THOMAS OLIPHANT
By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Staff, April 12, 1999
The addition of New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg's name to George W. Bush's crowded letterhead provides a revealing back-door view of the presidential candidate's real thinking about the defining crisis in the Balkans.
It also provides one more point of contrast with the person whose strong leadership on the issue has won, hands down, nationally as well as in pivotal New Hampshire, the first competition of the fledgling campaign, the Kosovo Caucus. That, of course, is Arizona Senator John McCain.
First, the revelation about Governor Bush. Gregg's recruitment -- and the timing -- demonstrate the war's place in the Bush campaign -- somewhere between inconsequential and irrelevant. Consider: Here's Bush Fils, the Dauphin, who after two embarrassing weeks of ducking and dodging, backing and filling, hedging and hinting, finally avers that maybe there's an American responsibility in all this.
Then, right smack in the middle of the crisis, he finally makes his first serious move in New Hampshire by attracting as First Figurehead one of the senators who opposes any US role, who says there is nothing happening in Kosovo that justifies the bombing run of a single American plane.
In Bush's world, this isn't acknowledged to be a problem, even in the context of last week's hype. The crisis is seen from Austin as having absolutely nothing to do with the identity of the Republican presidential nominee who almost certainly will have been selected a year from now.
The contrast is with McCain, whose major political move last week was to postpone his major political move -- the anouncement of his candidacy with a national tour and another splashdown in New Hampshire.
Instead, he spent the week earning 10 times the exposure his announcement would have attracted by becoming the spokesman for the non-Gregg wing of the Republican Party, arguing that the stakes for the United States at this moment in post-Cold War history are gigantic. People heard McCain as much as they heard President Clinton.
Don't misunderstand. Governor Bush's political No-Big-Dealism has the strong force of recent history and political common sense behind it. Prominent endorsers have always had issue differences with their endorsees. Indeed, in Bush's case, the attraction of Republicans from multiple perspectives is said to be precisely one of his candidacy's most appealing qualities.
In the Bush campaign, the Kosovo crisis is the classic distraction -- no matter what his crowded letterhead of supporting foreign policy big shots is telling him, and especially no matter that confronting Slobodan Milosevic over Kosovo was a solemn vow of Bush Pere seven years ago.
Point 1: The crisis will have passed well before Republicans start voting. Point 2: The crisis will have zero impact, even residually, on the GOP campaign. Point 3: The crisis will only have impact if something goes horribly wrong, in which case the impact will be on Al Gore. Point 4: That is an argument for soft-pedaled, hedged support for a US role and no more. Point 5: Above all, that is an argument for having the discipline to focus on keeping the juggernaut rolling -- classic front-runner strategy by possibly the most dominant front-runner in the modern game.
Family history provides the clincher. The war in the Persian Gulf had nothing to do with then-President Bush's political fortune except to the extent that it tricked Bush Pere into thinking it would because his huge, postfighting popularity was so important in dissuading so many well-known Democrats from entering the '92 race.
And that makes Governor Bush's well-publicized dissembling nothing more significant than the Persian Gulf fudge of then-Governor Clinton, except that Clinton was lucky not to have a national spotlight on him at the time.
On that basis, Judd Gregg's role as an opponent of US involvement is inconsequential because the issue itself is irrelevant to the task ahead. What counts is that New Hampshire's most popular and most senior elected official is aboard the letterhead, himself the scion of a locally famous father. And it counts so much that it was worth offering Gregg the traditional "national role" in the Bush effort, just like former governors John Sununu and Steve Merrill before him. It was especially worth it because Bush snared Gregg's political organization in the process.
Can't deny the logic, except that every once in a while logic doesn't apply to the nomination process.
Through John McCain's prism, the presidential primary stage is typically dark most days. There may be activity going on, but the public doesn't notice because the lights are off. But then, without warning, the lights can come on bright as opening night, and that is precisely when people pay close attention and make judgments about the actors.
From McCain's perspective, Kosovo is a classic defining moment -- not just on its own but as part of the deep fault line running through the party concerning America's role in the world, a concept that gets all this to economics as well as security policy and moral purpose. And this is one more moment, the previous one being abortion, when Governor Bush has failed to communicate except by calculation.
A year from now, people will look back on last week as a symptom, maybe a symbol, of two roads in presidential politics taken by the two men who didn't go to New Hampshire but were nonetheless on a well-lit stage. The totally focused front-runner put another big name on his letterhead. The underdog put forward a crystal-clear vision of his country's huge stakes in a foreign policy crisis.
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