The Differences That Really Matter

By WALTER SHAPIRO;

For Americans who take their civic obligations seriously, the choice that presents itself next Tuesday is inescapable. There will be no might-have-beens or none-of-the-aboves on the ballot. The primaries, polls and prognostications are merely an endless exhibition season; this is the one moment in four years that actually counts in the standings. Bush or Dukakis? Nothing less and, alas, nothing more.

But if history is any gauge, this could turn out to be one of the most important choices of the waning years of this century, despite the parlous state of the campaign. Never before have voters 40 and younger seen a ballot without the name of the incumbent President. Elections like 1988 that are not automatic referendums on the past presidential term tend to be political watersheds. The choice of John Kennedy in 1960 ushered in a brief but turbulent Democratic revival marked by domestic idealism, the triumph of the civil rights movement and then the agony of Viet Nam. Richard Nixon's victory in 1968 heralded two decades of conservative rebellion against domestic spending programs, social activism and liberal permissiveness that culminated in Ronald Reagan.

How hard it is to regard Bush and Dukakis in these epic terms. Viewed as comparatively little men at the time of their nominations, both have, if anything, been diminished by the campaigns they have waged. The ugliness of Bush's exploitation of the pseudo issues of patriotism and crime has almost been rivaled by Dukakis' timorous inability to articulate a rationale for his candidacy. From canned rhetoric recited off TelePrompTers to the omnipresent voice-overs of deceptive campaign ads, the candidates' messages have woefully failed to clarify the choice facing the nation.

A new TIME poll shows Bush leading Dukakis by a hefty 50% to 40%. But equally telling is the widespread disappointment in both contenders. Among those surveyed, a strong majority in the case of Bush (58%) and a clear plurality regarding Dukakis (49%) said the candidates were avoiding the real issues.

Small wonder that it has become a tempting commonplace to demystify this election as a bitter battle for spoils between two competent, albeit uninspired managers, each of whom would cleave to moderate policies if elected. By this reckoning, the lack of cutting issues in the campaign suggests an underlying consensus that the next President will practice budget restraint at home and respond prudently to Mikhail Gorbachev's overtures abroad. "Each candidate is a pragmatist," contends Stuart Eizenstat, who was Jimmy Carter's chief domestic adviser. "Neither is an ideologue. Temperamentally, each is cautious and, within his own party, more or less a centrist."

There is merit to this argument, but American elections are never quite the low-risk Tweedledee-vs.-Tweedledum contests they sometimes appear to be. It is sobering to recall that even the landmark struggle between Kennedy and Nixon was once widely belittled as an echo, not a choice. As Kennedy partisan Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote at the time, "The favorite cliche of 1960 is that the candidates . . . are essentially the same sort of men, stamped from the same mold, committed to the same values, dedicated to the same objectives."

Yet just as 1960 voters were distracted by posturing over Quemoy and Matsu, so too is it easy to become lost in the current fog of specious spats over furloughs, flag factories and flexible freezes. To understand the true stakes in the 1988 election, it is necessary to cut through the clutter to try to see the candidates as they really are, not as they purport to be.

Dukakis is, yes, a liberal. Almost nothing about the Democratic nominee is as exasperating as his stubborn refusal to acknowledge his ideological roots. During a near-narcoleptic 90-minute interview with Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline last week, Dukakis clung to the tired formulation: "I think all of us have combinations of liberal and conservative about us, Ted. I'm not a liberal." But on virtually every social issue from abortion to school prayer, Dukakis upholds the liberal values of tolerance and a deep concern for civil liberties. So too does he reflect liberal heritage in his abiding belief that activist government can be a force for good. But Dukakis is no latter-day Hubert Humphrey; Dukakis' postliberal credo represents an artful marriage of traditional goals and pinchpenny means.

Bush is the candidate of continuity, not change. It was an artful line that Reagan unveiled at the Republican Convention, and Bush cleverly added it to his stump speech: "We are the change." In truth, Bush would be more caretaker than catalyst. If elected, he would become the first President since Herbert Hoover took over from Calvin Coolidge 60 years ago to succeed a retiring incumbent of his own party. That explains why a Bush Administration would more closely resemble a European-style Cabinet shuffle than a full- fledged transition. No presidential contender in memory has so clearly signaled his top appointees, including James Baker as Secretary of State and Nicholas Brady either remaining as Treasury Secretary or moving to the White House, perhaps as Counsellor. Despite Bush's promises of "new faces," few have emerged in the campaign. A Bush Administration would boast all the strengths and weaknesses of retread Government: long on experience and short on new ideas.

