TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/111990/1119101.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 27.0 KB | 525 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 32

COVER STORIES

Keep the Bums In


Frustrated voters send an angry message: no to politics-as-
usual. But a stacked system protects incumbents so well that
nearly all of them will be back.

By NANCY GIBBS -- Reported by Jordan Bonfante/ Los Angeles,
Hays Gorey/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Houston


    In years to come, scholars sifting through the sediment of
last week's midterm elections may not find many clues about the
shape of American civilization in 1990. Every pillar of
conventional wisdom turned to dust in the voting booths --
leaving hardly a trace of the S&L crisis, or the debate over war
in the Persian Gulf, or the backlash against the budget deal
finally signed by the President last week. Perhaps the lessons
of the election will be found in what was missing: any
consistent theme, any tidy conclusions, any sense that voters
had found a way to make themselves heard.

    Where, after all the rumblings of autumn, was the wrath of
constituents who were thought to be savoring the chance to vote
the bums out? In the end the electorate managed to reduce the
re-election rate of House incumbents from 98% to 96% -- at a
time when polls found that a majority of voters believed
Congress was doing a bad job. Sitting Governors fared less well,
as 14 of 36 states threw out the governing party. But that
result too was typical for a midterm election and merely proved
once again that in the civil war between embittered voters and
embattled officeholders, incumbency is the most powerful weapon
and voter turnout the first casualty.

    The anti-incumbent mood, so widely chronicled in the weeks
before the voting, did show up in bits and pieces. In Minnesota a
scrappy college professor, Paul Wellstone, unseated Senator Rudy
Boschwitz by campaigning out of the back of a bus. Several
Capitol Goliaths, notably Democratic Senator Bill Bradley in New
Jersey and Republican Representative Newt Gingrich in Georgia,
reeled and very nearly fell to obscure challengers with tiny war
chests. Other smug incumbents saw their margins of victory cut
in half since the last go-round. Wherever voters could opt for
"none of the above," they did. Independent candidates won the
Governor's races in Connecticut and Alaska, and Vermont will be
sending to Congress a socialist who ran as an independent.

    But an overwhelming majority of Americans chose to send
their signals by staying home: the 36.4% turnout rate among
eligible adults tied 1986 as the second lowest since 1942. The
low participation left politicians and pundits scrambling for an
explanation -- and failing to come up with any that was
convincing. "If you are asking me what the mood of the people
is, I have to tell you I don't know," mused New York Governor
Mario Cuomo, who saw his share of the vote drop from 65% in 1986
to 53% as he won a third term over a trio of political nobodies.
"How would you know?" he asked. "They don't vote. Is it that
they are pleased? Is it that they are despairing? Is it that
they think it's futile? Are they egocentric? Are they ignorant?
I don't know. You can't poll the people who don't vote."

    Cuomo's puzzlement was somewhat disingenuous. Americans
certainly showed no signs of being pleased with their government
at any level, nor of being ignorant. If any signal came through
last week, it was a primal scream of disgust with
politics-as-usual, a blunt and resounding no! No to the lies and
intrigues of Washington, no to spending by politicians who can't
be trusted with the public's dollars, no to a money-greased
political system dedicated to self-preservation rather than
leadership.

    In this surge of reflexive rejection, some worthy
initiatives went down to defeat. And the restless electorate
showed itself capable of disingenuousness as well. If voters
truly wished to engage in some creative destruction, they might
have started with the incumbents close at hand, in their own
districts. As it turned out, voters only wanted to vote out
other people's bums. "People are looking for simple answers, and
they talk a good game about `none of the above,'" explained
retired Methodist minister Orval Strong of Austin. "But in the
end they don't want to forfeit their vote by leaving the
balloting to others."

    There was something painful about watching the electorate
trying in vain to make itself understood. Every message was
mixed. Is there a gender gap? Dianne Feinstein lost California
and Ann Richards won Texas, each carrying the women's vote by
nearly 3 to 2 -- but Lynn Martin in Illinois actually did worse
among women than among men. Is there a tax revolt? Virtually
every new tax was voted down -- but so were a host of proposals
to freeze or slash present tax levels. Has America turned Green?
Any environmental measure that meant new levies or bigger state
debt went down to defeat. "The most important conclusion is that
there was no theme at all," says former Arizona Governor Bruce
Babbitt. "To quote Winston Churchill, we had a pudding without
a theme."

