How we can win.

HOW WE CAN WIN

THE DECADE OF THE Sixties is widely regarded in retrospect as the heyday of the New Left. This summer, twenty years after the riots that enlivened the Chicago Democratic convention of 1968, veterans of those heady days--greying now, with traces of middle-aged spread --are gathering here and there to relive what they plainly consider the Good Old Days, and to tell respectful interviewers how they "changed America."

Hardly anybody pauses to reflect on the striking fact that the New Left's heyday coincided precisely with the development of the Republican Party's so-called "lock" on presidential elections. Since the glory days of New Left activism, there have been five presidential elections. The Republican Party has won four of them, three by landslides, and lost the fifth by the narrowest of margins (50.1 to 48.0 per cent) for very special reasons. That there might be a connection between these events is rarely discussed in the media, for that would suggest that the New Left "changed America" in ways that its masterminds can hardly have intended.

As a matter of fact, the dominance of the Right in presidential elections commencing in 1968 is even greater than described above. For the election that was won only narrowly by the GOP--that of 1968 itself--was nevertheless, like those of 1972, 1980, and 1984, a brutal shellacking for the Left. Nixon only edged Humphrey by 43.j to 42.7 per cent; but George Wallace, whose attitude toward the New Left was hardly cordial, won 13.5 per cent of the votes. The combined votes of the anti-New Left candidates, therefore, amounted to 57 per cent of the total.

And even the election of 1976, which the Republicans lost, offered little consolation to liberals. Gerald Ford chose as his running-mate Robert Dole, a Kansas senator of a similarly standard Republican background. The Democrats, however, still licking their wounds after McGovern's 49-states-to-one trouncing in 1972, nominated an ex-governor of Georgia who proclaimed himself a born-again Christian and ran against the Washington establishment. Save for the irrelevant George Wallace, Jimmy Carter was relatively the most conservative candidate seeking the Democratic nomination in 1976. And his hair's-breadth victory is the only success the Democrats can claim, at the presidential level, since those New Left hot-shots "changed America" in the mid 1960s.

What accounts for this remarkable turnabout? In the 36 years and nine presidential elections prior to 1968, the Republican Party won the Presidency exactly twice--in both cases thanks largely to the personal popularity of a general brought into the arena from outside politics altogether.

The GOP, in fact, had become accustomed to losing. It was the home of approximately 40 per cent of American voters: the "economic conservatives," who favored limited government and balanced budgets. Even Barry Goldwater in 1964, with the knives of such liberal Republicans as Nelson Rockefeller and Jacob Javits in his back, managed to garner 38 per cent of the votes. But where, and whose, were the additional votes that defeated Democratic candidates so spectacularly in and after 1968?

THERE IS NO MYSTERY about the answer. The voters who have contributed winning margins to the Republican Party since the late 1960s are components of the old Roosevelt Democratic coalition: white Southerners, Northern "ethnics," blue-collar workers, and older-fashioned Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. By 1968 they had had it "up to here" with the neo-Marxists, rioters, hippies, drug addicts, welfare queens, sexual revolutionaries, and miscellaneous if-it-feels-good-do-it types that had crawled out from under the rock of liberalism. These "social conservative" voters were relatively indifferent to the balance-the-budget rhetoric of the hard-core economic-conservative Republicans. But they had, correctly, identified liberalism as the fons et origo of the disruptive cultural tendencies sapping away at the moral foundations of American society. They accordingly proceeded to align themselves with those forces--i.e., the economic-conservative Republicans--who were also opposed to liberalism.

What has triumphed, then, in almost every presidential election since the mid 1960s is best thought of not as a bloc of typical old-fashioned conservatives at all, but as an anti-liberal coalition. Richard Nixon won the votes of ths coalition in 1972 because he was blessed with an opponent who made every anti-liberal's gorge rise. Ronald Reagan, however, in 1980, and even more spectacularly in 1984, swept the country with the coalition's enthusiastic support because he personally endorsed the views of both its components: the economic and the social conservatives.

