*EPF311 04/19/00
Election 2000 Campaign Spotlight
(A Newsletter on American Politics) (3390)

Issue No. 14 April 19, 2000

This weekly newsletter is provided by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State, to he1p explain to overseas audiences the 2000 election campaign in the United States. Newsletters include analyses of presidential primaries and the general election, background information on upcoming events, and material on major issues, key races at the congressional and gubernatorial level, significant polls, the nominating conventions and debates, the electoral system, and other information that will he1p explain this complex but fascinating example of democracy at work.

This newsletter also is available on our Election 2000 web site: http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/rights/elect2000

Additional election-related material may be obtained from the local Department of State Public Affairs Section's Information Resource Center.

The issue contains:

On the Trail with Bush and Gore
The Republican Party's Move Toward Conservatism
Campaign Trail "Tidbits"
Pundit "Pear1s"

On the Trail with Bush and Gore
By Stuart Gorin
Campaign Spotlight Editor

Texas Governor George W. Bush, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, held what his campaign officials called an "historic event" April 13 -- a meeting with a large group of homosexual activists to discuss their issues. No previous Republican presidential candidate held such a meeting.

Bush made clear that his views on homosexuality had not changed -- he is opposed to homosexuals marrying or adopting children -- but he did state that being openly homosexual would not disqualify a person from serving in a prominent position in his administration. That was a change from an earlier stance when he would only say he would "not ask" a prospective job applicant his or her sexual orientation. He also said he would "we1come" homosexual Americans into his campaign.

One attendee of the meeting said it was not the group's goal to make demands that Bush change any of his policy positions, but rather to start an ongoing dialogue.

Meanwhile, social conservatives expressed concern, stating that they could be alienated by any concessions Bush might make towards homosexuals, who traditionally do not vote Republican anyway.

Earlier in the week, Bush proposed creating large new defense, education and health care programs, allowing the Washington Post to coin a new phrase for a different species of politician: "a tax cut-and-spend" Republican. Democrats often practice what are referred to as "tax-and-spend" policies.

Bush, who still favors tax cuts, has called for $25,000 million in new spending for defense, $13,000 million for new education programs and $4,300 million for health services -- over a five-year period. He said he wanted to "he1p the working poor move up into the middle class."

Officials in Bush's campaign said America's growing economy will produce enough surpluses to more than cover any proposed spending increases and still allow for tax cuts.

Vice President Al Gore, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, charged that Bush has opened up a "Texas size canyon" by overestimating the nation's projected surplus and not factoring in plans to privatize part of the Social Security system.

Speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the vice president also challenged Bush's credibility by accusing the Texas governor of ignoring health care in his own state.

One of Bush's plans is to expand to everyone the tax-free medical savings accounts that are now available only to workers at small companies and the self- employed. Gore, who favors getting health care coverage for more uninsured children, said Bush's proposal would be a "tax shelter" for the wealthy.

Gore also spoke during the week in elementary and secondary schools in Michigan, Ohio and North Carolina, stressing his own support for education.

He told one group of students he had no regrets about volunteering for military service during the Vietnam War -- he spent five months as an Army journalist in Vietnam but did not see combat duty -- but that if he had been president then he would not have committed U.S. troops to action. Gore said he was obliged to support the United States at the time but he felt it had been a "policy mistake" to have gotten involved in the first place.

The Gore and Bush campaigns also had words for each other during the week on other matters. Bush's aides criticized the vice president for allowing close to two months to go by without holding any news conferences, and Gore's aides criticized the Texas governor for ignoring a challenge to participate in a debate.

The Republican Party's Move Toward Conservatism
By David Pitts
Washington File Staff Writer

(This is the first of two articles on the evolution of the two major U.S. political parties -- the Democrats and the Republicans)

Texas Governor George W. Bush, the probable Republican nominee for president in the year 2000, proud1y proclaims that he is a conservative, albeit a compassionate conservative. In doing so, he is expressing an ideological position broadly shared by most party members and by many party supporters.

