Conventional wisdom has it that President Bush is in trouble, but conventional wisdom has often been proven a fool.
Still, the Democrats have a strategy to win votes in the suburbs and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton is leading in the polls. Conservatives are swimming in malaise and longing for 1980 when Ronald Reagan made the world seem new to them.
But while most Republicans watch television and read the papers to see their misery chronicled, one of the most powerful and conservative Illinois Republicans is chucking it all to go fishing.
State Sen. James ”Pate” Philip (R-Wood Dale), chairman of the Du Page County Republican organization and possibly the next president of the state Senate, has decided to leave the polemics to somebody else. He`s not going to the GOP convention this week in Houston.
Houston is hot. Somewhere in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, there is a walleye with Philip`s name on it.
”What do I want to go to a convention for?” asked the longtime conservative and Bush supporter. ”At a convention, you sit around, you hear speeches. I`ve got some fishing to do.”
Philip has stepped down as an alternate delegate to allow Paige Pell, an organizer for Ross Perot`s ill-fated presidential campaign, to attend.
”I`ll do some fishing and work on my place in Michigan. And when I get back, the president will come to the State Fair, and the campaign will be on, and we`ll be ready to kick some butt,” Philip said.
He rejected the notion that he pulled out of the convention because of some spat with other Republican leaders or Gov. Jim Edgar, the delegation chairman.
”This is a media event,” Philip said. ”Paige Pell organized women for Perot. She will be in a press conference. It will be a news story. That`s what the convention is about, and I want to win.”
Monday was supposed to be a slow day for Philip, a bit of public musing about politics before taking his wife and some friends to a Clint Eastwood movie and an Italian dinner. But the phone in his suburban office kept ringing. There were calls from Houston and from campaign managers of Republican state senate races in Illinois.
The U.S. presidency is important. But all politics are still local. Philip wants to become president of the state Senate. The legislative maps have been drawn in keeping with the census, and the maps favor the Republicans in the fall.
”In 1988 I coordinated Northern Illinois for Bush, but now I`m worried about electing 30-plus state senators and you can understand why,” Philip said. ”I`m more involved in the state Senate campaigns than the presidency of the U.S. The most important thing right now is to control the state Senate, and we`ve got that chance.”
Philip, an ex-Marine who has been in the legislature for 25 years, has been able to survive a life in politics because he knows how to count. And the numbers now favor the suburbs. Only 25 percent of Illinois` 11.4 million population lives in Chicago. Thirty-six percent live Downstate. But 39 percent live in the suburbs.
Similar proportions apply to other metropolitan areas in the country. Most people, about 46 percent, live in suburbs. The shift has put Philip and other suburban Republicans on the brink of real power in Illinois. And those numbers let Philip kill Chicago Mayor Richard Daley`s hopes for a third airport at Lake Calumet.
They also give him reason to snicker when he hears about Clinton`s hopes to win suburban voters in the fall.
”Yeah. I kept hearing a lot about that; it`s the kind of thing political analysts would say to each other on television,” Philip cracked. ”A suburban strategy? Think about this. You live in the suburbs because you didn`t want to live in the city. You pay a mortgage. You have bills. And you`ll want to elect a Democratic president to work with a Democratic Congress so they can increase your taxes?
”Come on. . . . People don`t have any more to spend.”
As he sat back in his chair, Philip mused on a variety of political subjects, from Hillary Clinton`s lost headband and softer image to Bush`s problems with conservatives.
He said Hillary Clinton`s feminist politics will hurt the candidate where he needs help most, among so-called Reagan Democrats who have been voting Republican now for 12 years.
”That goes for the city and the suburbs. She does not have a lot of appeal to traditional family-oriented people. She`s still a liability even if they`ve toned her down. One minute she`s talking about how children have the right to sue their parents, and the next minute she`s in a pink apron baking cookies.
”And I haven`t even started talking much about Mr. Clinton`s service record or his spectacular social life.”
Philip attributes the lack of immediate conservative fervor for Bush to the president`s compromise with Congress to raise taxes and because the GOP has waited until this week to begin to define Clinton in its own terms.
”He made a great mistake when he told people to read his lips, that there wouldn`t be new taxes,” Philip said. ”Sure, that hurt him with conservatives in the suburbs. But the Democrats boxed him in on that one. He compromised with them and paid for it. You`ll see a different George Bush beginning this week. Besides, he`s been compared to Ronald Reagan and nobody can match up to that.”
Throughout the afternoon, the phone kept ringing. There was news from Houston that pro-choice delegates would drum the abortion issue again. In Illinois, Philip was putting names together for a fundraiser for a candidate. As he talked on the phone, he kept looking at the wall across from him and a mounted walleyed pike.
