Riding The Drug Issue

By Richard Stengel

Let's face it, none of the candidates is in favor of drugs. Assailing crack and coke is a little like supporting apple pie and motherhood -- except that voters rarely get passionate about apple pie. Usually in a campaign, such unanimity on an issue would make it about as important as the debate over the Law of the Sea Treaty. But not so with drugs, especially not last week in New York.

The state primary was an appropriate setting for an antidrug message; sometimes it seems that New York City is Ground Zero for drug abuse in America. Last week, as the Democratic presidential campaign moved into high gear in anticipation of New York's critical voting, all three Democratic candidates trumpeted their own fight against drugs. Republican George Bush, not to be outdone, came to town to tout his credentials as a leader in the war against drugs, providing a rehearsal for the opening skirmish in the general election campaign. In Washington, meanwhile, the Senate was getting into the act with a measure authorizing increased spending in the drug war and cracking down on Mexico with a political fervor that belied common sense.

In a primary season that has lacked emotional issues, drugs is the one subject thus far that seems to touch the voters directly, viscerally. Unlike the national debt and the trade deficit, it is neither abstruse nor abstract. It is a backyard issue. It is also one with wide appeal: it allows a candidate to sound tough in both domestic and foreign affairs while arousing passions among all economic groups, from the mean streets of the South Bronx to the manicured lawns of Westchester County. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed that Americans believed, 3 to 1, that fighting the flow of drugs into the country was more important than fighting Communism.

For a long time, the war on drugs was Jesse Jackson's signature tune, his issue. Fifteen years ago, Jackson was decrying drugs as America's public enemy No. 1. The drug issue is -- and has been -- the strongest, the most reassuring, the most universally appealing part of his populist message, the theme that seems to take some of the sting out of his radicalism. He speaks more convincingly, more plainly about drugs than about any other subject. No other candidate comes close to the reaction Jackson gets when he calls out "Down with dope. Up with hope." None can match his personal urgency. As the other candidates have incorporated an antidrug theme into their campaigns, Jackson has mocked them for stealing his drug message. His rivals, he says -- and he puts George Bush in that camp -- have recently become "sergeants and lieutenants" in the antidrug war. "I am a five-star general," he explains.

The Democrats are pretty much preaching similar messages; the contest concerns who can sound the most convincing. They all castigate the Reagan Administration for big talk but little action in the war against drugs. All of them threaten to cut off aid to foreign nations that refuse to cooperate in stopping the flow of drugs. All urge more support for the Coast Guard, Customs and the Drug Enforcement Agency. All endorse the idea of a drug czar and increased funding for drug treatment and rehabilitation programs.

Once again, in unison, all three Democrats unveiled new antidrug commercials last week for New York. Jackson's is the most riveting. Directed by hip, pixieish Filmmaker Spike Lee (She's Gotta Have It, School Daze), the stark, grainy, black-and-white commercial creates a feeling of tension and intensity. A stern image of Jackson shifts from 140th Street in Harlem to a placid suburban street in Tarrytown to suggest that drugs are "killing our children" in both neighborhoods.

In Dukakis' ad, which features an eerie close-up of Panama's General Noriega, the Governor asserts he wants "to see a real war, not a phony war, against drug and alcohol dependency. How can we tell our children to say no to drugs when we have an Administration that paid $200,000 a year to a drug- peddling dictator from Panama?" Gore's commercials, made by the veteran video warrior David Garth, emphasize that he may speak softly but he carries a big stick. Standing in front of an outdoor basketball court, Gore asserts, "We need a President who's not just going to talk tough, but who's willing to show some strength. And if that means . . . using the military to help stop drugs at our border, then let's do it."

Dukakis, the slight favorite over Jackson in New York, hoped that a win there would put the nomination within his grasp; a clear victory would send uncommitted party leaders tumbling into his camp and provide momentum, the year's most elusive force, as the contests head toward states with lower percentages of black voters. He was frustrated that Jackson's poetry had eclipsed the prose of his solid antidrug record. As Governor he created the Alliance Against Drugs in 1984; he claims that drug use among high school seniors in Massachusetts subsequently declined twice as fast as the national average. In Westchester County, Dukakis told a well-heeled gathering of party activists that the "most serious threat to our national security is not the Sandinistas, but the avalanche of drugs flowing into this country." The line echoes one of Jackson's; when Dukakis used it at a debate, it provoked a wry smile from the author. The normally reserved Dukakis also seeks to personalize his interest in the drug issue, mentioning his wife's 26-year addiction to amphetamines.

Al Gore, the only candidate who has said that he has tried marijuana, enlisted the support of Mayor Ed Koch, New York City's highest-volume antidrug crusader. Gore's quest has come to resemble Ulysses S. Grant's 1864 Wilderness Campaign, a murky and meandering series of ill-conceived firefights in search of a clear battlefield. Gore, Jackson and Dukakis emphasized a theme that is bound to play a role in the fall election: the willingness of Reagan and Bush to cozy up to the Noriega regime even after there was evidence that he was serving as a conduit for drug profits. Says Gore: "I believe that George Bush needs to be held accountable for that failure in policy come November."

Republicans realize the issue can undercut their general advantage of seeming tougher on national security matters. With that in mind, Bush journeyed to Manhattan, trying his darndest to sound still tougher on drugs. He called for the death penalty for "drug kingpins," saying, "These people are dealing in death, and that's what they should get." Bush likes to say he has been on the front lines of the drug war. Indeed, he was head of the South Florida Task Force and National Narcotics Border Interdiction System, both designed to promote cooperation among law-enforcement agencies in stanching the inflow of drugs. Yet that is precisely what makes him vulnerable: polls show that a majority of Americans believe that the Reagan Administration has failed to make a serious effort to stem the drug traffic.

Bush's weakest point on the drug issue may be his claim of ignorance about General Noriega's involvement in drug trafficking. On the subject of drugs, Bush is doing an Iran-contra have-it-both-ways tango. He boasts that he was a hands-on administrator of the antidrug efforts but was uninformed about Noriega's backhanded acceptance of drug money.

Congress also faces an election year and seems ready to embark on the greatest frenzy of antidrug votes since the last election year, 1986. The Senate unanimously approved an amendment to the annual budget resolution that would provide for a $2.6 billion expansion of the Government's antidrug | efforts. In doing so, it busted the supposedly sacrosanct spending targets negotiated with the White House last year. The Senate also voted to impose sanctions against Mexico for failing to be sufficiently vigilant in arresting the flow of drugs across its border into the U.S. If the House concurs, it would mark the first time Congress has invoked a 1986 law that denies foreign assistance to countries that have been lax in fighting the international transport of narcotics. But the action is more symbolic than real, as Reagan is likely to invoke an escape clause in the law.

The net effect of the Democrats' antidrug homilies may be little more than saying "Me too." Democratic Political Consultant Bob Shrum calls drugs a "valence" issue -- one that supersedes more routine concerns. Traditionally, Republicans have been perceived as the party of law-and-order and international machismo. But the drug issue gives Democrats a way of denouncing crime and declining social values without sacrificing the virtues of compassion. And it is already serving to help the Democrats strike emotional chords in voters who have mostly been unmoved by the 1988 primaries.

With reporting by Steven Holmes with Gore, Michael Riley with Dukakis, and Alessandra Stanley with Jackson