It was not a1ways so. The Republican Party was formed in 1854 -- in support of the most liberal cause of the time, the fight to abolish slavery in the South and, in particular, its extension into the new territories of the West. "The party was born as a party of principle devoted to stopping the spread of slavery," says historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, a view echoed by her peers. The new party also championed the interests of the industrial North, which it felt were not being fairly represented in Washington. Much later, it would support women's suffrage.

The Republicans gained political success swift1y. In 1860, Abraham Linco1n was elected as the nation's first Republican president. During a bloody civil war that began barely a month after he was inaugurated, slavery was dealt a death blow by Linco1n's Emancipation Proclamation and the passage by a Republican Congress of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlawing slavery, which was passed after the president's assassination in December 1865. With these actions, the Republican Party was forever identified with the anti-slavery cause. The Republicans also passed the first Civil Rights Act after the Civil War in 1866, which recognized African Americans for the first time as full citizens.

In the decades following Linco1n's death, the Republican Party continued to do well politically. According to Encyc1opedia Americana, "despite the persistent antagonism of the South, the Republicans retained control of the White House for all but 16 years between 1860 and 1932." And the party continued to promote progressive causes and attract a largely progressive support base -- "Eastern businessmen, Midwestern farmers, most laborers, and blacks," the Encyc1opedia adds.

The most successful of the progressive Republican presidents of this era was Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09) who promised the American people a Square Deal based on opposition to monopoly capitalism, and support for conservation and broad social reform. Most historians view Theodore Roosevelt as the most progressive of the presidents who served in the years after Linco1n's assassination until Theodore's distant cousin, Franklin Roosevelt -- a Democrat - was elected president in 1932.

At that time, a conservative trend in the Republican Party that had gained steam in the 1920s accelerated in opposition to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to combat the Great Depression. This is the period during which the Republicans changed strongly against the big government programs that Roosevelt pioneered, says historian Michael Beschloss. "That is a point of view I would argue has become probably near to being the majority in America, as it was not in the early 30s," he adds.

However, the party retained a strong moderate and even liberal wing until well into the 1950s, a period during which moderate Republican Dwight Eisenhower served two terms as president. The big change came in 1964 when the liberal/moderate wing of the party, championed by New York Governor Nelson Rockefeler, battled against the conservative wing led by Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, for the Republican nomination for president. Although Goldwater won, he was soundly defeated in the 1964 general election. However, his successful battle for the nomination signaled the ascendancy of the conservative wing of the party.

"From that point on," says political journalist Haynes Johnson, "you've had what you see as the new party emerging today. People who are in the party today are the heirs of Barry Goldwater." All the Republican nominees are now "very much anti-government, very much in favor of entrepreneurship, small business and, very much wedded to the new, emerging states of the South, where they have the greatest support and electoral votes," he adds.

His point about the growing power of the Republican Party in the South is viewed by historians as one of the most significant developments in modern American politics. Until 1964, the "solid South" overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party. But during the 1960s, Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson challenged the system of racial segregation then entrenched in the Southern states by proposing major federal civil rights and voting rights bills opposed by many Republican leaders, including the Republican Party's 1964 nominee, Barry Goldwater, who supported states' rights.

At this time, a major re-alignment in support for the two major political parties occurred, with many Southern whites now voting in large numbers for the Republican Party for the first time. "From that point on, the Republicans had a foot in the South; in many ways it destroyed the Democratic Party in the South," says Goodwin. "Indeed, Goldwater won five states there" in the 1964 election, she adds, the only states he won besides his native Arizona. The five deep- South states, which had voted against the Republicans in almost every election since the Civil War, were never to return consistently to the Democratic column again, partly because of Goldwater's opposition to federal civil rights legislation in the 1964 election.

It was a historic switch in the position of the national leadership of the two major parties, says Goodwin. Since its formation in the 1850s, the Republican Party was anathema to many Southern whites because of support for the anti- slavery cause and civil rights. Beginning in the 1960s, she continues, the Republican Party increasingly attracted the votes of conservative Southern whites because of its perceived opposition to federal civil rights legislation, although the legislation also was opposed by many Southern Democrats in Congress as well.

