by CARL M. CANNON
The National Journal, November 1,
2000
Voting for President is unlike any other
choice Americans make at the ballot box. Americans want a strong leader, but they also
want someone who cares about them and understands their problems. They want to agree with
a President's political philosophy, but they also want to trust him and like him as a
person. Most of the elections in the 20th century demonstrate that likability is necessary
for victory.
This would suggest that George W. Bush is going to be the next President of the United
States.
But a competing historical force is at work this year. The electorate almost always
rewards the party in power for a strong economic performance. And the performance of this
economy is unambiguous. Unemployment, poverty, and the federal budget deficit are down --
the deficits, in fact, are gone -- while productivity, consumer confidence, and the stock
market are up the past eight years. Way up.
This would suggest that Al Gore is going to be the next President of the United States.
So, one way to look at the 2000 presidential race is that it will reveal which of these
two powerful trends has more juice. Is it more important that a candidate is likable or
that the economy is robust? It's a riddle that would stump a Marxist determinist, not to
mention Andy Kohut, John Zogby, and the nation's staggered band of perplexed pollsters.
For starters, good historical parallels are surprisingly difficult to find. Obviously,
what the public wants are good economic times that they can creditably ascribe to the
policies of a candidate they happen to like. Certainly, 1984 fit that bill. The economy
was humming, and Ronald Reagan showed at key moments -- when he laughed on his way into
the operating room after being shot; when he shed a tear at the 40th anniversary of D-Day
-- that he had the right stuff. Times were also good in 1996, but on his best days, Bob
Dole lacked Bill Clinton's easy charm and catchy enthusiasm. That election, too, was never
really in doubt.
But back in 1956, there was a more interesting test for the American electorate. The man
who'd proved he had the right temperament for the job was the incumbent President, Dwight
D. Eisenhower, a war hero and five-star general. Ike beat Adlai Stevenson handily, as he
had in 1952, but what is not remembered so well is that the country was mired in a
recession at the time. It's hard today to imagine a sitting President waltzing to a
landslide win in bad times, but it happened. The dynamic this year is the flip side of the
1956 coin. Then, Americans were asked to retain a popular President even though the
economy was underperforming. This year, they are asked to turn out a sitting Vice
President -- even though the economy is robust -- because they like the other guy better.
In trying to figure out which factor will win out, let's first remind ourselves that
despite the yo-yo nature of this year's political coverage (Bush is up! No, he's down!
Gore is finished! Gore is coming back!), the opinion polls, taken in toto, show a race
that has been essentially even since Labor Day. Given the strong economy, that fact alone
indicates that voters are uncomfortable with Gore.
A Pew Research Center survey released on Wednesday found that liar is the word that
most often arises when voters are asked to give their impression of Gore. Other frequent
descriptions include arrogant and untrustworthy. Fully 27 percent of
respondents said that what they like least about Gore is his personality; only 18 percent
said the same about Bush.
The public knows Gore is intelligent and well informed. Asked in a Princeton Research
survey earlier this year whether he possesses those two attributes, 77 percent agreed,
while only 17 percent disagreed. But asked whether Gore "says what he thinks, even if
it's politically unpopular," only 41 percent said yes, while 52 percent said no. In a
Fox News Channel poll, only 26 percent said they know "a lot" of what Gore
stands for -- despite his eight years as Vice President.
In the media, all these traits are often boiled down to the observation that Bush is more
"affable" than Gore. But the public is more discerning than that. Affability
isn't enough. Yes, the voters want to like the guy, but they want a strong leader even
more. This desire can be gleaned from a poll released this week in California, where Gore
is comfortably ahead of Bush. That survey, taken by the Los Angeles Times, asked
whether the two men are "personally likable." Bush outpolled Gore 42 percent to
35 percent. But in questions about a host of other purely subjective traits, ranging from
"cares about people like me" to "will be a strong leader," Gore did
significantly better among Californians than did Bush.
It is also frequently said that although Bush may have a more pleasing personality, it is
Gore who is in sync with the public on "the issues." This point is so inexact as
to be misleading. First of all, it depends on what issue is being talked about -- and
where. Gun control, one of the issues that was supposed to help Gore, turns out to be a
double-edged sword in such swing states as Missouri, Washington, and Wisconsin. The
environment, another issue on which Gore is supposed to have the advantage, also has a
strong regional component to it. Gore, for instance, hasn't been heard telling Michigan's
autoworkers, as he wrote in Earth in the Balance, that air pollution from cars
poses a "mortal threat to the security of every nation that is more deadly than that
of any military enemy we are ever again likely to confront."
True, surveys suggest that a majority of Americans are more closely aligned with the
Democrats than with the Republicans on a wide array of issues, including health care,
education, and clean water. These are not trivial issues, but they cut in the Democrats'
favor in 1980 and 1984 as well -- at least that's what the polls showed before Election
Day. And Democrats told themselves during those two campaigns that being right on
"the issues" would bring them victory. It didn't.
Voters think of issues in a broader way than do Washington insiders. Gore may favor
closing the gun show loophole, or Bush may want to mandate trigger locks, but these are
not the kind of issues that determine presidential elections -- not even after eight years
of Clinton-style micro-policy wonking. Moreover, when Bush runs on a promise to bring back
working bipartisanship to Washington, that is not, strictly speaking, a policy issue at
all. Except to voters.
This is especially true for swing voters who are, by definition, more moderate than the
bases of the respective major parties. They usually do not employ narrowly defined policy
issues as litmus tests. Instead, they use issues to help them form impressions about the
real "issue" they care about the most -- the nominee's character. Their
conclusions in this regard will probably be the key to the outcome on Nov. 7.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once observed, famously, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt
possessed a "second-class intellect but a first-class temperament." Holmes
didn't mean his observation as a compliment, but this word he used, temperament, is
probably the word that best describes the elusive combination of likability,
trustworthiness, and leadership that swing voters are looking for. Americans are so drawn
to these qualities that they select the presidential candidate whom they think has the
right temperament even when his opponent has more experience. This was narrowly the case
in 1960, when Richard M. Nixon appeared on the political stage in the role Gore is playing
today: the smarter, more experienced presidential candidate, but one who was hard to love.
The candidate with the better temperament -- the man the voters simply liked the most --
prevailed in all four of FDR's victories, and in the four elections won cumulatively by
Eisenhower and Reagan. Temperament and superior likability did not, however, push Hubert
H. Humphrey to victory over Nixon in 1968. And it couldn't save President Ford in 1976.
Certainly, it served Al Gore and Al Gore's boss in 1992 and 1996, though Dole didn't have
the benefit of running against Bill Clinton after he was impeached. Not that it would have
mattered if he had: The Democrats had the better personality and the economy on their side
that year. This time, the Republicans have a more likable nominee. The 1996 election
wasn't close. This one will be.