Dukakis was, in fact, a successful Governor. The nonstop nattering negativism of the Bush ad campaign has badly tarnished Dukakis' original presidential calling card: his record in Massachusetts. Campaign brickbats aside, Dukakis was an adroit administrator who fostered creativity and transcended traditional liberal antipathy to the business community. Yet as a presidential candidate, he has marred his reputation by excessively claiming credit for the state's economic revival. Although woefully invisible in the current campaign, many of his administrative skills -- such as decisiveness and an ability to delegate -- would translate well to the White House. But even now Dukakis refuses to recognize that Massachusetts is not a microcosm of America. During the second debate, he doggedly clung to the illusion that more aggressive tax enforcement could stanch the deficit. His only real evidence: it worked in Massachusetts.

For better and worse, Bush is not Reagan. As an administrator this would clearly be a virtue, since the Vice President, although incurious and often inattentive, does have an underlying understanding of how Government works. The problem for Bush is "the vision thing." While Dukakis is trying to hide his ideology, Bush is attempting to conceal the fact that he does not have any. A former Bush aide contends, "He's not interested in policy." Through his entire career, the Vice President has been a political chameleon, taking on the coloration of the President he serves. Although he would hate to admit it, Bush was even willing to stay on under Carter as CIA director. The most important unanswered question in this campaign: Who would shape Bush's values and priorities if he became President? The near indefensible choice of Dan Quayle aside, the contours of Bush's projected Administration suggest that he would govern as a mainstream Republican -- sort of Gerald Ford plus pork rinds.

Both Bush and Dukakis are responsible for the tenor of their campaigns. It is a beguiling fantasy that the next President will rise above the manner in which he won the election. But politics cannot be separated from governance, nor do sound bites stop at the Oval Office door. The ease with which Bush has skirted the boundaries of truth in the campaign remains troubling. Last week, while coasting on a comfortable lead, the Vice President felt compelled to charge that Dukakis' economic nostrums are "far outside the mainstream," and snidely hinted that they come closer to European-style socialism than American free enterprise. It is a scant defense to suggest that these hyperbolic words were scripted by Bush's handlers; a President too, if he does not exercise restraint, can be at the mercy of his speechwriters. Balanced against this is the high-level technical competence and inner harmony of the Bush team, which may well be a prelude to a consensus-driven, smoothly organized White House staff.

Dukakis' political problems stem directly from his stiff-necked refusal to heed the advice of others. Campaign strategist John Sasso was the indispensable man because he possesses the unique ability to prompt Dukakis to listen. Dukakis also failed abysmally in translating his much vaunted administrative skills to the discipline of creating a national campaign; he insisted on micromanaging nearly everything from interviewing political aides to approving scripts of TV spots. The result: insularity and indecision. In addition, Dukakis has failed to inspire loyalty, a quality that Bush prizes, perhaps in the extreme. But at this dour moment in the campaign when true leadership demands discipline, the Dukakis camp has become riven with faction and plagued with press leaks from advisers seeking to salvage their own reputations from the debris of seeming defeat.

Do Americans want a return to an activist Government that boldly addresses domestic problems, or do they prefer a more cautious, reactive and less ambitious approach?

That question will not be on any ballot, but it is perhaps the most unambiguous decision facing voters. Dukakis is the apostle of the do-something ethic, while Bush represents mainstream Republican skepticism of new Government programs. That choice undergirds the election, but never have the terms of philosophic battle been defined for the voters. This vagueness provides protective camouflage for Bush, who has artfully used evocative phrases like "a kinder, gentler nation" to mask the passivity of his domestic agenda. He has, to be sure, advanced his own proposals on education and day care, but they do not seem to spring from deep personal conviction. ! Rather, they have been offered to the voters -- and may someday even be enacted into law -- to take the edge off the negativism of the rest of the Bush campaign.

Domestic affairs is the one arena in which Dukakis holds the promise of being far more interesting as President than he ever was as candidate. By nature a peripatetic tinkerer, Dukakis has undoubtedly fantasized about how he would tackle problems like the homeless without creating expensive federal bureaucracies. But he either refuses or is unable to articulate his vision. His most ambitious campaign proposals bear Dukakis' characteristic stamp of liberalism on the cheap. He would mandate that employers provide health insurance and covertly pass along the costs to consumers in the form of higher prices. In a technical sense, Dukakis' college-loan proposal is a wonder to behold: graduates would repay the money in the form of a small surcharge on their lifetime earnings, with the Government largely playing the role of collection agent.

Washington insiders have long assumed that a campaign is an impolitic forum for an honest discussion of the deficit. In this cynical view, voters cannot be trusted with the unpleasant truth: a tax increase is inevitable.

Early 1989, the experts reasoned, would be the proper moment for a pragmatic new President to cut a deal with Congress, regardless of what was read on Bush's lips or how Dukakis blathered on about uncollected taxes.

That logic still holds if Dukakis is elected. His last-resort taxes might consist of new levies on securities transfers or higher rates for upper-income taxpayers. But in well-placed Republican circles, there are whispers that Bush has in Reaganesque fashion been convinced by his own rhetoric about "no new taxes." As a top Administration official puts it, "Suddenly, I see the concrete setting. Bush has begun to believe and accept that the economic expansion was driven by the tax cuts of 1981 and the tax-reform bill."