By the 1980s, with the election of conservative Republican Ronald Reagan to the presidency, the liberal/moderate wing of the Republican Party was all but vanquished and most political analysts today believe it would be impossible for a liberal or moderate Republican to capture the party's nomination. The transformation of the Republicans from the party of Linco1n to the party of Reagan remains a fascinating ideological journey across decades of American history and Americans' ever changing views about each other and the role of government in their national life.

Campaign Trail "Tidbits"

-- Campaign Contributions: While many political observers believe that monetary contributions to candidates corrupt the political process, Utah Senator Robert Bennett says such an assumption is false. Rejecting the argument that special interest groups or individuals contribute in an effort to influence the seat of power in government, Bennett says power actually resides "in the people" in the United States, and it is the politicians who try to reach the power by buying political-advertising.

Bennett expressed these views during a discussion of political contributions at a forum organized by the Hudson Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington. He said disclosure was more important in the political process than setting limits on the amount of contributions. People should be able to contribute what they wanted to a campaign but it must be carried out openly, Bennett added.

During discussions at another program, organized by the Brookings Institution, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel said that in order to "reclaim the trust and confidence that are critical in a democracy," the United States is going to have to address the issue of money in political campaigns. He agreed on the necessity of disclosure but went a step further on limits.

Hagel said there must be limits placed on so-called "soft money" donations given only to political parties just as they already are on "hard money" donations given direct1y to candidates. Hagel was one of the few members of the Senate who supported the presidential bid of Arizona Senator John McCain, a strong advocate of campaign finance reform.

-- Internet: Political observer Curtis Gans of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate says that while surveys show six percent of voters in the United States regularly visit politically based websites on the Internet, he does not believe the Internet generally will be a source of generating more interest in the political process.

Gans, speaking at a_Democracy On-Line forum April 17, said most of the visitors are those who already are interested in politics. Even the use of the Internet for voting will not increase overall voter turnout, he suggested, because those citizens would still come to the polls anyway if the Internet were not available.

Gans agreed that Arizona Senator John McCain and former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley effectively used the Internet to raise funds and gather large numbers of volunteers early in their unsuccessful presidential campaigns, but he added that before larger numbers are attracted, there needs to be a rekindling of interest in politics. That must take place primarily within the schools and religious institutions and through the traditional media of newspapers and television, he added.

-- Falwell: Television evangelist Reverend Jerry Falwell launched a seven-month effort April 15 to re-energize the religious right by registering an additional 10 million voters in the United States through a "People of Faith 2000" effort. Falwell said the drive would be conducted by seeking the cooperation of 200,000 churches and temples and would be non-partisan, endorsing no candidates or political-parties.

The founder of the Moral Majority, which flourished in the nation during the 1980s before being disbanded, Falwell said the new effort is intended to counter attempts to weaken and marginalize the role of people of faith in the political process. He said he will be mailing the religious institutions information packets on how to conduct voter registration.

Meanwhile, a public watchdog group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, denounced Falwell's action as a "shady shell game" abusing churches' tax-exempt status. The group alleges the "People of Faith 2000" project is a scheme to he1p Republican candidates, and federal law prohibits tax-exempt institutions from conducting voter drives in a partisan manner, an accusation that Falwell denies.

-- Election Etiquette: The rules of etiquette enable people to air controversy, even in the political arena, but they should do so in an environment of cooperation and compromise, says Judith Martin, a syndicated columnist on the subject of etiquette. Martin spoke April 17 at a Brookings Institution forum on campaign etiquette, where participants spoke of practices carried out by politicians and journalists who cover their activities.

Noting that "in politics and journalism it has been considered both dashing and idealistic to cast all niceties aside in order to do the public business properly," Martin said it is difficult to do business in a state of open combat and the challenge now is to try to figure out how to bring back civility.

She said the goal is not for political candidates to become private friends who put their differences aside, but to be able to perform the public business that arises out of the differences and still stay within the rules.

