Once upon a time, there was a president who had very strong support among the American people for his foreign policy. Two years into his term, there were few clouds on his political horizon.
For a while, he became the most popular president in American history because of the very successful U.S. military campaign to stop a Middle East madman from threatening his neighbors. The president won the war but lost his job 19 months later when the American people decided they wanted a leader more concerned with the economy.
Obviously, that non-fairy tale of Bush the Elder is in the minds of every person having anything to do with the 2004 presidential campaign, which has been under way for some time behind the scenes and now, with the midterm elections behind us, will come to a television screen near you.
The 2004 campaign will be the first under the new campaign finance reform law, which bans soft money–unlimited contributions to national parties–but increases how much individuals can give. This presidential election will also be the first after the Electoral College changes flowing from results of the 2000 census.
The economy notwithstanding, those changes are likely to help President Bush.
His incumbent status allows him to raise large sums in individual donations of up to $2,000, while the Democrats are more dependent on big gifts from a limited number of donors.
The census tracked migration of Americans out of the Democratic-leaning Northeast and Midwest to the South and Southwest, GOP strongholds. Those changes play out in the Electoral College. Bush’s 271-267 victory in 2000 would have been 278-260 if the new system had been in place.
For the next year or so, most of the attention will be focused on the race for the Democratic nomination, because, barring unforeseen events, Bush is very unlikely to face any opposition within the Republican Party.
In all likelihood, there will be a fierce Democratic battle. Should the Democrats revert to the more populist economic stance that characterized the presidential losses of the 1980s and Bill Clinton’s victories in 1992 and 1996, or should the party adopt a more business-friendly stance?
Major questions revolve around two candidates who realistically would not win but could influence who does:
– How will the strong possibility of an African-American primary candidacy by Al Sharpton, patterned after Jesse Jackson’s primary contests, shape the race?
– Ralph Nader, whose Green Party candidacy in 2000 siphoned off millions of Democratic voters, might run again. Would he have the same effect this time?
The first primary will be an invisible one, the race for money that will begin Jan. 1, 2003, when candidates may begin accepting cash. The winner of that first primary doesn’t always win the nomination, but those who cannot compete for dollars almost never succeed in competing for votes.
The Democrats face a major problem in the South. The 2000 election showed that if Democrats cannot win at least some Southern electoral votes, they cannot win the White House.
Two factors will almost certainly determine the results of the 2004 presidential election: The success of any conflict with Iraq, be it military or diplomatic, and the state of the U.S. economy as a result of that standoff.
The U.S. seems to be exiting a recession rather than entering one as it was in 1990. The gross national product is growing, albeit slowly. Unlike his father, this Bush has a Congress controlled by his party, greatly reducing opportunities for critics to embarrass him through investigations of his administration or legislation that puts the president in a tight spot.
This Bush also has not alienated his domestic political base, and, unlike his father, he has cut rather than raised taxes.
The tax increase was the major factor fueling a 1992 GOP primary challenge for President Bush from TV commentator Pat Buchanan, who, although not a serious candidate, exposed Bush’s weaknesses.
The potential Democratic field doesn’t appear that formidable, although it is not clear if the big Washington names will take a pass as they did 12 years ago, leaving the door open for Vermont’s Howard Dean, a well-regarded but nationally unknown governor.
For the most part, the Democrats will be auditioning a new generation of leaders, although the status of 2000 presidential nominee former Vice President Al Gore hangs over the entire field. Gore, who won a majority of the popular vote nationally and in Florida lost by 537 votes, is far and away the favorite of Democratic voters in polls.
That’s because of his widespread name identification, but he also has a lot of former supporters who want him to forgo the race. The anti-Gore feeling is based on the belief that he blew a winnable election in 2000 and, without the advantage of being a sitting vice president this time, would be a sitting duck for Bush. Polls taken last month show Bush beating Gore by 15 points or more.
“Al Gore had his shot. He didn’t carry his home state [Tennessee]. He got clobbered in the heartland states. I don’t want to go through that again,” said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.).
Many Republicans would be thrilled to run against Gore, who could be this century’s version of Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, who ran a losing campaign in 1952 against Dwight Eisenhower, then won the worthless 1956 nomination because of his clout with party activists. “He’ll be the candidate that I don’t think anyone will be able to beat” among Democrats, says Rep. Peter Deutsch (D-Fla.).
Gore has vaguely promised a decision about his plans by year’s end, as has Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who has been perhaps the most active 2004 aspirant in trampling the grass-roots in search of support.
Kerry would test the belief that a Massachusetts Democrat would inevitably be viewed in the Sun Belt as too liberal, as was 1988 nominee Michael Dukakis, who didn’t even come close to carrying any Southern states.
The potential candidate most likely to be affected by Gore’s decision is Joseph Lieberman, the party’s candidate for vice president in 2000. Lieberman has said he would not run for president this time if Gore did, although he has wavered some when asked about that pledge.
If he were to run, Lieberman, who has been a strong supporter of Bush regarding the war on terrorism and the potential war with Iraq but a critic of his domestic policy, would seek to be the candidate of party moderates. However, no candidate taking that approach has won the nomination for many decades, because voters in Democratic primaries tend to be less tax averse, more supportive of government spending and more skeptical of U.S. military operations.
Among the Washington bigwigs who may or may not make the race are Democratic Senate leader Tom Daschle, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, who like Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) ran poorly in 1988. No congressional leader has gone directly from Capitol Hill to the White House in well over a century.
State capitals, however, have been the spawning grounds for presidents, with four of the last five chief executives having been groomed as governors first. This time, Dean is the only governor on the list of potential aspirants. But Dean, governor of the only state to legalize homosexual marriage, would be a serious long shot and currently trails Bush in polls of voters in his own liberal state.
Also on the list of candidates seriously considering the race is Sharpton, the New York activist who would seek to galvanize black and perhaps Hispanic voters, much like Jackson did. The risk, however, for the Democrats is that Sharpton, like Jackson, might drive the party’s eventual nominee to take positions on issues in the Democratic primaries to curry favor there that would be major sticking points for the mass of those who vote in the November election.