How does this analysis apply to the election of 1988? The Democrats know very well that their patented brand of liberal snake oil--high taxes, Big Government, and federal handouts for all "accredited victims"--is still selling very poorly indeed. On the other hand, their frantic search for "new ideas" has gotten nowhere. The truth is that genuinely new ideas in politics are few and far between. So--short of abandoning their whole political base, made up of that approximately 40 per cent of the American electorate that they have addicted to federal largesse in one form or another (even McGovern in 1972 got, like Goldwater in 1964, 38 per cent of the votes)--the Democrats had no choice but to run an essentially liberal candidate.

And that, of course, is what Michael Dukakis is. He is the human incarnation of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government: a low-keyed liberal technocrat, sensitively attuned to every vibration of the Democratic Party's extensive web.

But neither Dukakis personally nor the Democratic Party as a whole has the slightest intention of running a liberal campaign this year. If the modern conservative movement, or the Reagan Administration, needed any further tribute to their impact, the strategy of the Democrats in the present election would certainly provide it.

Being interviewed by Bryant Gumbel on NBC's Today show during the Democratic convention in Atlanta, Congressman Joseph Kennedy II made a wonderfully revealing slip of the tongue. Was this convention, Gumbel asked him, less "liberal," and thus perhaps more "conservative," than previous ones? To which this scion of the House of Kennedy replied, "Oh, I think we have to get away from these liberals--I mean labels."

And "get away" from the visible stigmata of liberalism is precisely what the Democrats are trying desperately to do. Their platform avoids the word "taxes" altogether--an incredible piece of cynicism in a document that purportedly covers the whole range of government activities. "Spend" is another no-no; the Democrats have learned to talk about "investing" rather than spending. Dukakis himself is depicted as so compulsively "frugal" that he is still hanging onto a 25-year-old snow blower. As his vice-presidential running-mate, Dukakis chose a Texas senator with one of the most conservative voting records of any Democrat in that body (a record, incidentally, that conflicts with Dukaki's own on almost every subject on which Dukakis has a record).

WHEN THEY ARE called upon to explain this behavior, the Democratic Party's strategists will privately admit that they are attempting to woo back what they and their obedient patsies in the media misleadingly call "the Reagan Democrats."

It is unclear whether the investors of this expression are merely kidding others, or themselves as well. But the "Reagan Democrats" are, of course, that whole previously described bloc of social conservatives, who have been off the Democratic reservation since the mid 1960s. They twice voted for Ronald Reagan in their millions, to be sure; but they are not merely victims of Reagan's notorious charm, or of his allegedly "simplistic" solutions for national problems: their defection from the Democratic Party is, as we saw, far deeper and longer-standing than that. They have been the voters primarily responsible for making the Democratic Party a presidential basket-case for the last two decades.

How will the social conservatives vote? That is the critical question in this election year, as in every election year since they became the swing vote in American politics in the mid 1960s. All other considerations are secondary. The Democratic Party's passionate involvement with issues of concern primarily to blacks is no doubt understandable: save in 1964, the party has not won a majority of the white vote in any presidential election since the end of World War II. But though it regularly wins upward of 90 per cent of black votes, these are only a small fraction of the national total; it can hardly look for increases there to put it over the top. To win, the Democrats simply must lure back a substantial proportion of the social conservatives.

As for the Republican counter-strategy, it is at least conceivable that the GOP could inch leftward and pick up enough liberal Democrats to make up for whatever losses it sustained among social conservatives. Presumably that is what the GOP's few remaining liberals (there are at least two: Connecticut Senator Lowell Weicker and Iowa Congressman Jim Leach) would have it do. (They certainly can't argue that the social conservatives "have no place else to go.") But the obvious strategy for the Republican Party is to seek to maintain the great anti-liberal coalition that has sustained it since the mid 1960s.

