The Primary Lessons of 1988

Already, just the names prompt small chuckles of remembrance: Alexander Haig, Pat Robertson, Pete du Pont, Joseph Biden, Bruce Babbitt, Paul Simon. Has it really been just four months since Iowa anointed Richard Gephardt and Bob Dole as the favorites? Before Primary Season 1988 is carted off to the Smithsonian, it seems fitting to step back and ponder some lessons of the campaign that was. After all, as the Duchess instructed Alice in Wonderland, "Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it."

The whys have it. Those close to Mario Cuomo say a major reason he did not make the race was his inability to frame a rationale for his candidacy. It all comes back to the old Roger Mudd why-are-you-running question that reduced Ted Kennedy to stutters in 1979. Whatever their faults as campaigners, both Michael Dukakis and George Bush could handle these whys-guy queries. Bush declared himself the designated heir to Reaganism and a man whose resume had earned a final line. For Dukakis, the White House represented a chance to sprinkle Massachusetts Miracle-Gro on the rest of the nation. Sure, these rationales are intellectually flimsy, but they gave Bush and Dukakis a steadiness that most of their rivals lacked. Jesse Jackson prospered because of the clarity of his mission, while Al Gore and Bob Dole learned the folly of aimless ambition.

Good news beats the blues. Sadly perhaps, a presidential campaign should not be confused with adult education. Or to update an Ira Gershwin lyric, "Who cares what banks fail in Yonkers, it is the upbeat message that conquers." Look what happened to the Cassandras with apocalyptic new ideas. Jack Kemp's earnest seminars on gold-bug economics went the way of Pete du Pont's Iowa lectures on the evils of farm subsidies. Bruce Babbitt's budgetary bravery proved that press puffery persuades few primary voters. Dick Gephardt's political stock soared only after he softened his overheated it's-midnight-in-A merica rhetoric.

The appeal of the real. The press is the Holden Caulfield of the political game, always on the alert for phonies. Gary Hart was nabbed for philandering, and Joe Biden was caught barking up Neil Kinnock's family tree, but the media's primary target became Gephardt's populist pretensions. The Missouri Congressman needed to peddle the antiestablishment line to revive his stalled Iowa campaign, but he only invited ridicule when he imported nearly 40 congressional insiders to join him on the barricades. In contrast, the blandness of Bush and Dukakis was often exasperating, but it stemmed so naturally from their personalities that no one could accuse them of being political changelings. There are, of course, limits to authenticity. Jackson was so real he couldn't make enough white voters accept his appeal. And the genuineness of Paul Simon's dippy persona carried him into the semifinals, but there was no way that a political Mister Magoo was actually going to be nominated.