Tackling the Teflon President

By Evan Thomas

Underdog Mondale says he likes running from behind

Mondale loyalists whistle bravely. "If I were a Republican, I'd be worried," declares Ohio Governor Dick Celeste. But the real fear grips the Democrats. "Mondale's chances are uphill," concedes Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Dave Nagle. Hart partisans give Mondale no chance at all. "Politics has a certain ecology to it," says Hart Adviser Frank Mankiewicz. "Walter Mondale appears to be Ronald Reagan's natural prey."

It is hard to find any Democrats, other than Mondale and his immediate entourage, who are willing to flat out predict victory in November. The odds in Las Vegas are 4 to 1 against such an outcome, making an even-money bet on Mondale the biggest gamble since George McGovern was a 5-to-1 underdog in his race against Richard Nixon in 1972.

The polls consistently show Reagan about 8 percentage points ahead of Mondale. Political geography favors Reagan even more. No Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 has won the West. Reagan can count on sweeping at least 95 of the 111 Electoral College votes in the 13 Western states. That means he starts off with 17% of the Electoral College. In the South, the President's conservatism is so popular that Atlanta Pollster Claibourne Darden believes "Reagan has only himself to beat now." In the Midwest he is showing surprising strength in the key states of Ohio and Michigan, where he is being helped by the comeback of the auto industry.

Nationally, too, the biggest problem for the apparent Democratic nominee is that the U.S. economy seems robust. Voters follow their pocketbooks, and the latest upswing in the economic cycle has coincided with Reagan's re-election campaign. Unemployment (7.4%) is down from double digits to roughly where it was when Reagan took office, and inflation (5.6%) has not been so low in a decade. When Reagan was sworn in, it was 13.5%. More important, most voters feel that times are good--and getting better.

If the election were held today, even Mondale's strongest backers concede that their man would lose. But they claim to relish the role of underdog. This may be because every time Mondale was pronounced the front runner during the Democratic primaries, he promptly lost an election. With a lead, he was a lifeless and complacent campaigner. When behind, he was "Fightin' Fritz."

Reagan, Mondale's people argue, should be vulnerable on the issues. There is, for starters, the deficit: instead of balancing the budget as he promised, Reagan has tripled the red ink, to $190 billion. There are questions of war and peace: the President's bellicose gibes at the Soviets, the Mondale camp argues, have frozen relations between the two superpowers. Lately though, Reagan has cooled his rhetoric, while the Soviets are sounding as mean as he portrays them. Then there is the charge that Reagan's economic policies have demonstrably favored the rich at the expense of the poor. According to a Congressional Budget Office study, households earning more than $20,000 a year reaped 85% of the tax reductions, while households earning less than $20,000 have paid for two-thirds of the budget cuts. (The Reaganauts counter that the supply-side tax cuts spurred the economy, creating jobs and spreading the wealth.)

Finally, there is the "sleaze factor": Mondale aides claim that the Reaganauts have shown disregard for propriety, if not the rule of law. More than 30 Reagan appointees have been investigated for one thing or another. In sum, the Mondale staff depicts an incumbent who, while his policies fail and his aides retain counsel, obliviously floats along, taking afternoon naps and leafing through old Reader's Digests for speech ideas. Reagan, Mondale told TIME last week, "is looking at the world through Rose Garden-colored glasses. For him to say that it's a safer world, that interest rates are dropping, that deficits are overestimated, is just not true." Indeed, Mondale contends that on issues such as civil rights, women's rights, arms control and the environment "there's a lot of anger out there, and Reagan doesn't understand it. Reagan is detached from reality, and that can be used against him."

To exploit this caricature of an out-to-lunch President, Mondale will portray himself as "Mr. Competence," a hands-on executive who is familiar with the levers of power and how to pull them. Says Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Matthew Flynn: "Fritz is decent, safe and steady. People trust him to do the predictable thing. He won't tamper with Social Security or go to war." Mondale says he is eager to show his steadiness, and expose Reagan's tenuous grasp of the issues, in "several" TV debates.

Mondale indeed has weathered ten debates in the past six months, while Reagan has not debated anyone in four years. But Mondale must avoid the fate of his former running mate, Jimmy Carter. In 1980 Carter scored more substantive points than Reagan, but the former actor won the debate on tone and style--and the election shortly thereafter. Mondale, though warm and funny in private, is stiff on television; while Reagan grins easily and naturally, Mondale sometimes bares his teeth like the runner-up in a beauty contest.

Even Reagan's worst enemies marvel at his dirt-doesn't-stick "Teflon" presidency. Voters forgive Reagan his verbal gaffes, and even his policy blunders. Many ordinary citizens feel they can say about Reagan, even though he lives in the White House, that "he is one of us." Walter Mondale, on the other hand, is one of them: the Washington bureaucrats, the lobbyists, the big spenders in Congress, who have--at least in the world according to Reagan--ensnarled the nation in red tape and drowned it in red ink.

