The Magic and the Message

(7 of 8)

But this year, says Republican Governor James Thompson, "our Republican blue-collar towns are catching the brunt of the recession. So they tend to blame the incumbent." All over the / Midwest, farmers are burdened by falling land prices, mammoth interest payments and declining export income. "If my farmers were traditional Democrats," says Kansas Governor John Carlin, "they'd be organizing lynch mobs." That is a fantastic if: except for the 1964 anti-Goldwater landslide, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Indiana have not gone Democratic since 1936.

To the White House, the state-by-state electoral arithmetic is a pleasure to figure and refigure. Reagan has a plausible base of 200 electoral votes, including those of California, Texas and Florida. With the addition of New Jersey or Michigan, plus a few states of the Deep South, and one small state (Washington? Kentucky?) for good measure, he will be reelected.

But he is not a shoo-in. He has profound weaknesses, which have been highlighted during his August holiday. The budget deficit problem looms bigger and bigger, yet Reagan seems blithe about it and unready to prescribe bitter medicine. The economy is rollicking along, but troublesome news could come before the election: the rates of interest and unemployment have recently risen.

The fairness issue is real. "The Reagan Administration hasn't allowed itself to be identified with populist trends," says Kevin Phillips, a Republican theorist. "It has allowed itself to be cast as the party of Learjets and mink coats." Even Americans who approve of Reagan, according to the new Yankelovich survey conducted for TIME, believe that his policies favor the rich.

When voters contemplate the prospect of necessary, painful reductions in entitlement programs, will they decide that Reagan is the wisest judge of what to cut? Other Reagan positions—his advocacy of environmental laissez-faire and opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment—have made enemies. Those antagonists, says an adviser, "will pop up all over the place on Election Day." For all his good will, Reagan is a polarizing leader. When Gerald Ford was President, the Gallup poll found he was opposed by equal proportions of whites and nonwhites, rich and poor. Toward Reagan, however, the antagonism runs starkly along racial and class lines.

His inept bomb-the-Russians joke last week may help the Democrats remind voters that the Administration's foreign policy has been long on tough talk and dangerously short on subtle maneuvering.

Admits a G.O.P. tactician: "All we need is a quip every couple of weeks, and people will begin wondering."Says another adviser: "The main thing to worry about is a foreign crisis in which we don't respond well." Although Americans often rally round a President at moments of international stress, a conspicuous foreign policy misstep abroad during the next two months could by itself cost Reagan the election.