Tackling the Teflon President

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Underdog Mondale says he likes running from behind

Mondale loyalists whistle bravely. "If I were a Republican, I'd be worried," declares Ohio Governor Dick Celeste. But the real fear grips the Democrats. "Mondale's chances are uphill," concedes Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Dave Nagle. Hart partisans give Mondale no chance at all. "Politics has a certain ecology to it," says Hart Adviser Frank Mankiewicz. "Walter Mondale appears to be Ronald Reagan's natural prey."

It is hard to find any Democrats, other than Mondale and his immediate entourage, who are willing to flat out predict victory in November. The odds in Las Vegas are 4 to 1 against such an outcome, making an even-money bet on Mondale the biggest gamble since George McGovern was a 5-to-1 underdog in his race against Richard Nixon in 1972.

The polls consistently show Reagan about 8 percentage points ahead of Mondale. Political geography favors Reagan even more. No Democrat since Lyndon Johnson in 1964 has won the West. Reagan can count on sweeping at least 95 of the 111 Electoral College votes in the 13 Western states. That means he starts off with 17% of the Electoral College. In the South, the President's conservatism is so popular that Atlanta Pollster Claibourne Darden believes "Reagan has only himself to beat now." In the Midwest he is showing surprising strength in the key states of Ohio and Michigan, where he is being helped by the comeback of the auto industry.

Nationally, too, the biggest problem for the apparent Democratic nominee is that the U.S. economy seems robust. Voters follow their pocketbooks, and the latest upswing in the economic cycle has coincided with Reagan's re-election campaign. Unemployment (7.4%) is down from double digits to roughly where it was when Reagan took office, and inflation (5.6%) has not been so low in a decade. When Reagan was sworn in, it was 13.5%. More important, most voters feel that times are good—and getting better.

If the election were held today, even Mondale's strongest backers concede that their man would lose. But they claim to relish the role of underdog. This may be because every time Mondale was pronounced the front runner during the Democratic primaries, he promptly lost an election. With a lead, he was a lifeless and complacent campaigner. When behind, he was "Fightin' Fritz."

Reagan, Mondale's people argue, should be vulnerable on the issues. There is, for starters, the deficit: instead of balancing the budget as he promised, Reagan has tripled the red ink, to $190 billion. There are questions of war and peace: the President's bellicose gibes at the Soviets, the Mondale camp argues, have frozen relations between the two superpowers. Lately though, Reagan has cooled his rhetoric, while the Soviets are sounding as mean as he portrays them. Then there is the charge that Reagan's economic policies have demonstrably favored the rich at the expense of the poor. According to a Congressional Budget Office study, households earning more than $20,000 a year reaped 85% of the tax reductions, while households earning less than $20,000 have paid for two-thirds of the budget cuts. (The Reaganauts counter that the supply-side tax cuts spurred the economy, creating jobs and spreading the wealth.)