TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/092391/0923103.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 8.9 KB | 179 lines

                ░                                                            ╚NATION, Page 21

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

"Always Attack, Never Defend"


Iowa's Tom Harkin, the third Democrat to announce, promises a
hard-hitting campaign based on unabashed liberalism and fiery
populist oratory

By LAURENCE I. BARRETT/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Nancy
Traver/Washington


    Combat. If one noun sums up Tom Harkin's political
program and persona, it is combat. The Iowa Democrat proudly
describes the strategy that won him five terms in the House and
two in the Senate: "Always attack, never defend." He believes
that a pugnacity gap kept Democrats out of the White House
through the '80s. Now, as he runs for President, he proposes to
fill that gap by waging class warfare against George Bush and
guerrilla operations against Democrats he considers timid. "The
only thing Americans like less than a dirty fighter," he says,
"is someone who won't fight back."

    He is hardly waiting for an excuse to counterpunch. For
months Harkin, 51, prepared for his formal announcement of
candidacy last weekend by conducting the kind of aggressive
populist campaign at which he excels. When he castigates the
Reagan and Bush administrations for favoring the rich and
harming the less affluent, he sings from the standard party
hymnal. But when Harkin gets personal, he deftly exploits the
politics of roots and resentment. He is the son of a Slovene
immigrant mother who died young and an Iowan coal miner who
never got to high school. In attacking the patrician President
he keenly dislikes, Harkin can make the incumbent's very name
sound odious.

    "I've got news for you, George . . . Herbert . . . Walker
. . . Bush," he says, jabbing his forefinger in the air. "Next
year the American working people are going to veto you!" Lines
like that evoke applause from blue-collar workers, farmers and
party activists. So does Harkin's hectoring of new-wave
Democrats who would move the party toward the center. Virginia
Governor Douglas Wilder, who became a candidate on Friday,
glories in his record of fiscal austerity. Paul Tsongas, the
earliest aspirant, styles himself a pro-business Democrat.
Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, still mulling a run, comes
across as a middle-roader. Of Harkin's rivals, actual or
potential, only Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey might match him as
an unapologetic prairie populist.

    For now, Harkin is the preacher of traditional liberal
psalms: a massive public-works scheme, increased spending for
education and health, lower taxes for the working class and
higher levies on the affluent. He promises "a bold plan for a
new economic structure." But many Americans long ago lost faith
in such primordial liberalism. Nathan Landow, Maryland party
chairman and a major campaign fund raiser, concedes that
Harkin's record could turn off wealthy contributors, not to
mention moderate voters. "But Tom has a fiery way about him that
will catch on," Landow says. "Maybe this time we need the
messenger and can relax a little about the message."

    Harkin's Senate colleagues last week were anything but
relaxed as he irked them with one of his guerrilla maneuvers.
As chairman of an appropriations subcommittee, he proposed
moving $3 billion from the Defense Department to popular
education and health programs. That would violate the
constraints in the 1990 deficit-reduction compromise reached
after much anguish, but Harkin thinks the five-year plan
inhibits flexibility and should be abolished. After an afternoon
of contentious debate, Harkin lost by a vote of 69 to 28, as he
knew he would. But among liberal political junkies who vote in
primaries, he scored points.

    Willingness, even eagerness, to take on any establishment
is part of Harkin's credo. He caused his first stir in Congress
well before being elected. In 1970, as a young congressional
staff member, he accompanied a dozen Representatives on a
fact-finding trip to South Vietnam. He discovered -- and
photographed -- abusive conditions at a camp for political
prisoners. When the committee's report glossed over the "tiger
cages," Harkin denounced it as a "whitewash" and sold his photos
to LIFE. Harkin, who was attending Catholic University's law
school at night and Saturdays, lost his job.

