Conventions to Fill in Portraits of Gore, Bush

WASHINGTON —  With the opening of the Republican convention in Philadelphia next week, the presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore may be approaching its first real crystallizing moment.

Though the two parties settled on Bush and Gore as their nominees nearly five months ago, the two men arrive at their national conventions with the contest between them much less sharply defined than in either of the past two elections, most analysts agree. That means, to a greater extent than in the past, the most critical events in this campaign may be yet to come.

“My sense is it’s not settled into shape,” says Stanley B. Greenberg, the pollster for Bill Clinton in 1992. “We have a sitting vice president who is not going to get noticed until he is able to emerge from the Clinton shadow, and you have Bush running for the first time nationally. So you have two candidates who have yet to emerge from the shadows.”

Through the long months of preliminary sparring, the race between Texas Gov. Bush and Vice President Gore has fallen into a pattern that is at once stable and unformed.

On the one hand, except for a brief period during the most fierce days of the GOP primaries, Republican Bush has held a steady lead over Democrat Gore in the national opinion polls. On the other, opinions about the candidates and interest in the race appear shallow, partly because no issue has galvanized a public largely content over the nation’s course.

For both candidates, that raises the stakes in the next three weeks as they make their case at the national party conventions--first the GOP gathering in Philadelphia next week and then the Democratic assembly in Los Angeles in mid-August.

Though the conventions no longer offer any suspense over the nominees, they have emerged as a pivotal moment in solidifying impressions of the contenders and defining the contours of the race. Both Clinton in 1992, and the elder George Bush in 1988, for instance, skillfully used their conventions to seize a lead they never relinquished.

“While the conventions have become irrelevant in terms of deciding the nomination, they have become quite important in terms of focusing people’s attentions on the candidates,” says veteran GOP strategist Robert M. Teeter.

Lack of TV Time May Weaken Effect

With the broadcast television networks devoting less air time to the gatherings, some speculate that the conventions’ effect might wane this year. But that remains to be proved: In the history of modern polling--roughly since the Depression--no presidential candidate who trailed immediately after his own convention has won the White House.

In most respects, Bush heads into the convention period in a stronger position than Gore. At the most basic level, the Texan has consistently led in the polls since early March, when he dispatched Sen. John McCain of Arizona for the GOP nomination. Gore has intermittently narrowed the gap, but usually not for long; so far the contest’s natural equilibrium has been a Bush advantage of about half a dozen points--roughly the lead he held in three of the four national surveys released this week. (The fourth, by the Pew Research Center, put the two men in a virtual dead heat.)

Beneath the broad national numbers are other encouraging signs for Bush. In polls all spring, he’s shown signs of reassembling the coalition that allowed Republicans to dominate the White House from 1968 through 1992. Bush, for instance, has reversed gains by Clinton in the past two elections and reestablished commanding advantages among white men and married women, two groups critical to the Republican victories in the 1970s and 1980s.

Bush has also consolidated his base much earlier and more completely than Gore. Partly because he emerged in the primaries as the defender of traditional Republicanism against McCain’s calls for change and partly because of antipathy toward Clinton, Bush has routinely drawn support from 90% or more of Republicans in polls.

Gore, meanwhile, has struggled to attract more than three-fourths of Democrats in many surveys. Analysts in both campaigns agree that Gore has made some progress at unifying Democrats with the populist message he has stressed in recent weeks. But Gore is still being nicked from both sides, with Bush attracting a sizable share of conservative Democrats and Green Party nominee Ralph Nader luring away liberals, at least in the early going.

Bush’s early success at unifying Republicans has provided him a tactical advantage by allowing him to spend much of his time stressing centrist themes (like education reform) and courting swing voters. In both parties, most analysts agree that Bush forfeited an opportunity to strengthen that connection by choosing as his running mate Dick Cheney, a staunch conservative whose greatest appeal may be to the Republican base.

But Bush aides say that with Republicans already mobilized, the GOP convention next week will be squarely focused on moderate swing voters. Republicans are planning more appearances than usual by community activists rather than politicians, fewer than normal attacks on the opposition party and a concerted effort to solidify Bush’s image as “a different kind of Republican.”