Brookings held the forum to release a revised version of "The Little Book of Campaign Etiquette" written by senior fellow Stephen Hess. The missing ingredient in efforts to improve campaign discourse, Hess said, is a set of agreed-upon norms and standards for behavior, and he offers his thoughts for such topics as campaign advertising, debates, endorsements, polls and scandals.

Pundit "Pearls"

-- Baltimore Sun columnists Jack Germond and Jules Witcover: "With both Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush having depleted most of their campaign treasuries in beating off the nomination challenges in their parties, they are reduced to limping around the country to the remaining, meaningless, state primaries in an attempt to stir up interest for the fall campaign and further ventilating the issues they hope will win for them. They keep busy lobbing charges from a distance against each other, essentially hunkered down in the safe trenches of friendly party precincts. After a veritable blitz of debates in each party during the primaries, there is no like1ihood that they will face each other direct1y until after the conventions, and probably not until well into the fall. Debates have become too critical to election outcomes, and too risky, for the principals to engage in them before then.

-- Fox News Channel panelist Jeff Cohen: "Given their impact on elections, it's shameful that presidential debates -- including the decisions over who gets to participate -- have been entrusted to a private Commission on Presidential Debates [CPD] entirely controlled by the two major parties. The 38 percent of Americans who, according to a 1999 Gallup poll, consider themselves independent of the Democrats and Republicans, are not represented on the CPD, which is bankrolled by the same big corporations that heavily fund the two major parties.... A more inclusive approach comes from an independent task force on presidential debates convened by American University law professor Jamin Raskin. Debates would include any candidate who has five percent support in national polls, which would admit [Green Party candidate Ralph] Nader; or who represents a party that won five percent of the votes in the previous election, which would admit [Pat] Buchanan if he is the Reform Party nominee; or who national polls show a majority of the public wants included."

-- The Hill newspaper political editor Robert Schlesinger: "The most important rule of picking a vice presidential candidate is taken from the Hippocratic Oath -- first, do no harm. Don't pick somebody who is going to cause controversy at the convention or be a drag in November.... Traditionally, nominees have sought to balance their ticket, whether in ideology, geography, demography or however.... Strategists in both parties also note that the need for balance has diminished: The parties are not as regionalized as they once were, which undercuts the need for geographical balance. At the same time, the nation's transition into an information age increases the importance of the message. An ideologically balanced ticket can garble a message.... In most cases, vice presidential nominees are window-dressing and secondary to a voter's decision. But guessing who gets the call still makes a great D.C. parlor game between the end of the primaries and the start of the conventions."

-- USA Today columnist Walter Shapiro: "It is odd that in a democracy, we routinely allow presidential nominees to designate their successors without any real opportunity for voter participation. The fleeting poll numbers that both Gore and Bush will endlessly study before making their choices do not constitute meaningful consultation. There is an unmistakable royalist tinge to the way vice presidents are chosen. Not only will one of the two running mates get to serve in the heartbeat-away job, but it is highly likely that the next vice president will be his (or her) party's presidential nominee in 2008.... Political conventions are infinitely more docile affairs these days, with the delegates reduced to the role of extras in a campaign infomercial.... How bracing it would be if either Gore or Bush followed the brave example of [Democratic presidential candidate] Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and granted the convention delegates the freedom to select the vice president nominee."

-- Campaigns and Elections editor-in-chief Ron Faucheux: "Going into the 1990s, the new concept of "message politics" was born. Political consultants now accept the notion that every campaign positions itself by conveying a message -- which is the rationale they give to voters to persuade them to cast their ballots one way versus another. This concept emerged from the simple idea that the voting decision is a choice. Voters don't elect the best man or woman for the job but, instead, only pick between the available alternatives on the ballot that day for that specific office. To make such a choice, it follows that voters focus on the differences -- rather than the similarities -- between candidates."

Newsletter Editor: Stuart Gorin, IIP/T/DHR
Fax: 202-619-6520 E-mail:[email protected]

(Distributed by the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)
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