As he heads toward his ultimate fate as a Trivial Pursuit question, Perot leaves behind a much clearer political landscape. His familiar line-“It’s just that simple”–now actually applies to the fall campaign. In fact, the Democratic the Republican message can each be reduced to a single word. The Clinton message is “change.” The Bush message is “trust.” And you thought it couldn’t be sound-bited, Ross.
This is the basic grid on which the rest of the 1992 campaign will take place. Despite plenty of twists and turns down the road, nothing will replace that grid, not even a major crisis. The two qualities obviously overlap: as Clinton emphasizes change, he will have to build trust that he can carry it out. As Bush emphasizes trust, he will have to explain the change that the trust would allow him to bring. The labels themselves may even be misleading. Given his cautiousness, how deeply committed to change is Clinton? Given his broken promises, how trustworthy is Bush? But for the purposes of the campaign strategists, it doesn’t really matter. Those are the hats they will wear. The candidate who can also wear the other guy’s hat for a few autumn weeks will win.
What reporters lazily call the character issue–Gennifer Flowers, the draft. and I-didn’t-inhale-is the foundation on which the Bush trust argument will be built. But to support the weight of a whole campaign, it must have new bricks–fresh revelations with the power to shock. Those may be hard to find. Last week, for instance, a woman appeared without pay on the highly rated Sally Jessy Raphael show to claim she had had a short affair nine years ago with Clinton. America yawned. Only three or four reporters called for details, and the show’s producer expected ratings to be average. If Bush backers flog such stories back to life, the backlash will make them sorry they tried.
So Arkansas will be the surrogate. The subtext of the Bush argument will be: if they can’t trust him to tell the truth in his home state, how can you trust him in the White House? Expect to see ads using the first line of a column by Meredith Oakley in the Arkansas Democrat last year after Clinton broke his pledge not to run for president: “His word is dirt.” He claims he’s a moderate? The Bush campaign will roll out all of his tax hikes. He claims he’s improved his poor state? They’ll 49th-in-the-nation him in every media market. Bush himself did a U-turn on abortion, but that might not stop him from pointing out that Mr. Pro-Choice did nothing to stand in the way of Right to Life efforts to change the state constitution. And Clinton’s on record both opposing and supporting Bush’s gulf policy. The aim will be to use Arkansas to make “Slick Willie” stick.
But skewering one’s opponent as an unprincipled trimmer is tough-if you’re George Bush. And the “L word” cannot be pinned on Clinton as easily as it was on Michael Dukakis. As governor of a Southern state for 12 years, Clinton has useful experience in defending against liberal-bashing. Besides, the core of the GOP’s anti-liberal argument will have to be that you can’t trust Clinton not to raise your taxes. And every voting American knows that Bush has a huge problem being credible on this particular issue, beginning with three simple words about lips that have entered the language. Clinton’s answer on taxes-that they will go up only for the rich-is simple and politically salable. Meanwhile, the most potent GOP trust issue of all-the idea that Democrats can’t be trusted to stand up to communism-is dead. No tank ads this time.
Bush, by contrast, will have a harder time rebutting Clinton’s change argument. When the president poses as the anti-Washington candidate, he just looks silly. When he says Congress hasn’t enacted his growth agenda, he may be factually right; the truth is that Bush’s free-market recipe for economic stimulation-mostly capital-gains taxcuts–probably deserved to be tried as a boost to entrepreneurship. But the Bush program lacked the boldness of some of Clinton’s ideas, it was badly packaged, and blaming Congress for not enacting a tepid agenda looks whiny. Most of all, when the president tries to talk about how committed he is to change, it won’t be hard for Clinton to remind the public that he used his huge gulf-war popularity to accomplish exactly nothing.
In other words, Clinton may be able to handle “trust” better than Bush can handle “change.” But trust me, that can all still change–a dozen times-between now and the election. Just ask Ross and Cher.
