Race of Muted Differences Has the Nation Yawning

By Rhodes Cook/Congressional Quarterly

WASHINGTON (CQ, Oct. 25) -- As 1996 began it appeared that the national election would match the legendary one of a century ago, when Democrats and Republicans engaged in a high-stakes struggle over the role and scope of the federal government -- defining the course of politics for the next generation.

But any similarity between this year's campaign and that of 1896 disappeared a long time ago. And as Election Day approaches, the presidential race is not close, not exciting and not nearly as significant as it was once expected to be.

It remains possible that Republican nominee Bob Dole could muster the means to score the greatest upset since Harry S Truman was re-elected nearly a half century ago. And the battle for control of the House and Senate is still hotly contested, with the outcome very much in doubt.

All the same, the election of 1996 heads toward the finish line with the sense of drama all but gone, and the promise of a contest waged in sharp black-and-white lost instead in muted shades of gray.

Not surprisingly, the level of public interest is not high, whether measured quantitatively in the low viewership for the August conventions and the October debates, or anecdotally, in the absence of the campaign as a conversational staple, even among political aficionados. Fully half the respondents in an Oct. 13 New York Times/CBS News poll described the campaign as "dull" -- a term chosen by less than 40 percent of those interviewed in October 1992.

"Baseball, like politics, seems to have a declining audience," says pollster Peter Hart. "Fewer people are watching the conventions. Fewer people are watching the debates, and fewer people are enthralled with the candidates."

What Happened?

One of the prime reasons for the lack of interest has been the static nature of the presidential race. President Clinton has enjoyed a large and clear-cut lead over Dole since the early days of the primary season last winter. Back then, Clinton was running unopposed on the Democratic side while Dole was being skewered as a tax-increasing, Washington insider by his crowded field of Republican rivals.

Dole has yet to recover, despite his rapid succession of primary victories in March, his dramatic resignation from the Senate in the spring and the unveiling of his 15 percent tax cut in the summer.

Only his choice of Jack F. Kemp as his running mate on the eve of the Republican convention in August and the convention itself caused an uptick in the polls, and that was cancelled by the Democratic convention that followed barely a week later.

Dole's efforts to close the gap have not been helped by the Republican 104th Congress. Even some Republicans agree that the first Congress dominated by the GOP in 40 years made some critical early missteps that have colored the campaign this year.

"We were so heady" after capturing both houses of Congress in 1994, says former Republican National Committee Chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., that "we tried to reverse 40 years in two years."

And the problem was compounded, says Fahrenkopf, by an unrelenting Democratic counterattack that for more than a year now has effectively defined Republicans as being against Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment.

"The Democrats adopted the Republican strategy of 'define your opponent,'" says Fahrenkopf. "The mistakes we made in 1995 impact some of the difficulties we have in 1996."

The Dole campaign is like a collection of professional athletes transformed by circumstances "into the moral equivalent of a high school team," says Republican consultant David Hill. "They can't get a break."

Meanwhile, Clinton has had a number of assets to work with -- a favorable economy, a world generally at peace and a perfect foil in GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is as much a focal point of the 1996 campaign as Clinton himself.

Once Again, It's the Economy

The controversial nature of the Republican 104th Congress has allowed Clinton to portray himself as the protector of a variety of popular government programs. Yet just as critical to his success so far this year has been the perception of a prosperous economy.

Presidents who have lost their bids for re-election in recent times have generally been weighed down by the perception of a slumping economy. That was the case for George Bush in 1992 and Jimmy Carter in 1980, while the only one of the last four presidents to win re-election, Ronald Reagan in 1984, was able to capitalize on an economic upswing with the theme of "Morning in America."

Clinton has run a similar "good times" campaign this year. "They are running the 1984 Republican campaign down our throat," says Fahrenkopf, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee during the Reagan re-election campaign.

Bob Beckel, who was national campaign manager for Democrat Walter F. Mondale in 1984, tends to agree. The similarities between the 1984 and 1996 campaigns, he says, are "eerie."

"I would propose it for 'X-Files,' " says Beckel, "even down to the personalities." Dole and Mondale, he says, are both Midwesterners with minimal TV skills who find themselves pitted "against two of this century's greatest communicators."

