The Primary Lessons of 1988

By WALTER SHAPIRO

Already, just the names prompt small chuckles of remembrance: Alexander Haig, Pat Robertson, Pete du Pont, Joseph Biden, Bruce Babbitt, Paul Simon. Has it really been just four months since Iowa anointed Richard Gephardt and Bob Dole as the favorites? Before Primary Season 1988 is carted off to the Smithsonian, it seems fitting to step back and ponder some lessons of the campaign that was. After all, as the Duchess instructed Alice in Wonderland, "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it."

The whys have it. Those close to Mario Cuomo say a major reason he did not make the race was his inability to frame a rationale for his candidacy. It all comes back to the old Roger Mudd why-are-you-running question that reduced Ted Kennedy to stutters in 1979. Whatever their faults as campaigners, both Michael Dukakis and George Bush could handle these whys-guy queries. Bush declared himself the designated heir to Reaganism and a man whose resume had earned a final line. For Dukakis, the White House represented a chance to sprinkle Massachusetts Miracle-Gro on the rest of the nation. Sure, these rationales are intellectually flimsy, but they gave Bush and Dukakis a steadiness that most of their rivals lacked. Jesse Jackson prospered because of the clarity of his mission, while Al Gore and Bob Dole learned the folly of aimless ambition.

Good news beats the blues. Sadly perhaps, a presidential campaign should not be confused with adult education. Or to update an Ira Gershwin lyric, "Who cares what banks fail in Yonkers, it is the upbeat message that conquers." Look what happened to the Cassandras with apocalyptic new ideas. Jack Kemp's earnest seminars on gold-bug economics went the way of Pete du Pont's Iowa lectures on the evils of farm subsidies. Bruce Babbitt's budgetary bravery proved that press puffery persuades few primary voters. Dick Gephardt's political stock soared only after he softened his overheated it's-midnight-in-A merica rhetoric.

The appeal of the real. The press is the Holden Caulfield of the political game, always on the alert for phonies. Gary Hart was nabbed for philandering, and Joe Biden was caught barking up Neil Kinnock's family tree, but the media's primary target became Gephardt's populist pretensions. The Missouri Congressman needed to peddle the antiestablishment line to revive his stalled Iowa campaign, but he only invited ridicule when he imported nearly 40 congressional insiders to join him on the barricades. In contrast, the blandness of Bush and Dukakis was often exasperating, but it stemmed so naturally from their personalities that no one could accuse them of being political changelings. There are, of course, limits to authenticity. Jackson was so real he couldn't make enough white voters accept his appeal. And the genuineness of Paul Simon's dippy persona carried him into the semifinals, but there was no way that a political Mister Magoo was actually going to be nominated.

Money talks if nobody squawks. An economic determinist would not be surprised that the victors were the candidates with a built-in fund-raising advantage. But in hindsight it is striking that the overstuffed larders of Bush and Dukakis never became campaign issues. The Vice President, in fact, only narrowly edged Dole and Robertson in the greenback derby; the difference was that Bush husbanded his cash far more effectively. Dukakis cleverly deployed a ; bogus PAC-man issue to keep his underfunded rivals on the defensive. Political-action-committee funding may be a problem in congressional races, yet it was a minor factor in the 1988 primaries. By frequently chastising Gephardt for accepting PAC support, Dukakis pre-empted any populist complaints that he was trying to buy the nomination.

The great debate spate. Not since the heyday of vaudeville have so many performers appeared together on so many different stages. After enduring roughly 50 debates, a numbed voter might rightly ask, "Where was the beef?" About the only beneficiaries of this orgy of oratory were Bush and Jackson. As the Vice President again seems to be turning himself into Mr. Maladroit, it is easy to forget how his hyperaggressive debate posture put a crimp in all the wimp talk. Jackson's dominance of the Democratic debates helped him narrow his credibility gap as a serious contender. There were also casualties from these protracted trials by rhetoric: Babbitt, plagued by near palsied facial contortions, and Hart, who returned to the fray looking like the portrait of Dorian Gray.

Reading, alas, can be deceiving. Finally, a few words about the press, that media mob of 3,000 journalists who descended on Iowa like commandos hitting the beaches of Normandy. Certainly, when it came to influencing the results, the press proved to be a paper tiger. Despite his glowing clip file, Bruce Babbitt foundered in Iowa, while Bob Dole, the media's favorite Republican, was upended in New Hampshire -- and later had the temerity to blame the press in part for his defeat. Reporters were doomed to repeat as gospel political orthodoxies that were soon outpaced by events. Try these on for nostalgia's sake. A sitting Governor like Dukakis can never be nominated because he would be unable to devote enough time to contest Iowa. The Bush campaign is a balloon kept aloft by a thin membrane of inevitability, so the prick of a single bad defeat will send it sputtering to earth. And that fanciful dream of reporters everywhere: with so many candidates in both parties, at least one of the races is certain to go all the way to a deadline-defying finish at the convention.