“Tonally, thematically, the convention will be totally different,” says one senior Bush aide. “It’s not going to feel political. It’s going to be much more welcoming, much more multicultural, a lot more real people, a lot fewer politicians.”

Bush’s greater success at defending his base is reflected in the campaign’s geography as well. At the moment, Bush appears to have more options for reaching the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.

While holding big leads in most traditionally Republican states, Bush is running about even or ahead of Gore in a substantial list of states that Democrats have won in the last two, or in some cases three, elections. Among them: Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, Maryland, Arkansas, New Mexico and Minnesota.

Going Boldly Into Clinton Territory

Underscoring the Bush campaign’s confidence, the pre-convention tour he’s launching Friday will take him through six states that Clinton carried in each of the last two elections, including battleground behemoths Ohio and Pennsylvania. Bush has stayed relatively close to Gore even in coastal states, such as California and New Jersey, where Clinton won easily in 1996.

“The Gore people find themselves in a situation similar to us in terms of the electoral map,” says Tony Fabrizio, the chief strategist for GOP nominee Bob Dole in 1996. “They are having to defend turf they shouldn’t have to defend.”

Reflecting his limited crossover appeal, Gore hasn’t shown comparable strength in Republican terrain. With a strong African American turnout, his aides believe that Gore can compete in Georgia and perhaps North Carolina, both of which Dole carried last time. But both now look to be an uphill climb.

Still, the reality is that with Democrats averaging 375 electoral votes in the last two elections, Gore doesn’t need to add Republican states to win; he merely has to defend enough of Clinton’s gains. His aides remain confident that Democratic-leaning states like New Jersey will quickly solidify once voters learn more about Bush’s conservative views on issues such as gun control, abortion rights and the environment.

At that point, the Gore camp believes, the race will come down to the usual list of Midwestern battlegrounds--such as Ohio, Missouri, Michigan and Pennsylvania--with Florida looming as an intriguing wild card. Once reliably Republican, Florida went for Clinton last time; this year, Gore has usually run slightly ahead of Clinton’s national total there, suggesting that he could carry the state if he can close his national gap with Bush.

In that larger effort, Gore still has several important assets. Much of the debate in this campaign has focused on issues--such as education, health care, Social Security and Medicare--on which Democrats have traditionally held the advantage. And polls have consistently shown that a significant majority of Americans prefer to use the budget surplus primarily to pay down the national debt and to bolster Social Security and Medicare (as Gore is urging) rather than for a large tax cut as Bush has proposed.

Perhaps most important, about half (or more) of Americans tell pollsters they believe the country is moving in the right direction, especially economically. Americans have usually rewarded the party in power when they’ve been that satisfied. Gore, though, hasn’t yet benefited as much as expected from that contentment: He has no advantage over Bush when voters are asked who can better keep the country prosperous. An unusually high percentage of Americans happy with the country’s direction are also telling pollsters that they will vote for change by supporting Bush.

Those trends may partly reflect a growing tendency to attribute the nation’s prosperity to the high-technology industry rather than decisions in Washington. But Gore advisors believe the larger problem is that voters still see him almost entirely as vice president--a supporting actor rather than a strong leader. His challenge was encapsulated by a woman at a recent Michigan town meeting who asked Gore: “Where have you been for the past eight years?”

Faced with such attitudes, Gore strategists believe they are unlikely to overtake Bush unless they can flesh out the vice president’s personal story. They plan to focus extensively at next month’s Democratic convention on Gore’s biography, using testimonials from friends to highlight his service in Vietnam, his youthful disillusionment with politics and the causes he’s championed through his career.

“The support for Gore comes much more quickly and much more easily once voters get a sense of who he is,” says Tad Devine, a senior consultant to the campaign. “Until they understand something about his motivation and his biography and his background, it is difficult for voters to get a handle on him outside of the image of a vice president.”

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* WHAT’S TO REPORT?

To Howard Rosenberg, TV’s planned minimalist convention coverage is just about right. F1