Voters have always indulged a certain amount of hyperbole and rhetorical excess from their politicians. Campaign promises lifted hearts and hopes, even if the promises later went unfulfilled. But increasingly people are fed up. They can see that the world is changing in ways that are perilous as well as promising. They don’t have a sense that their elected leaders are responding to the change in ways that affect their lives. Congress in particular seems to live in a different world, a never-never land where checks don’t bounce and lunches are often free. Government at any level seems helpless to improve the sorry state of American education, or care properly for the 37 million Americans who lack health insurance or save the rotting cities. Instead voters still hear echoes of shopworn ideology from the right and the left. They remember being cynically manipulated by political handlers in the last presidential election, by Willie Horton and jeremiads over flag-burning. And they have yet to hear much that is refreshingly different from the candidates who are just beginning to stumble into the 1992 arena.
Politicians are not impervious to the rising clamor. They have to get elected, after all. There actually are some signs that the Democratic presidential hopefuls will try to offer a menu of straight talk. In urgent conference calls and group think sessions, strategists try to conjure up a No Bull campaign. “Whoever can talk straight-and be seen that way-will take off like a rocket,” says Democratic consultant Joe Trippi. “People are so cynical, so fed up with the system, they’re dying for someone to tell them the truth.”
So Gov. Bill Clinton announced his candidacy last week in Little Rock, Ark., by vowing: “I’m going to tell you, in very plain language, what I plan to do as president.” Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, who also entered the race last week, made a show of eschewing tub-thumping from his speech. “Kerrey’s not the kind of guy who tosses out applause lines to hear the crowd clap,” declares Harrison Hickman, one of his advisers. Others are aiming at the same goal in their own ways: Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin’s angry, podium-pounding populism; former Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas’s bottom-line, boardroom cool; Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder’s tough-guy fiscal parsimony. “It’s a common theme in Democratic campaigns,” Hickman says. “Everybody wants to speak truth to power, to be credited with uttering unpopular truths.”
But will they really tell the truth? Don’t count on it. Politicians are well aware of the dirty little secret behind all the popular demands for straight talk: Americans say they want truth, but they don’t like what they hear when they get it.
Real truth telling, as opposed to mere style, usually loses more votes than it gains. Few voters really want to face the choices and sacrifices that deeply honest leadership would demand. In the Democratic presidential primaries, the vote is dominated by interest groups who want a piece of the pie, not a slice of reality. Republicans, who have controlled the White House for all but four years since 1969, have their own strategies of self-delusion. They invoke the ,‘miracle of the market" and the “power of the individual.” Translation: we’ll muddle through somehow, if the government pretty much stays out of the way.
The candidates are faced by an ancient dilemma of leadership. How to inspire people to “do the right thing”? How to make voters realize that small personal sacrifices, taken collectively, will help everyone in the long run? It’s a riddle that only a few leaders have solved in the past, and then only against a backdrop of depression or war that sharpened the sense of urgency.
Each candidate has his own strategy for exploiting the public demand for straight talk. Somewhat ironically, however, their advisers are often leery of openly discussing their game plans. And so far the candidates are showing themselves to be more adept at playing to popular fears and resentments than at offering solutions. There are any number of issues that could use some plain speaking in the months ahead–education, global competitiveness, health care–but three arenas in particular are likely to be testing grounds for the No Bull campaign:
The touchy issue of race offers a telling example. The big prize for both parties is the white male vote, especially in the South. The defection of those voters from the Democratic to the GOP column in the 1960s has been the main reason for the Republicans’ near hegemony over the White House. White males have become the nation’s largest fed-up voting bloc, supporting Republican presidential candidates since 1980 at a greater than 2-1 margin, 3-1 in the South. “They feel threatened, and anxious, and don’t think anyone is speaking honestly to them in their own language,” says Clinton’s media adviser, Frank Greer. Their main fear: losing their jobs, or their chance for promotion, to minorities and women.
How do the candidates handle this hot potato? By speaking in sly code or by ignoring the issue altogether. Bush avoids any rhetoric that smacks of racism, but he inveighs against quotas and threatens to veto the civil-rights bill now before Congress. The Democrats, fearful of alienating whites and blacks alike, say almost nothing about race at all.
Racial quotas are actually a bogeyman. Even if affirmative action were abolished tomorrow, it wouldn’t do much to improve the economic plight of middle-class white males. But the Democrats need to at least address the fears of the alienated white middle class. Clinton comes the closest to doing so responsibly. He vowed last week to oppose Republican policies that set one race against the other in the scramble for jobs and proposed solutions such as job training, workfare and child-support laws.
Strapped middle-class voters have a nightmare of a recession that won’t end, and no one is better at exploiting those fears than Tom Harkin. He is the Working Man’s Friend, the angry man at the end of the bar. He fingers the “real enemies”: big corporations, rich Republicans and the Japanese. He even used the B word on the stump, denouncing as so much “bullshit” the economic policies of the Reagan-Bush years. Harkin is probably shrewd to focus on an economic message. Pocketbook issues move voters more than any other. But as sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset notes, “People don’t blame corporations, they blame the government.” And Harkin is a big-government Democrat. He is also Big Labor, an equally unpopular institution.
