local Democrats intended for Clinton, either. He has been forced to spend the last week on the defensive, because of his own mistakes, or because of attacks from other Democrats.
The strongest attack came from Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, winner of last week`s South Dakota primary. He swept into Georgia with all the subtlety of William Tecumseh Sherman, said Clinton could never be elected in November because of his problems with the draft issue, then zipped off to Florida, Colorado and New York.
But he left behind a compelling surrogate, Max Cleland, Georgia`s secretary of state who, like Kerrey, paid a high price in Vietnam. Kerrey, a Medal of Honor winner, lost a part of a leg. Cleland lost two legs and an arm. Cleland and Kerrey both offered a simple, three-layered logic for their attack: The Democrats cannot win in November without support from Southern white males, who abandoned the party for Reagan in 1980.
Southern white males are inherently conservative and patriotic, and in November simply won`t vote for Clinton, who in the late 1960s got student deferments from the draft under circumstances that have drawn criticism.
The Bush campaign is already running ads against Buchanan that feature retired Marine Corps Commandant P.X. Kelley and will not hesitate to try to shred Clinton with negative ads in the fall campaign. Kerrey said Clinton would be peeled like a boiled peanut.
There is only one candidate who can weather that kind of attack and draw Southern white males to the party, too: the war hero, Kerrey.
At least, that is what Kerrey says.
Clinton responded by presenting his own decorated Vietnam hero, Oconee Circuit District Atty. Jim Wiggins, who said Kerrey was soft on crime.
It is unlikely that Kerrey`s attack will change the intended course of events in Georgia, but it might pull him a few points higher than anyone expected. If the attack serves that purpose in this test market, it will become powerful ammunition in Florida and Texas, the two big prizes on Super Tuesday.
While a collection of polls show Clinton the strong favorite in Georgia, the surprise is that they show former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas in second place and everyone else far back in the pack.
Clinton, however, made a mistake that might cost him some support among Georgia`s black Democrats, an important part of the coalition that candidates must build in the South.
Misinformed that Jesse Jackson had decided to endorse Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, Clinton, in Phoenix at a TV station at the time, launched into an attack on the civil rights leader`s integrity. He didn`t know the tape was rolling, and his image was being beamed to a satellite.
With the speed of light, word of the attack spread. CNN, Atlanta-based and the South`s most important news source, ran the tape at every opportunity. Clinton was shown calling Jackson a backstabber and double-crosser, among other things.
Jackson, of course, won the primary in Georgia four years ago and has always carried tremendous weight in the black community. Before long, he too was on the air saying how shocked he was to have been blindsided by Clinton.
Clinton`s problems have crowded almost everything but paid advertisements off the airwaves and in a way have cheated Georgia of the chance to present its problems, just as depressed New Hampshire did, to the nation.
At this season, Georgia has a deceptively lovely sheen. The daffodils already have blossomed and in the quiet, woodsy Atlanta neighborhoods, the magnolias are in bloom, and the azaleas will blossom in a few weeks.
Edgar H. Sims Jr. can see some of this from his law office on the 44th floor of the Georgia Pacific building. Despite the early arrival of spring, he is worried about Georgia and its prospects.
”In the recession in the `70s, real estate was hit hard, but everything else was basically OK,” said Sims, chairman of the state Democratic Party.
”But this recession is hitting everyone right across the board.”
Gov. Miller acknowledges this problem, too, although he is quick to note that his state`s economy is not in as much trouble as New Hampshire`s.
Still, Georgia has lost some 90,000 jobs over the past few years, most of them in construction.
There also is the dark prospect of peace, which no one wants to talk about much. Georgia is crammed with defense contractors like Lockheed and Martin Marietta. It also has many military bases.
When Congress actually slices into the Pentagon budget now that the Cold War is over, Georgia`s economy undoubtedly will suffer.
All of these problems, plus the trouble with the economy at the national level, have given the Democrats hope that they might finally be able to win a presidential election if they can just nominate a candidate who can make it to November without self-destructing.
Sims thinks the conditions are ”ideal” for pulling all of those white defectors back to the Democratic fold.
”A lot of people aren`t exactly sure why they are mad at George Bush with all these bad things happening,” said Sims.
”I think a lot of white males, and that is where the battleground is in the South, are going to vote for Pat Buchanan, and it may be a step-by-step process. First you vote for Buchanan as a protest and then, you are faced with Bush again. Once you have done that, boy, it`s really going to pull those votes back to the Democratic Party.”
Atlanta pollster Claibourne H. Darden Jr. doesn`t think that can happen, particularly with a Clinton candidacy, even though he concedes Clinton will get the most votes in Southern primaries.
”The Democrats, under the wise tutelage of George McGovern and his efforts in 1972 to democratize the Democratic nomination process have developed a system that, up to now, has totally defeated their candidates before they even get to the nomination,” said Darden, who has gained some notoriety for his incendiary rhetoric.
The heart of the party is far to the left of its constituency, which he defines as the legendary ”Bubba” vote that has drifted off to the Republicans.
Clinton won`t sell with this group, Darden says, because of his problem with the draft, the tabloid stories about his marital infidelity and the role he played in anti-war protests more than two decades ago.
”It was like during the Civil War,” Darden says. ”When a soldier was gut shot, they didn`t operate on him, they just leaned him up against a tree to die. Bill Clinton has been running a presidential campaign, but he has been fatally wounded. He is just leaning against the tree.”
Georgia`s institutional Democrats are betting that Darden is wrong.