Oddly enough, the one policy issue on which Bush displays genuine passion -- slicing the capital-gains tax to 15% -- would refute the argument behind tax reform: earned and unearned income should be treated equally. But then Bush never believed the free-market gospel that tax preferences distort the economy; one of the few times the Vice President took an activist role in the White House was to preserve oil-industry write-offs in the 1985 reform bill. And Bush promises oilmen new tax breaks if elected.

$ It was fitting that some of the most dramatic exchanges in the first debate came when Bush and Dukakis staked out their diametrically opposed positions on abortion. Since three liberal and moderate Justices will be in their 80s by Inauguration Day, the next President probably has it in his power to shape the Supreme Court: whether it continues to uphold legalized abortion or limits, or possibly abolishes, the rights granted under Roe vs. Wade. Similarly, a more conservative high court could erode the judicial underpinnings of affirmative- action programs.

There is no uncertainty where Dukakis stands: he strongly supports abortion rights, and most of his judicial appointments in Massachusetts have been liberal activists. While the Vice President has at times displayed discomfort with the Reagan Administration's harsh opposition to some civil rights programs, his private views on abortion remain a puzzle. Was it a philosophic conversion or political expediency that prompted Bush to embrace the right-to- life movement when he joined Reagan on the G.O.P. ticket in 1980? By temperament, Bush might be inclined to nominate moderates, such as his old friend Justice Potter Stewart was. But as President, Bush would face intense lobbying from the Republican right to appoint antiabortion conservatives. The last time he was confronted with strong right-wing pressure, he anointed Quayle as his running mate.

The 1988 campaign has reversed one electoral cliche: these days politics starts at the water's edge. For months Bush has mercilessly tarred Dukakis as weak on defense and naive on foreign policy. When not joyriding in a tank, Dukakis has tried to link the Vice President to the foreign policy scandals of the Reagan Administration. This skirmishing has obscured for the voters what should be a reassuring truth: there is not much more than a dime's worth of difference between Bush and Dukakis on strategic and defense policy, especially since Congress will be calling the tune on military spending. Perhaps not since Kennedy-Nixon have two would-be Presidents tracked closer to the mainstream foreign policy consensus.

One reason for the public confusion is that both candidates have reached the center by zigzag routes, and each must still mask his leanings to satisfy ideologues in his own party. In the late 1970s, Bush jettisoned mainstream ties to the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations as a price of advancement in G.O.P. politics. But with hawkish conservatives stymied by Reagan's rapprochement with Gorbachev, Bush has reverted to his roots and surrounded himself with a shadow cabinet that signals an Establishment restoration.

Dukakis had to learn the strategic rudiments while at the same time satisfying the liberal peaceniks in the Iowa caucuses. The result was some gooey platitudes about the U.N., some awkward policy missteps and an undeserved reputation as the spiritual heir to George McGovern. With prudence and growing confidence, Dukakis has carefully selected moderate foreign policy advisers and uncharacteristically reached out to Democratic experts like Senator Sam Nunn and Congressman Lee Hamilton.

The Vice President, to be sure, has far greater firsthand knowledge of East-West relations and the concerns of European allies. But Dukakis would bring to the presidency an equally strong instinctive understanding of the economic threats to the nation's security from both Japan and an increasingly integrated European Community.

Yet there is one indelible difference between the two that could take on central importance if the nation faced an unforeseen terrorist threat or new left-wing insurgency in Latin America. Their diametrically opposed attitudes toward military intervention and covert operations are very much a product of their life experiences. Bush is the first former CIA director to seek the White House; Dukakis was an exchange student in Peru at the time of the 1954 CIA-backed coup in Guatemala. Small wonder that Bush retains a hawkish can-do faith in covert action; Dukakis is a multilateralist keenly aware of the damage to American prestige and fair-play values that can be the permanent byproduct of unwise subversion and military intervention.

Maybe Bush is right, that the choice ultimately comes down to a question of values. What beliefs do the American people want to embrace in the last years of the century that brought the nation to greatness? The election of Bush would be a vote for stability, for conservative continuity and, yes, for upholding the limited-Government legacy of Ronald Reagan, while smoothing off some of its rough ideological edges. Dukakis offers more of a risk and potentially more of a reward. His selection would mark a return to more communal values, as the nation gave liberalism another chance to adapt to a changed environment and redeem its faith in activist Government.

After more than a year of campaigning and overheated rhetoric that seemed mostly designed to obscure such fundamental issues, the decision rests in the hands of the 112 million registered voters who will choose America's future.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: Yankelovich Clancy Shulman

CAPTION: WHO WOULD DO A BETTER JOB?

DESCRIPTION: Telephone poll of voters on the presidential election.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington, David Beckwith with Bush and Michael Riley with Dukakis