    One message, however, was very clear. The voter cynicism
that such elections have bred will not be easily healed -- not
by campaign-finance reform, or voter education, or easing
registration requirements, or tinkering with term limitations.
Though such measures would help to restore voter faith in the
system, they could not alter the fact that an entire generation
of young voters has rarely had the experience of going to the
polls to vote with any enthusiasm for a candidate they trust,
instead of to choose the lesser of two evils. At the moment,
even if such candidates emerged, they probably could not win. If
they won, they could not govern. Until that changes, it may be
unreasonable to expect more than one-third of voters even to
bother going through a process that mainly serves to remind them
that they vote their fears, not their hopes.


    The Mighty Fortress. For all the ardent pandering of
politicians, all the carefully manufactured suspense of network
election coverage, voters in congressional elections did not
have much of a choice. In most states, by the time the ballots
were printed the decisions had been made. Voters could pick
between the bums they knew, the bums they didn't know and fringe
candidates they feared might be worst of all. Only 1 in 5
challengers had ever held any public office. "The first law of
politics still applies," says Charles Black, the Republican
Party spokesman. "You can't beat somebody with nobody."

    The whole spectacle left many voters with the sense that
the real competition was not between Republicans and Democrats
but between all those already in office and those seeking to
replace them. Sitting Democrats and Republicans alike share a
dread of doing anything that threatens their tenure by angering
voters: making hard decisions, putting limits on their powers or
engaging in serious debate. "The problem is that politicians are
fixed on self-preservation," says Chicago Democratic Party
consultant David Axelrod. "They are offensive to voters because
of all their efforts to be inoffensive." Members of both parties
are equally beholden to contributions from political-action
committees, wealthy benefactors and single-issue lobbyists. Thus
both the Democrats, who have been shut out of the White House
since 1981, and the Republicans, who have been shut out of
control of the House since 1954, have a vested interest in
maintaining the status quo.

    Voters' choices are also reduced because so many potential
opponents do not see much point in mounting a challenge. The
advantages of incumbency are virtually insurmountable:
voluminous free mailings, easy fund raising, large staffs,
access to the press. That power creates a vicious circle:
incumbents are so entrenched that few challengers of any caliber
will run against them -- and the few who do cannot count on much
help from their national parties. This leaves voters with little
alternative but to send incumbents back for another term, in the
process reinforcing the holdovers' aura of invincibility.

    "Most normal people, not to mention the best-qualified
people, will not tolerate this system," says Elaine Kamarck,
senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington.
"So even the worst of the incumbents, who can use their
positions to rake in special-interest money year after year,
have an enormous advantage."

    In many tight races this year, both parties lost
opportunities by failing to find and support strong challengers.
The Democrats gave Newt Gingrich's opponent, lawyer David
Worley, only $5,000 -- and Gingrich won by fewer than 1,000
votes. Other sacrificial lambs turned into lions on election
day, most notably Christine Whitman, the invisible woman in New
Jersey's Senate race who nearly toppled Bradley -- despite being
outspent 20 to 1.

    But upsets were the exception to the rule. Better than 1 in 6
House members had no major-party opposition. Of the 406
incumbents who sought re-election, 79 ran unopposed and 168
faced foes who had raised less than $25,000, nowhere near enough
to finance an expensive televised campaign. Only 23 challengers
were able to raise even half as much money as the incumbent --
in part because political-action committees gave 19 times as
much to sitting lawmakers as to their foes. In fact, as of Sept.
30, two Congressmen alone -- Stephen Solarz of New York and Mel
Leof Los Angeles -- had raised more campaign money than all 331
challengers combined: $3,385,606 vs. $3,320,672. Says Common
Cause president Fred Wertheimer: "House members are shielded by
a wall of political money that makes them nearly invincible."

    What rankled many voters was that so much of the money was
poured into television ad campaigns that were at best amusing,
at worst deceptive and almost never substantive. "I don't even
know who stood for what issues," says Mindy Tornatore, a
cosmetics-company account executive in St. Louis. "All I know is
who trashed who."

    The mudslinging might have been even worse had not local
newspapers and television stations acted as watchdogs,
correcting the worst distortions. In some cases, candidates'
high-priced hired guns became issues. Republican consultant
Roger Ailes, the self-styled dark prince of political
advertising who helped to fashion George Bush's
rough-and-tumble 1988 campaign, came under fire for branding
Democratic Senator Paul Simon a "weenie." Ann Richards' adviser,
Robert Squier, produced one ad that altered a newspaper headline
to make it seem that the paper, rather than Richards, was
criticizing Clayton Williams. The commercial had to be
withdrawn.

