Roads not Taken : Bush’s and Clinton’s Missed Opportunities

On Tuesday, the final non-event of the 1992 primary campaign will occur. Bill Clinton and George Bush will almost certainly win the California presidential primary. In other words--nothing will happen.

In fact, nothing much has happened since the New Hampshire primary in mid-February. That was when angry Democratic and Repub lican voters first showed their displeasure with the presumed front-runners, Bush and Clinton. The rest of the campaign can be summarized in two words: They survived.

Bush and Clinton didn’t really defeat the other candidates. The other candidates just collapsed. Voters took a good look at Paul E. Tsongas, Patrick J. Buchanan and Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. and said, “You’ve got to be kidding.” They all died of the same cause--terminal implausibility.

Bush and Clinton survived because they were marginally more plausible than the others. Not more popular. Just more plausible. After all, Bush is widely reported to be President right now, though the evidence is not conclusive. And through a willful suspension of disbelief, some voters can imagine Clinton in the White House. But Brown? Buchanan? As they say in New York, “Getouttahere.”

It has been clear since the New York primary in April that Bush and Clinton would be the only candidates to survive. The two front-runners were supposed to use the last month to bind up their wounds and show the electorate a bold new presidential image. If that was the idea, they blew it.

For both candidates, May became the month of missed opportunities. The violence in Los Angeles was a perfect opportunity for Clinton. It focused attention on the nation’s long-neglected domestic needs. It put race relations on the agenda, and that is supposed to be Clinton’s strength. His message is racial healing. Americans needed healing in the aftermath of the Rodney G. King verdict.

We wanted Robert F. Kennedy. We got a couple of suburban golfers nervously surveying the wreckage and looking as uncomfortable as Michael S. Dukakis in the tank. Both Bush and Clinton were terrified of making a mistake. Bush and Clinton fashion themselves as candidates of the middle class, and they knew the middle class didn’t want to pay for this. So instead of soaring rhetoric, we got partisan recriminations: “It’s George Bush’s fault.” “It’s Lyndon Johnson’s fault.” “It’s Ronald Reagan’s fault.” “It’s Murphy Brown’s fault.”

An improving economy was supposed to save Bush, but he, too, missed his opportunity. Over the last five months, more and more voters say the economy is getting better. And Bush’s job ratings have gotten worse and worse. Things may be getting a little bit better, but the improvement has no conceivable relationship to anything Bush is doing. Because Bush isn’t doing anything.

The L.A. riots demonstrated that the domestic agenda is much bigger than the economy. The economy was booming in the 1980s, but it didn’t do the cities much good. The country is in a mess. The voters want change. They know they won’t get it from Bush--who has no agenda and has said nothing about what he would do in a second term. Clinton sounds like another politician with a bunch of warmed-over position papers. Voters don’t believe it would make any difference which one gets elected.

So what happened in May? Bush dropped 12 points. Clinton didn’t budge. And Ross Perot, the candidate for change, zoomed to the top of the polls.

But Perot is not on the ballot in California. The state won’t even count his write-in votes. A lot of voters are going to stay home, and those who vote will take a firm stand in favor of plausibility.

That doesn’t mean the California primary is without interest. Every major trend in American politics will be visible in Tuesday’s primary, only more so. That’s because California is just like the rest of the country, only more so.

The political gridlock that affects Washington also paralyzes California, only more so. The Republican governor in Sacramento can’t even count on his own party for support. Citizens have taken matters into their own hands, with ballot-box budgeting and government by initiative. In 1990, California voters approved one of the most punitive term-limitation measures in the country. This year, incumbents are on the defensive against angry voters everywhere. Only more so in California.

Bush and Clinton are weak everywhere, but weaker in California. Bush has a 47% unfavorable rating nationally; he is running a 56% unfavorable rating in California. Clinton’s national rating is 48% unfavorable; in California, it’s 54% unfavorable.

Perot is doing well in national polls--and even better in California. In the country, Perot is tied with Bush, 35%-35%. In The Times poll of California, Perot is 14 points ahead, 39%-25%.

California is the keystone of the GOP coalition. It has gone Republican in every presidential election since 1948, with the exception of the 1964 Johnson landslide. For Bush to be running third in California, with just 25%, is catastrophic.

At 26% in California, Clinton is doing just as badly. The two likely major-party nominees are in a battle to determine who seems more irrelevant. What’s happening to Clinton in California is happening all over the country. Trial heats between Bush, Clinton and Perot have been taken in 26 states. The results show Clinton ahead in exactly one--Arkansas. He is running third in 15 states.

In other words, the Democratic Party--the oldest political party in the world--is in imminent danger of becoming a third party. The premonition of disaster is stimulating talk of a Dump Clinton movement at the Democratic Convention. That won’t happen. The party is so enfeebled that no one is in a position to take charge and force it to change direction.

California is also at the forefront of another political trend, one painfully evident this year. There is no visible public campaign. California is well on its way to achieving a new level of perfection in the art of politics--the totally paid political campaign. No speeches, no rallies, no walking tours, no interaction with the voters. Just fund-raising events, TV commercials and direct mail.

In California, campaigns are highly professionalized. The voters are not listened to. They are targeted. Campaign rhetoric has degenerated into attack ads and poison-pen mailings. Want to get rid of the district attorney? A radio ad invites you to dial 1-900-DUMP-IRA, and you will be asked to make a contribution. One TV ad compares Senate candidate Dianne Feinstein, who is being sued for irregularities in campaign finance reporting, with convicted tax evader Leona Helmsley?

Most of the campaign bypasses the press. There are no events to cover. There are only ads and mailings, the most important of which come in the last few days--too late for the press to evaluate.

First, political parties became irrelevant. Now, the press has become irrelevant. Soon, voters will become irrelevant. If an ordinary, unskilled voter tried to volunteer for a campaign in California, there wouldn’t be anything to do. The pros do it all. You want to participate in politics? Give money.

Campaigns in California are like traveling circuses. They come to town every few years, set up tents, dazzle the spectators with clowns and high-wire acts and rake in the money. After Election Day, they strike the tents, round up the elephants and disappear. The show is in town to make money. The people are there to pay, watch and clap. As P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

The only visible public campaign this year is for a candidate who is not even on the primary ballot. In fact, he hasn’t even decided whether he will run. Whatever you may think of Perot’s ideas and methods, he is adding something genuinely new to the California campaign--citizen involvement. People are participating. They are signing up. They are offering their input. After all, Perot doesn’t need their money.

The Perot campaign is an effort to de-professionalize politics. Like Brown and Buchanan, Perot is urging voters to “Take back the system.” That has enormous appeal--even more so in California, where the professionalization of politics has gone farthest and resentment runs highest.

How can Bush and Clinton fight back? They can’t. All they can do is assume the same thing will happen to Perot that happened to Brown and Buchanan. He will die of his own implausibility.

If the voters see Perot as an implausible President, they will do the same thing in November they are going to do in California on Tuesday. They will settle for the most plausible alternative.