    Five years later, having defeated a veteran Republican for
a House seat, Harkin made larger waves. He bucked the Ford
White House and his own party leadership to pass a measure
forcing the Administration to use human rights as a criterion
in dispensing foreign aid. It was an unusual success for a
freshman who was not even on the House Foreign Affairs
Committee. Many Harkin amendments on diverse subjects followed.
Like last week's Senate effort, most were doomed, but Harkin
insists, "A vote should be taken. People should express
themselves." His habit of forcing difficult votes is one reason
Harkin never became a Hill insider. Democratic Representative
Dan Glickman of Kansas, though a friend, says of Harkin, "He's
a passion guy, not a dealmaker. You wouldn't want all 535
lawmakers to be passion guys. The place would be chaos."

    After he got to the Senate by defeating the Republican
incumbent, Roger Jepsen, in 1984, Harkin managed to combine
dealmaking and passion to pass the 1990 Americans with
Disabilities Act, a major statute that extends civil rights
protection to the handicapped. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the key
Republican in the deal, credits Harkin with skillful
accommodation on that issue. Yet Hatch also observes, "Some on
our side feel that he is the liberal equivalent of Jesse Helms."

    Harkin can probably live with the criticism that he is a
noisy ideologue. Other accusations carry a sharper sting. Some
Democratic associates in Iowa and Washington describe him as a
thin-skinned loner, quick to take offense and slow to form close
links with allies or underlings. Republican opponents routinely
accuse him of foul political play. His first adversary was
Congressman Bill Scherle, who beat Harkin in 1972 but lost to
him two years later. Scherle recalls Harkin's approach as
"fabrication and exaggeration." One ostensible example of that
dogged Harkin in later years. In a 1980 book by David Broder,
Changing of the Guard, Harkin is quoted as saying he spent one
of his five years as a Navy pilot in Vietnam flying
reconnaissance and patrol missions. In fact, as he carefully
makes clear today, he was based in Japan ferrying damaged
aircraft from Vietnam and other Asian sites.

    In his 1984 race against Jepsen, abortion was a
significant issue. At churches Harkin's camp distrib uted a
highly misleading handbill. It asserted, "As a Catholic, Tom
Harkin has always been opposed to abortion." In fact, he
professes philosophical qualms but usually votes on the
pro-choice side. The sheet also wrongly accused Jepsen of
supporting the death penalty "if your daughter, sister or mother
is raped and has an abortion."

    Tactics that raw have disappeared from Harkin's script,
but he often declines to let accuracy ruin a witty line or
blunt a political dart. Angry that Bush may provide emergency
assistance to the Soviet Union if food shortages worsen, Harkin
says that G.O.P. niggardliness toward elderly Americans will
force many of them "to choose this winter between heating and
eating." Harkin dismisses the possibility of starvation in the
Soviet Union: "I keep seeing these pictures of Russians. I've
never seen a picture of a skinny one yet." When he argues for
rapid reduction of U.S. forces in Europe, he uses the figure of
350,000. He doesn't mention that a drawdown is well under way;
according to the Pentagon, the number of troops still in Europe
is only 214,000.

    Under the intense scrutiny of a Presidential campaign,
this cunning carelessness could be a liability. But voters tend
to ignore such details, and Harkin's obviously heartfelt
commitment to his causes overshadows his lapses. Last week when
he pleaded for expanding immunization services for impoverished
children, he recalled getting shots from the visiting nurse at
his "two-room country schoolhouse, middle of nowhere, Iowa."
Neither he nor his five siblings had easy access to medical care
in the town of Cumming (pop. 139). When he fought for the
disabilities act, he had in mind his eldest brother, Frank, who
lost his hearing at nine when he contracted spinal meningitis.

    Bush's political handlers say they are eager to have
Harkin as an opponent because his old-fashioned liberalism makes
him an easy target. But Orrin Hatch, who knows Harkin better,
predicts that "he's going to be a very formidable candidate."
Conviction is a candidate's heavy armor, and Harkin's is thick.
Those who disparage him as too ideological, too careless with
facts, should remember 1980. Democratic strategists used the
same points in explaining why they wanted the G.O.P. to nominate
Ronald Reagan.