    Despite many pious promises by candidates to forswear such
tactics, negative campaigning is here to stay, in part because
it is easier to tear down an opponent's reputation than to take
strong positions on controversial issues. "If there hadn't been
negative campaigning, no one would have had anything to talk
about," says political scientist Paul Green in Chicago.
"Politics is a giant minute waltz."


    Meanwhile, Back Home. In addition, incumbents could take
advantage of the old saw that "all politics is local." "It's the
self-preservation instinct at work," says political scientist
Greg Thielemann of the University of Texas at Dallas.
"Pork-barreling in our direction is O.K." Ironically, a general
anti-Washington feeling can work to an incumbent's advantage.
The more people distrust the yahoos in Congress, the more
inclined they are to cling to "their guy" as their one defender
against congressional tomfoolery.

    Especially in uncertain times, fear can quickly overtake
fury. The folks back home develop warm feelings toward the
legislator who sends out chatty newsletters (printed at
government expense), who traces Grandpa's lost Social Security
check (by turning the chore over to a government-paid assistant)
and fights to keep the local airbase open (though it contributes
nothing to the national defense).

    As last week's cliff-hangers made clear, politicians ignore
such tasks at their own peril. Big-name national figures learned
they could not take local issues for granted while they pursued
a national agenda. For all his stature as a potential
presidential candidate, Bill Bradley very nearly fell victim to
a local political battle over New Jersey Governor Jim Florio's
detested $2.8 billion tax hike. Bradley tried to hide from voter
wrath against Florio, but he was the only target in sight; in
the end he squeezed into office with 51% of the vote, down from
64% six years ago. Florio heard the message as well: the next
day he agreed to rethink his tax plan.

    But Bradley and his colleagues in tight races were merely
chastened. Nothing short of a scandal could oust most sitting
lawmakers. Because of his unseemly ties to defense contractors,
Maryland Democrat Roy Dyson was defeated by a high school
teacher. Voters ousted Minnesota Republican Arlan Stangeland
after questions were raised about his charging to his House
expense account several hundred phone calls to a female
lobbyist. Two West Coast G.O.P. Congressmen, Oregon's Denny
Smith and California's Charles Pashayan, were crushed beneath
the weight of the savings and loan mess, though other S&L
joyriders survived. California Senator Alan Cranston, also
tainted by the S&L debacle, announced that he would not run for a
fifth term in 1992. He cited health as the reason. However, his
home-state standing has plummeted.


    Setting Limits. Presented with few real choices, voters
found other ways to make themselves heard. By wide margins,
voters in California, Colorado and Kansas City passed
resolutions that would force legislators to leave office after
12 years. Polls elsewhere showed strong support for limiting
Congressmen and Senators to 12 years in office, even though that
would mean that many popular lawmakers would be forced to step
down long before voters are ready to retire them. On one level,
term limits are no more than a Republican ploy to break the
Democrats' grip on state legislatures and Congress. Moreover,
it is not clear that states have the constitutional right to
determine the qualifications of members of Congress; the
Colorado bill is sure to go to the Supreme Court. But it is also
a measure of voter despair that so many people see no other way
to bring in fresh blood than by ejecting incumbents across the
board.

    One better way, of course, would be for Congress and the
White House to support genuine campaign-finance reform as at
least a start in making the electoral process look more like a
competition than a coronation. Providing incumbents and
challengers with equal amounts of public funds and access to the
airwaves would weaken the special interests and open the races
to genuine challenge. Last week's dispiriting results raised
some hopes that reform might finally stand a chance. "I see a
glimmer, like Rome in decay," says Texas environmental activist
Diane Wilson. "We're nearing a point where it's so bad, the
system will be forced to reform."

    But the House has avoided taking action, and Republican
filibusters blocked votes on reform measures in the Senate. If
anything, the narrow escapes of so many incumbents are likely to
make them all the more protective of their privileges -- now,
of all times, they cannot afford to play fair. That, in fact,
is just what many voters expect incumbents to do. "They all got
back in," complains Jack Vanden Brulle, 55, a Berkeley printer.
"Oh, sure, they say that some races were closer than those
people have been accustomed to, and that therefore they may have
got a message. But I don't believe that -- you can't scare these
guys."