Blame for the sick economy can be apportioned in many quarters and both parties. The question is which candidate will be the most forthright about doing something to fix it. Bush has resisted the usual quickie–and ill advised –cures, such as pumping money into the economy with make-work job programs. Bush recognizes the truth, that the money usually arrives after the recovery has already begun. But there are no signs that the administration has any long-term solutions beyond enacting a capital-gains tax cut, a highly debatable curative that would mostly help the rich. Remarkably, Bush has been held relatively blameless for hard times, perhaps because the public seems to accept his implicit premise that foreign policy is the preserve of presidents–and anything that goes wrong at home is all Congress’s fault.
The easiest-and cheapest–way to play No Bull polities is to rail against the Inside-the-Beltway crowd. Bob Kerrey aims to tap voters’ growing belief that the game of politics has become hopelessly professionalized, played by Washington insiders for other Washington insiders. Kerrey is in many ways a hard-to-pigeonhole outsider. A registered Republican until 1978, he didn’t enter politics until 1982, at the age of 39. A successful developer of a chain of restaurants and health clubs, he can call himself an entrepreneur. But rivals note that he voted for the congressional pay raise, and his most important new proposal is pure New Deal: higher payroll taxes to pay for national health care. “He’s not going to be willing to run against Washington, which is what you have to do,” says an adviser to former California governor Jerry Brown. “He doesn’t hate those guys on the Hill. You have to see all of Washington, including the Democrats, as the enemy.”
Brown has no such qualms. Without the slightest sense of shame, Brown–a governor’s son, two-time presidential candidate and former two-term governor of the nation’s most populous state–this month is expected to officially launch (for better or worse) what could be the ultimate No Bull campaign of 1992. In a game where you are who advises you, Brown’s choice of intimates is significant: a close personal friend and informal adviser is Patrick Caddell, the Democrats’ first and foremost post-Vietnam theorist on running against Washington.
A No Bull campaign strategy is as risky as it is irresistible. For one, you may pick the wrong thing to be honest about. In 1984 Walter Mondale thought he would win kudos for bravely admitting that he would raise taxes. He won kudos–and lost 49 states. Recent exercises in truth telling have only added to voters’ wariness. Jimmy Carter, with Caddell in his camp, won in 1976 with such a strategy and then foundered as president.
The biggest burden of No Bull campaign is that it focuses even more scrutiny, if that’s possible, on the personal character of candidates in both their public and private lives. Running as a truth teller is the shortest route to victory, but it’s also a high-wire act over the Grand Canyon of Credibility. Changes of votes, changes of position, suddenly take on a higher moral significance. They become a self-imposed litmus test of character: if you say you are honest, that you aren’t like the other guys, then that had better be true. Candidates who decry the mechanics of image manipulation–and they all will this year–had better not be caught employing it themselves. “No field of candidate has ever had to face a standard of judgment this high,” says Trippi, the Democratic consultant. “If it’s shown that there is just the smallest little difference between what you say you are and the reality of what you’ve done, you’re dead.”
The field in 1992 could have a hard time meeting that standard. The week before he announced, Kerrey missed a vote to cancel production of the B-2 bomber. He said he was busy working on his announcement speech. Rival camps pounced on his absence from the Senate as proof that he was a business-as-usual pol, muting his image as a critic of Pentagon prerogatives. Harkin’s image as Working Man’s Friend is already under attack. He is one of Congress’s most enthusiastic PAC fund raisers; he led the Senate in 1990 with $1.6 million. And even his family and lifestyle will be scrutinized for signs of hypocrisy. His wife, Ruth, is “of counsel” to one of Washington’s best-connected law firms; The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the couple’s combined annual income exceeds $300,000. Clinton, running on themes of family responsibility, has already faced questions about his own personal life.
Brown, who denounces party moneymen and PACs as leeches on the body politic, until last year was hanging out with them as chairman of the California Democratic Party. Alone among the candidates, Bush seems to be exempt from criticism for his flip-flops over the years, and he has had some whoppers, like abandoning his “Read my lips” pledge on taxes.
It is all too predictable that the campaign will devolve into petty finger-pointing, with each candidate questioning the other’s bona fides as a straight talker. The risk is that they’ll never really get down to talking about what needs to be done, beyond spouting platitudes and proposing a voter-friendly program or two.
If the candidates were to truly level with the voters on the issues, what would they say? Any truth telling would have to begin with federal entitlement programs. Last year the U.S. Treasury wrote cheeks totaling some $500 billion to retirees, veterans and the disabled. Many on the receiving end are middle class, and not a few are wealthy. One policy expert after another has testified that entitlements should be " means tested," i.e., based on need. But politicians are loath to touch the largest of these entitlements: social security. As America’s population ages, sooner or later both parties are going to have to face up to the question of how to pay for those golden years without bankrupting the country.
