Al Smith in 1924, so wonderfully oblivious to Wisconsin and Prohibition, was indeed what a future New York governor, FDR, called him, “the Happy Warrior.” Perhaps Smith’s provincialism-a trait of city slickers, especially New Yorkers-protected his happiness. When, four years later, he got nominated he got shellacked. New York’s current governor is the Grumpy Non-Warrior (so far; God may phone any day now). He spent last week aggrieved, denying he said what a tape recording proved he said about offering territorial concessions to Iraq. His denial indicates he thinks either that he is too saintly to err or too nimble to get caught. It is a nice question which attitude would be scariest in the Oval Office.
For now, the pertinent question about Mario Cuomo is: Will people out there in America (the landmass just off Manhattan, as New Yorkers see it) elect a liberal from a place many Americans consider a combination of Calcutta and Gomorrah? A state where, under Cuomo, the budget has nearly doubled while the population has grown hardly at all. Al Smith’s campaign anthem was “The Sidewalks of New York.” Who today wants to trip the light fantastic through the homeless on those sidewalks?
If Cuomo seeks the nomination, this may become a two-man Democratic contest, Cuomo against some Not Cuomo, perhaps Arkansas’s Gov. Bill Clinton. Last week Clinton got something he needs, someone to sharpen his interesting but blurry message. James Carville’s jeans and running shoes adorn a body as stringy as beef jerky. He looks like Dr. Seuss’s Grinch, except he has the wintry smile of Jack Palance in “Shane.” Carville is the gunslinger (consultant) who helped Harris Wofford win the Pennsylvania Senate seat. He says things like, “When people stay up late at night, they worry more about how to pay for education than how to pay for an abortion.” The Democratic Party has not recently been zoned for such common sense.
The prickly Cuomo is concentrated pugnacity. Unfortunately, he has more zest for argument than wisdom regarding what is worth arguing about. Still, against Bush he would do what Dukakis did not. It’s called self-defense. And he would attack with a sanctimoniousness that Bush would find insufferable. Clinton, too, may soon have bite, with the help of Carville. Carville has the ideological Tabasco sauce one expects from Louisianans in politics.
Speaking of that species, The New York Times’s headline-DUKE TAKES HIS ANGER INTO 1992 RACE-reflects only how David Duke looks to liberals in midtown Manhattan. They know about as much about Duke as Al Smith did about Wisconsin. True, many of Duke’s supporters are angry about this or that. (Some just like poking a thumb in the eye of Respectability.) But Duke himself is about as angry as an organizer of a Tupperware party. Politics for him is a business, the only one he has ever tried. He has found a market niche on the rancid right and, with direct mail solicitations, he has a good cash flow. That gives him potential as a nuisance, particularly to Bush.
Republicans gained ascendancy in presidential politics by detaching from the Democratic coalition many Southern whites and urban ethnics. If Duke does what George Wallace did in 1968-runs in November as an independent-he can siphon votes from Bush. Even just a few votes can matter, given the custom (it is only that) of winner-take-all allocation of states’ electoral votes. Small shifts in popular votes can produce dramatic redistributions of electoral votes. Remember, presidential politics is the game of getting 270 of them.
In 1988 a shift of just 0.3 percent of Bush’s California vote to Dukakis would have switched 47 electoral votes-a 94-vote tightening of the race. In 1992 California will have 54 votes, one fifth of the total needed to win. Nationally, the Democrats have a deep hole to claw their way out of. Bush carried 28 of his 40 states by 55 percent or more of the two-party vote and in 1992 those 28 will have 263 electoral votes. But Bush carried 8 states with less than 53 percent. In 1992 they will have 129 electoral votes.
Before November Bush must suffer the attentions of Pat Buchanan, who is heading for New Hampshire. It’s not a recession there, it’s a depression. Buchanan may ruin the crease in the presidential trousers. He loves to brawl and has had lots of practice. But nothing Buchanan says is apt to be as insulting to Bush as the letter 82 GOP congressmen sent to Bush asking him to appoint Jack Kemp “domestic policy czar.” Previous administrations have had such a leader. He was addressed as Mr. President. For some conservatives the last straw may have been Bush’s attempt to jump-start the economy by buying socks at J.C. Penney. That was the most inane gesture-as-policy (was it supposed to trigger a tide of emulative consumption by the sheeplike masses?) since Gerald Ford tried to whip inflation now with WIN buttons.
The editors of National Review, speaking for much of what used to be Bush’s conservative base, have issued a blistering ultimatum. They note that domestic federal spending has increased 10 percent annually during his tenure-faster than under any president since 1945. They denounce “the slapstick reputation of his White House staff " and “his desire for liberal approval and a quiet life.” They say his actions (raising taxes, accepting the civil rights quota bill, dithering about credit card interest rates) reveal " a vacuum where his principles are supposed to be.” Unless Bush “makes a major, explicit, and convincing turn to the right, therefore, we can no longer support his Administration.” But, hey, have a nice day.
Today Wordsworth’s words do not fit Bush:
This is the Happy Warrior; this is he whom every man in arms should wish to be.
