NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE / DAVID M. SHRIBMAN

A Campaign Trail's Echoes

By David M. Shribman, Globe Staff, March 23, 1999

WASHINGTON -- Last year the politicians produced a Congress about nothing. This year they're producing a presidential campaign about nothing.

Even in the more heavily contested Republian campaign, the conflicts are muted, the differences few, the tensions almost nonexistent. The candidates agree the clashes should be on the issues, not on personalities. But the candidates also agree on the issues.

They agree so much that it's possible to cut paragraphs from one speech and paste them seamlessly into another candidate's speech.

Take these three paragraphs:

- "Whoever the next president may be -- he or she -- should see to it your taxes are cut, our defense is rebuilt, drugs are reviled, and our schools are put back in the control of parents."

- "People ask me what are the first things I would do as president, what are my priorities. . . . They are: to fix public education; to improve family incomes by lowering taxes and securing Social Security; and to strengthen national defense."

- "It is conservative to cut taxes and compassionate to give people more money to spend. It is conservative to insist upon local control of schools and high standards and results, it is compassionate to make sure every child learns to read and no one is left behind."

The speech excerpts are from, respectively, former Red Cross president Elizabeth H. Dole, former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander, and Texas Governor George W. Bush. But it almost doesn't matter. Simply take away two giveaway words -- the "she" in Dole's remarks, the "compassionate" in Bush's -- and the excerpts would fit neatly in the others' speeches because they're all saying essentially the same thing.

Unencumbered by records

"The issue agreement is extraordinary, and that's because the race is defined by two front-runners who haven't taken positions on issues," says Thomas D. Rath, a Republican national committeeman from New Hampshire and a top Alexander adviser. "That's why we're left with saying: 'Here is my life, here is my resume, here are the principles I stand for.' "

Indeed, Bush and Dole -- the two candidates generally believed to be leading the GOP pack -- are remarkably unencumbered by positions on national issues or foreign affairs. Bush, the son of a Republican president, just won his second term as governor but has been in an elected office only 50 months. Dole, the wife of a Republican presidential nominee, has served in two Cabinet positions but has not sought elective office since she was chosen May Queen and student-government president at Duke University.

Their records and recent speeches yield only the barest outlines of their views. They believe in giving states and local governments more power and prerogatives, in cutting taxes, and in boosting defense. So do all Republicans. So, too, does President Clinton.

"Some of these candidates aren't saying anything," says Edward Gillespie, who is advising the presidential campaign of Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio. Adds Greg Mueller, who is advising publisher Steve Forbes: "This campaign will eventually be driven by a search for a blueprint for issues for victory. Right now that's not happening. A lot of people are taking a lot of time to figure out where they stand on issues, and that's feeding this idea that the Republicans have nothing they stand for."

The few points of departure

In the most bitter area of modern politics, abortion rights, the Republican candidates all generally oppose them. They disagree somewhat on the details, but they disagree substantially over whether Republicans should stress the issue. Bush does not think they should. Former Vice President Dan Quayle, conservative activist Gary Bauer, and Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire believe they should. On trade, most of the candidates are free-traders. Political commentator Patrick J. Buchanan is not.

Kasich fought to kill the B-2 bomber. Senator John McCain of Arizona supports an overhaul of campaign financing and is one of the most fervent battlers against tobacco. That's it. None of these things is causing much of a stir. None probably will.

And so the great irony of the struggle to win the Republican presidential nomination in the years of conservatism's ascendancy is that the campaign is merely redeeming the slogans of two politicians who couldn't disagree more.

One is former Governor Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, the Democrats' 1988 nominee. He was ridiculed for saying that the principal question in presidential politics is competence, not ideology. The other is former Governor George C. Wallace of Alabama, who ran for president three times. He tormented Richard M. Nixon and Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968 by proclaiming there wasn't a dime's difference between the two of them.

Dukakis and Wallace were both right.