    A small bit of good news last week was that money, while it
never hurts, does not guarantee victory. In Florida, Democrat
Lawton Chiles was outspent 2 to 1 by Republican Governor Bob
Martinez. Yet Chiles prevailed by capitalizing on the revulsion
with politics-as-usual in a conspicuously populist campaign.
"I'm really frustrated with politicians, but I just liked Chiles
for how he ran his campaign. It wasn't the issues at all," said
Elizabeth Bardfeld, a 26-year-old law-school graduate. Some
analysts saw Florida's election as a trendsetter, proving that
a plain-speaking candidate with a low budget can beat a flush
Republican with a slick advertising machine. "Chiles got off the
big-money wagon and he walked the streets," says Carmen Morris,
32, president of a Miami public relations firm. "And we ate it
up."

    Nor could money prevail in Texas, where multimillionaire
Republican Clayton Williams spent $8 million of his own funds
($4.40 a vote)  running against state treasurer Ann Richards. He
made his humiliation only more expensive. "It was the stupidest
campaign run in the country this year," declares Emory
University political scientist Merle Black. The race was
Williams' to lose: he led by as much as 15 points over the
summer, until his sexist buffoonery, his ignorance of state
government and his admission that he paid no income taxes in
1986 made a lasting impression on voters.

    For all the talk that George Bush's coat had no tails, the
President may have made the difference in the most crucial race
of all: helping Senator Pete Wilson defeat Feinstein in
California. The state will gain seven new congressional seats as
a result of the 1990 census, and will account for 20% of all the
electoral votes needed to win the White House.

    Analysts trying to assess the long-term impact of last
week's voting point above all to the redistricting battle that
will soon unfold in many states. Despite holding the
governorships in California and Illinois and gaining those in
Michigan and Ohio, the Republicans are still in a weaker
position than Democrats to draw new congressional district
lines. The Democratic losses were more than made up for by their
victories in Florida and Texas, key Sunbelt states where the
G.O.P. had expected to make major inroads this year.


    The Season of Discontent. Midterm elections are
traditionally an expression of discontent with the party that
controls the White House, and 1990 was no exception. Earlier
this year, when the President's approval rating floated up to
80%, the G.O.P. had hoped for a big upset that would open the
way to Senate control in 1992, when 20 Democrats will be
defending their seats.

    But then, to the horror of Republican candidates and
strategists, Bush squandered the most powerful asset of all. By
abandoning his "no new taxes" pledge, Bush stripped his party
of its most effective electoral theme. The battle over the
budget, during which Bush waffled repeatedly and reinforced his
image as a champion of the rich, was a political nightmare come
true. "Bush had led all the Representatives to run against
taxes," says Paul Quirk, a political scientist at the University
of Illinois-Chicago, "and he had to hurt all of them."

    Despite Bush's tumble, Democrats were not able to clean up.
One reason was that they already held such a heavy majority in
the House of Representatives, 258 to 175. "There are so many of
us now," notes Speaker Tom Foley, that "we may be bumping up
against the ceiling." But it was also clear last week that
Democrats were hurt by the budget battle. Their vaunted attempt
to exploit the "fairness issue" by raising taxes on the wealthy
fizzled in a generalized rejection of tax hikes of all kinds.


    No New Taxes. The ingrained distrust of government's
ability to spend money wisely was even more pronounced at the
state level. In contrast to previous elections, voters refused
to impose new taxes even when they were earmarked for specific
popular causes like fighting drugs and crime or protecting the
environment. "Last time we were ready to pay, and we got taxed
for it," says Sunny Merik, an editor in Santa Clara, Calif., who
in the past supported measures that underwrote highway
improvements and other public works. "But then the people in
Washington put some [fuel] taxes on top of that, and then gas
prices went up because of the Middle East. People would be crazy
to tax themselves on top of all that. I have one friend who said
he voted against everything that cost money."

    Fear of an economic recession and painful cuts in services
dissuaded voters from approving draconian cuts in present tax
levels. In California, Montana, Nebraska, Colorado and Utah,
they rejected initiatives that would limit spending or roll back
taxes. A similar measure in Massachusetts would have cut the
state budget by 8% by reducing fees to 1988 levels. The proposal
was supported by the Republican candidate, William Weld, and
opposed by Democrat John Silber, who warned of a "meltdown" of
the state economy. In the end voters accepted Weld -- and
rejected his tax rollback.

    There were similar mixed messages in other states. In
Illinois, Democrat Neil Hartigan promised to remove an unpopular
2% income tax surcharge, while Republican James Edgar admitted
he would keep the levy in place. Edgar privately asked George
Bush to stay away, fearing the anger that Bush's tax reversal
had bred. Voters overwhelmingly wanted a rollback -- but did not
trust Hartigan to do it. Edgar won by 52% to 48%. Nebraska's
Republican Governor, Kay Orr, went back on her pledge not to
raise taxes, as did Florida's Martinez and Governor Mike Hayden
in Kansas. All three lost.

