Campaign Issues

By Laurence I. Barrett/Washington

Every candidate for President strives for a persona that shouts to voters, "Here's a strong leader!" For Democrats, that imperative is a special challenge. The ghosts of Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter haunt them with reminders of how easy it was for Ronald Reagan to depict Democrats as wimps, soft on foreign adversaries and pushovers for domestic special pleaders. Strategist Patrick Caddell, in a long paper on the party's flaws, urges his colleagues to "face the sensitive question: Is the Democratic Party perceived as a 'feminine' party and the G.O.P. a 'masculine' party . . . on characteristics such as 'strong,' 'tough,' 'forceful'?"

To counteract this perception, most of the Democratic candidates are investing heavily in what can be called the "muscle factor." Like novice sportswriters, they festoon their rhetoric with images denoting oomph. They strain to adopt positions that appear to be gutsy. Richard Gephardt promotes his restrictive trade policy with the argument that a "made-in-the-U.S.A." approach will "score knockout victories again." Free traders, he says, "lack backbone." Joseph Biden uses the America's Cup races as a metaphor for the nation's standing, then declares, "To say we want to compete means we are already losing. I want to win!" Paul Simon attempts to offset his meek image with the mantra "We need someone with the courage to do the tough things."

Autobiographical tidbits reinforce the motif. Michael Dukakis tries to overcome a bookish mien by telling a TV audience that he ran a "pretty credible 57th" in the 1951 Boston Marathon and was "always out on the ball fields and playing fields." Albert Gore in most speeches cites his Army service in Viet Nam. Bruce Babbitt, who has pedaled his ten-speed across Iowa and climbed a mountain in New Hampshire, is described in one of his TV commercials as "coming from a frontier family that lives by simple truths."

Even strategists who doubt Caddell's formulation that a political party, like a French noun, can connote gender, concede that the Democrats must strive to convey toughness if they are to attract the defectors and younger men who contributed heavily to both Reagan landslides. Pollster Stanley Greenberg, after studying switch voters, points out, "Younger voters, even more than others, respond strongly to candidates who seem determined to pursue clear goals -- regardless of what those goals are." It worked for Reagan and for Oliver North.

The Democrats encounter another problem, however, as they do their Atlas act to impress independent-minded voters. The candidates must also appeal to party loyalists who dominate the nomination contest. These activists in most Northern states lean leftward -- feminine as Caddell has defined it -- and pressure national candidates to toe their issue lines. The result can turn muscle to flab.

In Iowa, for instance, doves, populists, union leaders and feminists weigh heavily in the caucus process. When Gephardt flexes his muscles for trade and farm legislation, he wins points in the small Iowa caucus arena but risks coming across to a national audience as a Mondale-style panderer to special interests. "If Gephardt really wanted to look gutsy," says one party critic, "he'd tell the unions where to go." Biden has tried to look tough by taking command of the battle against Supreme Court Nominee Robert Bork. But he ends up seeming to cater to liberal groups and surrendering his independent judgment on the biggest issue he faces as Senate Judiciary chairman. Babbitt is more consistent in his willingness to take unpopular stands, as he did last week by proposing a national sales tax.

In foreign affairs, all the Democrats, save Jesse Jackson, attempt to persuade voters that they have outgrown the McGovernite aversion to strong action abroad. Yet most of them oppose specific intervention in almost every case, giving the impression that the Viet Nam syndrome still governs their thinking. On the question of reflagging Kuwaiti tankers, for example, only Gore supports the White House. Thus gritty rhetoric often looks like mere posturing. Says Alvin From, executive director of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council: "Tough talk does not substitute for a credible sense that a candidate will really fight for something."

Most Republican contenders are going through a mirror image of this drill. To independents and moderates, they talk about compassion as they attempt to disengage from the harsher aspects of Reaganism. But G.O.P. primary voters tend to be conservative loyalists. They want a combative leader who reminds them of Reagan -- or so the candidates think. Reagan's longtime pollster, Richard Wirthlin, cautions that the muscular approach does not work automatically. "People always rerun the last successful election," Wirthlin explains. "Now candidates are trying to bring forward what was a very important trait for Reagan."

Looking tough is a special challenge for George Bush, burdened as he is with the image of the eternal second banana. Lately the Vice President has sought to counter murmurs about the "wimp factor" by citing his captaincy of the Yale baseball team and his World War II combat record, as well as his Government posts. "Everything I've done in my life has equated with leadership," he says. But Bush undercuts his effort by his refusal to adopt any firm positions of his own. His principal rival, Bob Dole, exudes a can-do aura that allows him to project toughness without resorting to overheated rhetoric. When he talks about being the one Republican willing to make tough decisions to reduce the federal deficit, his listeners may dislike his message implying austerity but they respect the messenger.

That lesson applies to contenders in both parties. Creating political muscle, like building real biceps, takes time and sweat. Without some pain in the form of stands that offend one faction or another, political gain in the long run is elusive.