Turning to Taxes and Trust

For his part, Dole has tried to gain traction with his tax cut proposal and the character issue. But thus far, neither has proved a winner.

In Virginia, a state that has voted for the Republican ticket in the last seven presidential elections, a Richmond Times-Dispatch/12 News poll taken in early October found that Virginia voters, by 2-1, favored cutting the deficit before enacting tax cuts.

Moreover, the same poll found that Clinton was viewed as best able to manage the economy by a margin of 10 percentage points, roughly the size of his lead over Dole statewide.

Dole has also leaned heavily on the issue of Clinton's personal trustworthiness -- or his lack thereof. But there are many who doubt that raising questions about Clinton's personal character will stir much voter interest either.

"Character is an issue the first time around when there's nothing to go on," says Georgetown University political scientist Stephen Wayne. "When voters have performance to evaluate, character is muted and to a large degree beside the point."

While Clinton is drawing about 50 percent of the vote in most national polls these days, Dole has had trouble matching the 37 percent share that Bush drew in the three-way race of 1992.

For many voters seeking an alternative to Clinton, Dole's age (73) has been a prime concern. "It's always difficult to jump a generation as we did in 1992 and then go back a generation," says Hart.

Muting Differences

The perception of a close race is often critical to maintaining voter interest. The highest rate of turnout for any presidential election in the last 60 years came in 1960, which was also the closest election in the last 60 years.

Nearly 63 percent of the voting-age population cast ballots in the closely contested campaign that Democrat John F. Kennedy won in the popular vote tally by barely 100,000 votes of nearly 70 million cast.

Meanwhile, one of the lowest turnout rates of all time came in 1948, when Republican Thomas E. Dewey was considered so far ahead of President Truman that some of the leading public opinion organizations stopped polling more than a week before the election under the assumption that Dewey had the race locked up.

While Truman's come-from-behind victory is legendary, only 51 percent of the voting-age population cast ballots in 1948, the lowest rate of turnout for any post-war presidential election until 1988, when barely 50 percent of the voting-age population participated.

The turnout is expected to be higher than that this year, if for no other reason than the new "motor voter" registration law. Nearly 9 million voters have been added to the rolls through the law since it took effect in early 1995, according to a study released in mid-October by the League of Women Voters and the NAACP.

Yet turnout is not expected to match the level of 1992, when a record number of votes were cast (104.4 million) and the rate of participation (55.1 percent of the voting-age population) was the highest since 1972.

Four years ago, the well-financed independent candidacy of Ross Perot helped draw voters to the polls. Yet while Perot is running again as the candidate of his fledgling Reform Party, he is not the catalyst for dissent that he was in 1992.

And while there is an ambitious array of other third parties in the field, none has the resources to step forward to fill the void. In the end, the tally for all third parties combined next month may not surpass 10 percent, roughly half what Perot alone tallied in 1992.

In Search of a Flow

Also tending to dampen voter interest has been the pace of this cycle's campaign. In the past, campaigns tended to have a continuity to them, from the long primary season in the spring through the summer conventions and into the fall campaign.

But the pace of the 1996 campaign has been much more disjointed. The "front-loaded" schedule of presidential primaries (most were held in the month of March) and "back-loaded" conventions (both were held in August) left a long intermission in between, with the two presidential debates and one vice presidential debate crammed into a 10-day period in October.

And many voters not turned off by the start-and-stop nature of the campaign have reacted negatively to its heavily scripted nature, most evident at the national conventions where intraparty differences were muted and thematic consistency demanded of all speakers.

The presence of clear-cut choices this year might have piqued voter interest.

But both Clinton and Republican congressional leaders have tended to mute their differences, with both sides focusing on achieving re-election rather than fashioning a governing mandate for 1997.

Clinton has been content to stand close to Dole on issues such as crime, welfare and immigration -- important "wedge" issues that the Republicans used effectively against the Democrats in the presidential campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s.

Meanwhile, the unpopularity of the congressional Republican assault on a variety of government programs has prevented the GOP from making the 1996 election the ideological Armageddon that they once hoped it would be.

"We could have had a reasonable debate on the role of government, but we've had nothing," says Curtis B. Gans, the director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate. Clinton and Dole "are two decent men, but they are not visionary or tremendously courageous."

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