    In many cases, the Governors who fell were victims of an
electoral irony. The anger at politicians in Washington was felt
more on the state level than on the national level. Throughout
the 1980s, Reaganomics shifted much of the burden of government
to the states -- whether for providing services or finding ways
to pay for them. Incumbent members of Congress can hide from
their responsibility for such steps, but sitting Governors
cannot. As chief executives, they directly bear the blame for
policies that affect the voters. That wrath accounts for the
decisions by Connecticut's William O'Neill and Massachusetts'
Michael Dukakis not to seek another term after imposing tax
increases. Special-interest money also plays a smaller role in
state races -- which means that voters can more easily make
themselves heard.


    A Gender Gap? When it came to the "woman factor," the
patterns were just as difficult to discern. This was supposed to
be the year that women candidates would pour into office in
record numbers. More women were running for top posts than ever
before: eight each for the U.S. Senate and governorships, 67 for
the House of Representatives. With few exceptions these
candidates were experienced politicians who had worked their way
up through the system and established networks of support that
might carry them into high office at last.

    Yet as the election approached, events seemed to conspire
against female office seekers. The Persian Gulf crisis pushed
abortion and other social issues off the front pages, making it
harder for challengers like Claudine Schneider, who tried to
upset Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, the veteran chairman
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But in Oregon Barbara
Roberts used a breezy style and support for abortion rights to
stage a come-from-behind victory over an opponent who spent
almost twice as much money. There was still a gender gap: women
turned out heavily for Richards in Texas and Feinstein in
California. But one result of the coming of age of female
candidates is that their gender is no longer a novelty, no more
potent than specific concerns over taxes or crime -- or war and
peace. " `Women's issues' is a misnomer," says Richards. "They
care about crime, the environment and other things besides
abortion."

    In some cases, women exerted more influence on the outcomes
by their absence than by their presence. Democratic Governor Jim
Blanchard of Michigan was tossed out by voters who were
irritated by, among other things, his less than courtly dumping
of Lieutenant Governor Martha Griffiths, 78. His ex-wife also
made a contribution to his defeat by selling her titillating
memoirs to the Detroit News.

    Back in Washington, the increased Democratic strength in
Congress promises even more polarized policymaking. In the
House, Speaker Foley is likely to press populist bills on health
care, civil rights and an income tax surcharge on millionaires.
Foley's strategy is to confront Bush with an unpalatable choice:
if the President signs the legislation, Democrats will get the
credit, but if he vetoes the bills, Democrats will gain an issue
for 1992. Senate majority leader George Mitchell, who like Foley
had leaned toward conciliation with the White House in the past
two years, will take the offensive now that Bush has proved
vulnerable. That could lead to yet more partisan battles over
issues that Americans care deeply about: civil rights,
environmental protection, education and the war on drugs.

    In a sense this has been a month of civics lessons, which,
when studied together, confirm the deepest anxieties of the most
disheartened voters. It began with the budget battle, a bloody,
ugly brawl that left no winners and many scars. All the boasts
about statesmanship and responsibility could not hide the fact
that few hard decisions were made by either the White House or
the Congress. Even the handful of officials with the best
intentions and purest hearts could not find a way to make policy
out of principle. And even if they had, there is no certainty
that voters would have rewarded them for their courage.

    Then last week it became clear why. Anger could not be
channeled into action; the crippling of the policy process
begins with the electoral process. Hate mongering, deception and
mudslinging are all widely deplored, and then used to great
effect. How can voters fail to be cynical when politicians buy
their jobs by selling favors and use the money to ensure that
voters don't get much of a chance to punish them? Public opinion
surveys around the nation registered disgust and sorrow at the
processes by which lawmakers are elected and through which they
govern. As long as American politics drifts away from
democracy's dreams, the voters' only real choice will be to say
no.


____________________________________________________________
The Art of Redistricting


    Every 10 years census takers hit the streets, and state
lawmakers lunge for their maps. Once the Census Bureau
determines how the population has shifted, the states redraw the
lines of their congressional districts to adjust for gains and
losses. The potential creativity of this process raised the
stakes in several Governors' races last week. State legislators
redraw the lines, but Governors can veto redistricting plans --
and force favorable compromises. Artful lawmakers and Governors
may create districts that will be "safe seats" for their own
party. Since Democrats will control the process in 18 states
with more than 160 seats, Republicans will find it even more
difficult to expand their numbers in the House.