Bush whacked

George W. threatens to render his opponents -- and primary voters -- irrelevant

by Michael Crowley

For a stretch of time this past winter, hardly a day passed without the announcement that some Republican or another had decided to run for president. By early 1999, at least 10 Republicans had concluded that they were White House material, and party activists were abuzz over what was shaping up to be one of the most unpredictable and exciting primary campaigns in decades. "This will be the most open presidential primary that New Hampshire has seen in at least a quarter-century," Steve Duprey, the New Hampshire Republican Party chairman, said back in January. "It's wide open. Anyone could win it."

But as George W. Bush made his megamedia swing through Iowa and New Hampshire this week, it was clear how much that has changed. In showering the Texas governor with dozens of endorsements and millions in contributions, the Republican Party establishment has lent him an air of inevitability, even divine right.

Back in January, GOP activists were looking forward to sifting through the crowded field and choosing a candidate. But today, the party's primary voters have become almost beside the point. The nominee essentially has been chosen already -- not by the vox populi, but by the overlords of the Republican establishment.

The GOP's top apparatchiks and éminence grises apparently have concluded that this primary is too important to leave to the voters, who could always fall for some unelectable right-wing demagogue. So the Bush coronation has been reminiscent of the Simpsons episode that depicts Republican Party headquarters as a stone castle on a bleak mountaintop where a malevolent array of operatives and oligarchs (including atomic mogul Montgomery Burns and a blood-drinking ghoul) meet to choose a candidate for mayor of Springfield.

In Bush's case, there is no dark castle. Instead, there is the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, the party's journalistic mouthpiece, whose latest cover features Bush with crown and scepter, basking in a heavenly glow beside the headline THE ANOINTED ONE. There are the esteemed leaders of the party establishment -- former cabinet secretaries, luminous thinkers, and other walking memories of the Bush and Reagan administrations. There are the endorsements of dozens of officials and members of Congress. All this before Bush's first specific policy proposal.

And then there are the adoring fundraisers and donors who have lavished him with money. Hundreds of fundraisers have streamed into Austin this year to lunch with Bush. By mid-May, Bush had raised some $13 million without attending a single fundraising event; his campaign is on pace to raise an astonishing $50 million.

This roaring inferno has sucked the political oxygen from the GOP contest and now threatens to engulf the lesser flames flickering forlornly around Bush. For those poor saps, it's an extremely frustrating state of affairs.

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True, some of the Republican candidates -- such as religious fundamentalists Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes -- never expected to do more than preach to a narrow constituency of believers. And Patrick Buchanan isn't a serious contender in good economic times. His economic-populist message, though always resonant with a certain audience (this year it's steelworkers fuming over layoffs and cheap steel imports), can't match the potency it found during the era of corporate downsizing.

But others have invested considerable time, money, and personal dignity in White House quests that are becoming pitiful to watch. This category includes a few ordinarily serious people who are now fast becoming punch lines: Lamar Alexander, Elizabeth Dole, and Dan Quayle.

Yes, Quayle was already a living sight gag. But, resentful of his wretched public image, he had been hoping desperately that a "serious" campaign, organized around a God-fearing, socially conservative message, might prevent him from leaving behind an eternal legacy of stupidity. Unfortunately for Quayle, however, a former vice-president just can't compete with the son of a former president. With Bush sucking up so much campaign cash, Quayle's campaign has found itself strapped for money. Quayle raised just $2 million in the first quarter of the year, and has begun laying off staff and trimming his campaign budget to remain afloat.

Elizabeth Dole has also suffered badly from Bush mania. Her fundraising total for the first quarter of 1999 was a humiliating $685,000. Throw in poor reviews of her absurdly scripted performances, and people speculate that all she's running for now is the number-two slot on a Bush ticket. Even her husband, former senator Bob Dole, seemed to dis Liddy's chances in a puzzlingly candid interview with the New York Times last month. "If she can't raise the money," Dole told the Times, "obviously it's pretty hard to be a candidate."

