Sununu may be gone, but unfortunately for Bush, the threat from the right remains. Last week David Duke threw his hat–or hood–into the ring with an announcement speech full of race-baiting code (he described the Democrats as the “party of Jesse Jackson and Ron Brown,” both of whom are black). This week talk-show right-winger Patrick Buchanan will challenge Bush’s reelection with his “America First” campaign of isolationism and Japan-bashing. The media, eager to find fissures in the alliance that elected Ronald Reagan and Bush, wondered whether the president could still speak to the all-important “Bubba vote.”
The team Bush picked to replace Sununu and run his own campaign was not reassuring to many on the right. “Conservatives have nowhere to turn,” lamented L. Brent Bozell III, head of the Conservative Victory Committee. The new chief of staff, Transportation Secretary Samuel Skinner, was a tough prosecutor in Chicago (nickname: “Sam the Hammer”), but he is a pragmatic politician, not an ideologue. As transportation secretary, Skinner was skilled at wooing Congress, recently winning passage of the controversial highway bill. Skinner is rumored to be pro-choice, but according to top aides he has not revealed his personal position on abortion. Where Sununu managed to alienate most of Washington, Skinner and his vivacious wife, Honey, a lawyer, have cultivated valuable friends, including Vice President Dan Quayle. Last week Bush named one of Skinner’s allies, polltaker and strategist Robert Teeter, to be his campaign chairman. Teeter represents the “kinder, gentler” approach to politics and will likely urge Bush to stress “family values” and economic growth. Both campaign manager Frederic Malek and chief fund raiser Robert Mosbacher are also regarded as moderates. Mosbacher, a wealthy Texan, is well known for his socialite wife, Georgette, former owner of a multimillion-dollar cosmetics company.
Not exactly a Joe Sixpack crowd. Still, the campaign does include some operatives with ties to the right, particularly Charles Black, an old Jesse Helms protege. Black is an expert in the use of “wedge issues,” like crime and the flag, to split off conservative white males from the Democratic Party. Like Black, second-tier operatives Mary Matalin, Richard Bond and George W. Bush, the president’s son, were all allies of the late Lee Atwater, a master at winning voters with tough talk and divisive politics. White House aides say that Bush is likely to appoint an as-yet-unnamed conservative to the role of “counselor” to the president as a good-will gesture. The absence of more true believers will enhance Quayle’s role as ambassador to the right. Skinner is flexible enough to cultivate conservatives. “He’ll be friendly to whoever pats him,” said one conservative activist.
Notably missing from Bush’s lineup is Roger Ailes, the gut-fighting media guru who helped launch a negative ad campaign suggesting Michael Dukakis was soft on crime and weak on defense. Ailes is likely to play the role of debate coach; by his abrasive humor, he is adept at getting Bush riled up for verbal combat.
The threat to Bush from the right can be overstated. Bush is more conservative than many realize. He may come from the moderate East Coast wing of the party, but he has paid his dues to the right, vetoing pro-choice measures and appointing two conservatives to the Supreme Court. Like Ronald Reagan, he believes that government intervention generally does more harm than good. The GOP, like the rest of the country, has moved to the right over the last decade. It is not as badly split as some commentators have suggested. And Bush’s challengers are more noisy than truly threatening. Federal investigators are examining David Duke’s fund-raising practices, and the next set of voters he faces may be the kind that sit on a grand jury. Buchanan is suspect among many voting blocks, particularly Jews for his anti-Israel diatribes. He is likely to return to the Bush fold after the New Hampshire primary.
The most important task for Bush’s new team is to come up with a consistent message. Bush has been wobbling lately. He spent months damning federal affirmative-action programs and then signed the civil-rights bill. He resisted a tax cut and then embraced one. The White House in Sununu’s last days was paralyzed and chaotic. Aides spent their working hours gossiping and plotting Sununu’s demise. The chief of staff, meanwhile, was desperately maneuvering to hang on to his job. Last Monday, as the noose tightened, Sununu tried to rally his top advisers, deputy chief of staff Andrew Card, communications expert J. Dorrance Smith and White House counsel C. Boyden Gray. They said it was too late, a message reinforced later that day by Quayle. Only then did Sununu understand what Bush had been signaling for months that the time had come to resign.
Under Sununu, the White House had essentially no communications strategy. Skinner & Co. will have to find a way of rallying white middle-class voters–the key to the election–without resorting too blatantly to the heavy-handed tricks of 1988, like the infamous Willie Horton ad. Bush will also have to make sure that he does not go too far to placate the right. The GOP convention could turn into a nasty fight over abortion. There is no easy compromise: Bush is either pro-life or he is not. A right-to-life platform could widen the Republican gender gap, alienating female voters. The GOP also risks losing younger voters, who tend to be fiscally conservative but pro-choice. If he’s not careful, in his relentless efforts to win over his vocal critics on the right, Bush could lose the middle–where the votes are.
Photo: Discovering the chief of staff’s double game was the last straw: Bush and Sununu last week (LARRY DOWNING-NEWSWEEK)
Photo: A speech full of race-baiting code: Duke makes his presidential bid (WALLY McNAMEE–NEWSWEEK)
Subject Terms: PRESIDENTS – United States – Election – 1992