Other candidates for the Democratic nomination have done Reagan's spadework, painting Mondale as the avatar of Big Government and a vestige of the failed Carter Administration. Gary Hart, particularly, has attacked Mondale as the tool of special interests, most of all Big Labor. When Mondale tries to expose the Reaganauts' sleaze factor, the Republicans are sure to cite the questions Hart raised about Mondale's propriety. Hart's main charge: Mondale used "tainted money" raised by labor political action committees to avoid federal campaign-spending limits. Even supporters admit that Mondale tends to overpromise. For instance, he pledged to the AFL-CIO that he would match the export subsidies of other countries "product for product, dollar for dollar" (cost: up to $50 billion). Says one Hart adviser: "Reagan will get a lot of mileage from moderate Democrats by saying to them, 'Free your party from Big Labor.' These White House people aren't just sitting there, you know. They're gathering ammunition about just how tied to Big Labor Walter Mondale actually is, and it will be devastating." The G.O.P. will also try to tag former Vice President Mondale with the failures of Carter's foreign policy, particularly the debacle of the hostages in Iran.

Far from coming on as the feisty challenger, Mondale could quickly wind up on the defensive. "Mondale is the reincarnation of Hubert Humphrey, even down to that shrill desperation in his voice," says Gerald Austin, a Midwestern Democratic political analyst. Warns Nebraska Governor Bob Kerrey, a Hart backer: "Mondale has got to take the first step away from organized labor, perhaps by saying that wage increases have to be tied to productivity. You can't have a 100% voting record with COPE [the AFL-ClO's political arm] and get elected."

Perhaps, but Mondale is not about to disavow his political heritage and turn into a "neoliberal" like Hart. Instead, Mondale's advisers say, the nominee-to-be will become even more of a liberal ideologue. Mondale will try to portray himself as the champion of the working man, the downtrodden and the dispossessed, in sharp counterpoint to Reagan. In effect, Mondale will try to turn the campaign into a class contest.

One problem with this strategy is that Populist Fritz looks more like Establishment Fritz. He says that he "hurts" when workers lose jobs and the poor go hungry, but voters question his empathy when they read that he earned some $300,000 last year by doing almost nothing for a Washington law firm and by sitting on various corporate boards. Also, there may not be enough poor, minorities and union members to elect Mondale. If the old Democratic coalition turned out in force, it could perhaps again forge a majority. But voter turnout is traditionally low at the bottom end of the economic ladder. Mondale has thus far been unable to arouse the passion necessary to drive voters to the polls.

Mondale is counting on help from a truly effective orator: Jesse Jackson. The Jackson camp believes that its man encouraged some 2 million more blacks to vote in this year's primaries than ever before. In Pennsylvania, TV exit polls showed that blacks cast 18% of the total vote, up from 12% in 1980. The black vote could be crucial, especially in the South. Jackson and Mondale partisans use the same appealing but flawed arithmetic: if only 10% more blacks vote in five Southern states lost by Carter in 1980, the Democrat could win them all. The trouble is, that presumes Mondale will be able to win as many white votes in the South as Native Son Carter did. It also presumes that Reagan's support is static, when in fact large numbers of conservative Southern whites have registered to vote in the past several years.

To win, Mondale will have to sell his campaign of compassion beyond its natural constituency. Most polls show jthat Reagan and Mondale can each safely count on about one-third of the 'voters. The election will be won or lost in the battle over the middle third. Many in this swing group are Hart supporters, including his hard core of "yumpies"--younger upwardly mobile professionals. Ominously, exit polls found that more than a third of the Hart voters in California and New Jersey would vote for Reagan, or not at all, if Mondale is the nominee. The Mondale camp believes that their minds will change when the heat of the primary race dissipates and Hart voters look more closely at Reagan's policies. "It's no longer the great yumpie in the sky. It's Walter Mondale or Ronald Reagan," says Tim Russert, counselor to New York Governor Mario Cuomo. Hart's followers, naturally, will be more likely to vote for Mondale if Hart is with him on the ticket (see following story).

The middle third of undecided voters is largely middle class. Mondale's task will be to make them identify with those left behind by the Reagan revolution. "When Reagan says, 'Are you better off?' he's talking to people who got the big tax cuts," declares Mondale. "What I want to ask Americans is not whether you happen to be among those who got a better commercial deal for yourself, but are we better off?"

Yet to many voters watching Reagan's television ads that portray a Norman Rockwell America in the summer of '84, glowing with prosperity and joy, the answer is a resounding yes. In good times, middle-class voters usually look up, not down.

What the Mondale campaign really needs is for the country to suffer a severe economic jolt or a foreign policy disaster. Says Texas Political Consultant George Christian, former press secretary to President Lyndon Johnson: "Mondale needs the big one--the big blowup in the Middle East, the big interest-rate jump--to turn this thing around. If it's just business as usual, he's not going to make it." Verbal stumbles by the President, or gloomy warnings that he has mortgaged the future with those heavy deficits, are not enough. For Reagan's magic to wear off, voters must actually feel the effect of his mistakes. In the end, the election is more Reagan's to lose than Mondale's to win. Says Iowa Democrat Nagle: "The chances for victory are out of our hands."

Still, long shots have surprised before. In 1948 the Democratic candidate was widely dismissed as a sure loser. In 1984 the Democrats can only hope that the pundits are as wrong about Walter Mondale as they were about Harry Truman.

--By Evan Thomas.

Reported by Sam Allis with Mondale and Christopher Ogden/Chicago, with other bureaus

With reporting by Sam Allis, Christopher Ogden