Friendly Advice, but Stern

Party pros urge Mondale to say things people may not welcome

Inside the convention center, the Democrats did their best to project an image of confidence and common purpose. Outside, they spoke more frankly of their divisions and areas of weakness. Arkansas Senator Dale Bumpers, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert Strauss and Pat Caddell, a political strategist and adviser to Gary Hart, were among eight Democratic leaders and strategists who met individually with TIME'S editors to discuss the party's prospects. Their main points:

DALE BUMPERS. If we really run a completely populist campaign, a them-vs.-us campaign, it won't work.

We have moved to the precipice of an economic calamity. I would describe the situation in fairly dire terms, and I would try to communicate it to every blue-collar worker and every farmer in Arkansas in language they can understand. We are writing $200 billion worth of hot checks to maintain the economy. If you had told all of those people who voted for Ronald Reagan because he was a fiscal conservative who was going to balance the budget, if you had told them in 1980 that this guy was going to double the national debt in five years, they would have insisted on your taking a saliva test. Jimmy Carter would have been under impeachment if he had a deficit this size. But we have no credibility. Democrats were considered to be the cause of it, and they still are. The President has convinced people that it was entitlements set up by the Democrats that caused all the problems.

I would point out that you are not going to solve this problem by saying that entitlements can't be touched, that defense spending can't be cut, that taxes can't be raised, because all of those things have to be done. The first thing I would do if I were Fritz Mondale would be to establish my credibility by saying things that people do not want to hear. If Fritz runs a campaign that is an extension of the New Deal, we don't have a chance.

We have had such a series of failed presidencies in this country that somebody's going to have to do something unconventional. It's very difficult to run a downer campaign, but what you're saying to people is there is still hope--if we act.

ROBERT STRAUSS. Getting Government and the bureaucracy out of your life doesn't appeal just to corporate executives in New York who live on Park Avenue. Government offends the least among us just as much. [The poor] are shoved around by cops, they have trouble getting money for a traffic ticket. They're harassed with their food stamps. They too see this as an appealing theme.

But when you get past that, you find that people aren't talking about more Government or less Government. What they really want is an effective Government. You find they do want a Federal Trade Commission. They want a Food and Drug Administration. They want the FBI. [Corporations] want Government to protect them against imports of steel or autos. Agricultural people want money from Government to keep their prices up.

What people want is better Government. We're not going to get that until we elect a President who knows how to put people in who believe in Government, who understand Government, who are willing to make it work by attacking deficits.

If you're going to solve the deficit problem, some son of a bitch has to be willing to stand up and say there's something wrong. We're wasting a lot of money in Medicare. We're wasting too much of this and too much of that.

I think the best a Democrat could do would be to come out foursquare on things like that. I think the public is ready to receive it. Had President Reagan done that, he could have built the kind of national consensus that we need a President to build. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He just didn't want to take the chance, I guess. If Walter Mondale had done it, his stock would have gone up dramatically. I don't know of a single soul that would have left him because of it. He would have reached more into what I think Middle America is. To me this is a laydown hand. There is no question how to play it.

If you take on Ronald Reagan [directly], he'll destroy you. You have to take him on sideways. I think he's the best saluter I have ever seen. He's the world champion. You don't try to outsalute him. You don't try to outpopular him. This country is never going to like a Walter Mondale as much as they like Ronald Reagan. But they can respect him more for his qualities of governing this nation.

PAT CADDELL. The Democratic Party is two parties. There is the blue-collar, minority, older, New Deal coalition, vs. younger, better educated, more independent, more moderate liberals. The younger voters tend to be skeptical of the New Deal, Big Government programs, more conservative on economic issues but more liberal on cultural matters. The leadership of the Democratic Party is having real difficulties understanding that the second part of the party really exists.

My concern is realignment. The past 50 years, the best demographic group for the Democratic Party has been younger voters. Since 1960, every Democratic nominee has carried younger voters. All of a sudden, in June, they go from being the best group historically for the Democrats and have become the very worst.

The Mondale strategy is clearly that if they can excite the old coalition--blacks, minorities, blue collar and so forth--they can get a higher turnout and win because of the number of Democrats. The Republicans' strategy is to make that [younger] generation believe that they are the party of the future and the Democratic Party is the party of the past.

I hate to be simplistic, but Ronald Reagan is perceived as a leader, even by people who dislike him. Reagan is successful because he's an ideologue, because he's a man who has been willing to lose if necessary. It gives him a certain strength.

He's successful because he defines the issues, he picks the terrain and never yields the initiative.

The Democrats have been the party on the defensive. The biggest thing they have to do is get the initiative from Reagan. I don't think the Democratic Party can win unless it's prepared to lose, to say this is where we stand. If Reagan gets control of the definition of the election, then Mondale will lose the under-40 votes by historic margins.

The younger generation is really schizoid. They have fought for issues, but a lot of them rolled off in the '70s. If you can get someone who appeals to their beliefs, their idealism, you can move huge numbers of them. On that hangs the future of the Democratic Party.