Curbing the rise in health-care costs-at least twice the inflation rate in recent years-will require equal firmness. An honest politician will have to tell patients that they can no longer expect the best possible care, regardless of cost. (And tell doctors, whose median salary is $140,000, that they may no longer be driving Mercedes-Benzes.) In the not-too-distant future, lawmakers could be making choices out of an Aldous Huxley novel, deciding who qualifies for a new kidney.
Both parties will have to risk alienating their traditional constituents. For the Democrats who control Congress, that means the vast array of interest groups lined up at the public trough. Clinton has already shown some willingness to take on vested interests, such as the all-powerful teachers unions. But his steps, like those of his rivals, are pretty mincing so far. Clinton’s workfare program, for instance, applies to only a portion of Arkansas’s welfare recipients. Republicans will have to be more willing to tax the wealthy. Even supply-siders like Jude Winniski are coming around to sponging a bit more from the rich, and now that Bush has abandoned his “No new taxes” pledge, there is no particular principle to defend. A gas tax has been considered politically impossible for years, but it would ease the deficit while promoting energy conservation.
Congress is not going to suddenly transform itself and abolish pork-barrel polities. But if Congress keeps on driving recklessly, a bold chief executive will have to find ways to take away the keys. Bipartisan commissions are often derided as a copout, but they work when Congress lacks the will. In 1983 one such commission raised the payroll tax, thus saving the Social Security Trust Fund. More recently, another commission forced the closure of 25 major U.S. military bases that provided jobs in a congressman’s district–but contributed nothing to national defense. It may take a truly independent commission to dismantle the coldwar military-industrial complex. There are too many pet weapons programs at stake to expect Congress to cut the budget wisely.
But even more difficult than reforming the government will be reforming the people themselves. The fact is that government, even if well run, can only do so much. Real presidential leadership is moral leadership. A truly straight-talking politician would tell the voters to look to themselves–to their own lives. It is doubtful, for instance, that education will improve very much until parents learn how to turn off their children’s television sets. This may not be what voters want to hear. But if they want politicians to tell them the truth, they will have to be willing to listen.
Because the usual lying and distorting is well underway, it’s time to strap on the old bull detector, signified here with parentheses.
We’re all outsiders, running against the government. (They’re all big pols.)
The president is not in a campaign mode. (Roger Ailes says so.)
We plan to cover all of the serious issues facing the country. (That means polls.)
We’ve got no real power. The candidate is so good he sells himself. (He’s dead without us.)
Tell it to us plain, no bull. And stop promising. (What’s in it for me?)
Question for the candidates: What personal experience shaped your views or had the most impact on your thinking about race?
During the summer Sen. Bill Bradley spoke about how his years with the New York Knicks shaped his views on race. In that straight-talk spirit NEWSWEEK’S Eleanor Clift asked the candidates to offer their own reflections. George Bush wouldn’t comment; said a spokesman, he is “not a candidate.” Doug Wilder was abroad and unable to respond. Five excerpts:
I was raised by my grandparents until I was 4. My grandfather had almost no education but was an instinctive liberal on race. He owned a little grocery store in Hope, Ark. More than half his customers were black. And if he knew them, and he knew they were doing the best they could, he would give them food even if they didn’t have money. My grandfather supported integration and thought black people were getting a raw deal. In a little Southern town, you actually know black people, so people who were not blinded by racism had the advantage of human contact.
Values. Family values. Respect for personal dignity. These traditional and essential concepts instill in us an abiding sense of what civil rights mean in human terms. We are accountable to our God and to all others with whom we share our space on earth. I learned this lesson from my parents. They created a loving home environment of respect for all people, irrespective of race, religion or other differences. Unlike Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, I was not converted to an understanding of civil rights by a single experience.
After graduating from college, I was living in Wolisso, Ethiopia [as a Peace Corps volunteer], with four other Americans, one of whom was black. After two years I was preparing to leave Ethiopia and return home. It was all very emotional. In the last day or so, I was talking to one of the students and [the black volunteer] Tom Williams’s name came up. The student said, “You are our friend, but Mr. Williams is our brother.” It shocked me. I felt hurt, almost betrayed. In retrospect I came to understand that I was truly a ferengi (foreigner). I suspect it’s a feeling many nonwhites experience in this country.
I first witnessed racial injustice as a student at Iowa State University. Black students simply could not find housing off campus. They were forced to live in run-down shacks. The most enlightening time of my life in regard to race was the years I spent in the Navy. I was stationed in Meridian, Miss. There were separate clubs for blacks and whites in town. One night, I was the officer in charge on shore patrol and Was called to a black club because of a “disturbance.” When I arrived, there was a Filipino Navy-man and his date just having a drink. I told him he shouldn’t be there and he asked me, “Where am I supposed to go?” He said he had gone to the whites-only club and they told him he did not belong there.
When I was 8 years old, my father and I were driving across San Francisco and I looked out the window of our car and made a racial remark about a few guys standing on the corner. My father stopped the car and told me that if I ever spoke that way again, he would make me walk home by myself. But more than that, my father over and over again made it clear to my sisters and me that prejudice had no place in our lives. There was one more thing: the Dominican nuns at my Catholic grammar school. They shaped my imagination to view life in a moral context, where even the slightest touch of bigotry was a sin.
