HICAGO - This was the week when the airwaves were supposed to be full of attack ads, when the airport tarmacs were supposed to be full of cheering crowds, when schools and community centers were supposed to be festooned with bunting and signs. But the Illinois primary this Tuesday has been all but canceled - and not for lack of interest.
Though hardly anyone misses the thrust-and-parry that a few more weeks of Republican presidential contests would have brought, the primary season left many questions unanswered. A week of struggling in Illinois, with its strong manufacturing, agricultural, and service sectors and with its strong political traditions, might have brought the Republican race to closure, not just to its conclusion.
Instead, this week in March is a lot like any late-winter week in Chicago. The night people still linger over the blues at Buddy Guy's Legends in the Loop, the fancy shoppers still dart from furriers to jewelers on the Magnificent Mile on North Michigan Avenue. And a lot of questions surrounding the Republican campaign remain. Here are a few that Illinois might have helped resolve:
What is George W. Bush's real appeal to Republicans? Exit polls in nearly every state showed that Bush performed well among GOP voters against Senator John McCain of Arizona, but a test of the Texas governor's attraction to Republicans in an industrial state with a strong Republican tradition would have been useful. The 2000 presidential race was unusual because no mainstream Republican candidates, except of course for Bush, were left by the time Iowa held its precinct caucuses and New Hampshire held its primary. The other candidates had been weeded out earlier. Republicans clearly favored Bush over McCain, who, after all, aimed his campaign in large measure toward independents and even toward some Democrats, but Republicans never got to choose among a set of conventional Republicans. Bush's father won the Republican nomination against such GOP figures as Senator Bob Dole of Kansas and Representative Jack F. Kemp of New York. The father faced a tougher, more representative test than the son.
Can Bush operate outside of a controlled situation? Ordinarily that question is answered in Iowa and New Hampshire, whose voters are relentless in their demands for unscripted candidate appearances. It wasn't. But Republicans who are about to select their presidential candidate have a right to see the nominee shorn of publicists, strategists, and marketers to help them assess their choice and gauge his mettle. In South Carolina, Michigan, Arizona, New York, and the West Coast, some of the armor around Bush shook loose. It might have completely fallen away by the time Bush and the GOP contest reached Illinois. He - and Republicans - would have been better off if it had.
Has Bush really been tested? On the surface, the Bush people argue, McCain gave Bush a test of a lifetime. Not so. Bush faced a tough competitor, one whose nerves and courage had been steeled, as McCain liked to say, in a Hanoi hotel where there were no chocolate mints on the pillow. But Bush's positions were never tested fully. Steve Forbes left the GOP race too early to test him on taxes, Elizabeth H. Dole left the race too early to test him with women, Lamar Alexander left the race too early to test him with moderate conservatives, Gary Bauer left the race too early to test him with ideological conservatives - and to test him on the great Geiger counter of GOP politics, abortion.
What kind of conservative is Bush? There are two answers - and thus no good answer. First, he is a compassionate conservative. Second, he is a conservative whose views and approach are comfortable to religious conservatives. They both can be true. But Bush began his campaign with the claim that he had pioneered a new sort of conservativism, a compassionate conservativism that he expected to flesh out as the campaign progressed. The phrase disappeared from view as McCain, to Bush's left, forced the Texas governor to claim he was a ''reformer with results.'' The night last week that Bush won 13 of 16 primaries and became the de facto GOP nominee the reform talk was in the background and the phrase ''compassionate conservative'' was back.
The Bush team claims it understands fully what the term means. Political professionals have only a vague idea of what Bush means. And the rest of the country is clueless. A few more weeks of wrangling over the definition of conservatism might have done Bush some good and surely would have performed a service for the electorate. Next week's primary here in Illinois is more than a missed date. It is a missed opportunity.