Perhaps most pathetic, however, has been the fate of Lamar Alexander, the earnestly moderate former Tennessee governor who has been running nonstop for president since 1993 (including a failed 1996 candidacy). His head start hasn't gotten him very far. Earlier this month, a cash-starved Alexander -- who raised a weak $2.5 million in the first quarter -- announced the layoffs of at least half a dozen staffers, including his director of communications. Alexander says the move was a consolidation of resources for February's Iowa caucuses, the first official test of the primary season -- and possibly Lamar's one and only stand.

It's inevitable for resentment to set in when a well-known and quite plausible GOP presidential candidate finds it difficult even to make it as far as New Hampshire in a year when there is no Republican incumbent. "He's entitled to run and compete," Alexander said of Bush to the Washington Post last week. "But he's not entitled to inherit."

Yet the Republican Party has always been about entitlement and inheritance -- in its internal politics as well as its philosophy. Unless Bush turns out to be a disastrous campaigner -- which hasn't been the case in Texas -- his competitors seem destined to fail. Only two of Bush's rivals seem capable of staying alive for any length of time. Arizona senator John McCain, a blunt-talking darling of the national press, can count on free exposure and editorial praise -- but it's not clear how far McCain's support extends beyond a circle of political reporters thirsting for an honest man.

Then there's Steve Forbes, the billionaire publisher who campaigned in 1996 on a flat-tax platform but now has expediently taken up socially conservative causes such as banning abortion. Forbes alone can keep up in the money race, by spending from his almost limitless inheritance. Republican leaders have implored him not to savage Bush, as he did Bob Dole in 1996, with expensive attack ads, but Forbes has refused to make any promises.

Still, Forbes has never held elective office, and his campaign is sufficiently aware of the trouble people have imagining the man as president that it has begun airing black-and-white ads showing Forbes at work in a mock Oval Office setting. Ultimately, Forbes may thrash Bush with stinging ads, but he can't possibly win the nomination.

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Bush may yet stumble. It's entirely plausible to imagine him confusing, say, Bosnia with Kosovo, or forgetting his own Social Security plan. And those rumors about a drunken, drug-addled, and (on occasion) publicly nude past may turn out to be true. It's hard to believe that a salacious Bush scandal won't eventually explode on the MSNBCs of the world and captivate the mainstream media. And forget all the recent rhetoric about separating the personal from the political. You can count on Bush's frustrated rivals and vengeance-seeking Democrats to stoke the fires of any scandal.

But Bush's rivals are so hapless, their campaigns so emaciated, that none seems capable of stealing the nomination from him. The party elders know this, and they know it is Al Gore who will ultimately benefit from any damage suffered by Bush. (Assuming Gore outlasts Bill Bradley, of course, which is likely -- although the more one sees of Gore's phony-seeming public persona, the more plausible a Bradley insurgency becomes.)

Bush's real problem in a general election, however, won't be fending off scandals. It will be convincing a prosperous electorate concerned about Social Security and the state of schools that tax cuts and more government devolution are needed. State by state, and district by district, Americans have elected a sharply conservative Congress in this decade. But time and again, Bill Clinton and the Democrats, as protectors of the environment, education, Medicare, and Social Security, beat back the conservatives. National Democrats today have more credibility than Republicans on nearly every issue (perhaps even foreign policy, with the apparent success of the Kosovo intervention).

All of which is a big problem for George W. Bush. Early smoke signals suggest that he isn't likely to draw a particularly compelling ideological contrast with Gore. And, given his background, he can hardly run as a morally pure alternative to the Clinton administration -- especially in view of Gore's wholesome life story.

The problem is that if Bush looks like an Al Gore clone, there's little incentive to reject Gore, who enjoys a kind of quasi-incumbency. A tie goes to the proven vice-president, not the untested newcomer.

Which is why the Republican rush to anoint Bush is risky. Might it not be wiser to give a chance to candidates who stand in sharper relief against Gore? To nominate a woman like Elizabeth Dole, or a refreshingly unscripted war hero like John McCain?

The question is moot. The high priests of the Republican Party have spoken. They have found their Chosen One. All hail W!

Michael Crowley can be reached at mcrowley[a]phx.com.