Note that the GOP need not hang onto every social conservative. In 1976 Jimmy Carter lured back to the Democratic fold millions of them--Southern Baptists above all--who concluded (rightly, in my opinion) that the Ford-Dole ticket had little to offer them. Yet Carter defeated Ford by only the narrowest of margins, because millions of other social conservatives refused to be lured. With reasonable attention to the claims and concerns of this bloc, it should be possible for George Bush and the Republican Party to hold onto the votes of most, albeit not all, social conservatives this year, and send Michael Dukakis back to Harvard in November for a couple of refresher courses.

Of course no issue, and certainly no coalition, lasts forever. It is that fact that has tempted certain impatient analysts (Kevin Phillips, for one) to argue that the great anti-liberal coalition is breaking up, with new concerns pushing to the fore and driving its components in different, even opposite, directions. The Democrats themselves have long dreamed of letting the Republican Party have the blasted social conservatives if it wants them so much, provided only that the Democrats, by pointing with horror at the Falwells and Robertsons, can scare into their own camp a sizable number of previously Republican yuppies who may be economic conservatives but don't want Jerry Falwell "imposing his values" on them.

The short answer to such daydreams, however, is to point to what the Democrats are actually doing this year. They aren't attempting any such fancy two-cushion shot. They are just trying desperately to blend into the prevailing conservative ethos and tiptoe into the White House on the grounds that they are anti-Khomeini, anti-astrology, and anti-Meese.

THE REPUBLICANS, therefore, will be foolish indeed if they don't seek to maintain their powerful coalition by binding the social conservatives to them with hoops of steel.

The Bush high command has already taken the first important step in this direction, by endorsing what amounts simply to an updating of the 1984 platform, on which Reagan and Bush ran so successfully. Pat Robertson and other influential social conservatives are reportedly well satisfied with the draft now approaching completion. They are well aware that the big social-conservative issues (e.g., anti-abortion measures) go to the heart of our society's profoundest assumptions and will not be resolved this year --or next. But they are confident that the present leadership of the Republican Party is in their corner on the major issues, and they are content to remain in its corner in return.

In the campaign itself, the GOP must resist the temptation to try to beat the Democrats at their old game of cash-as-compassion. It must sound instead the themes that have resonated so powerfully during the Reagan years: negotiating from strength; the renewal of national pride; prosperity based on encouraging individual initiative; and a solicitude for those in need that does not turn them into lifelong mendicants. The American economy is in its 69th month of steady growth. What is it, precisely, that Michael Dukakis is so eager to change?

The designation of New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean as the Republican convention's keynote speaker caused a ripple of concern among conservatives, since Kean is a relatively "moderate" Republican from the Northeast, best known for his uncanny ability to win the votes of blacks in his own state. If this choice were followed by others of the same type--especially in the matter of the vice-presidential nomination--the ripple of concern might swell into a tsunami. But many observers believe that Kean's designation was simply a small and diplomatic zig, to be followed at the New Orleans convention by other and more important zags to the right. As to that, we shall soon see.

Bush's most important remaining decision, of course, is his choice of a running-mate. If our analysis of the Republican Party's necessary strategy is valid, that running-mate simply must not come, like Bush himself, from the old economic-conservative core of the GOP. That was Ford's mistake when he chose Dole in 1976, and James Reston hit the nail on the head (for a change) when he promptly wisecracked, "That ticket will run strongly all the way from Grand Rapids to Topeka."

Bush's running-mate must appeal as strongly as possible to the social-conservative members of the GOP coalition. This will not only balance the ticket; it will also help mightily to ward off the raid the Democrats are obviously trying to make on this crucial bloc.

It is no discredit to Bush that he personally has certain characteristics--the "preppie style, for example--that are simply outside the experience of the average social conservative. Nobody can be all things to all men, and the American people are too sensible to expect this. But there is every reason why the Republican Party should put forward a ticket symbolic of the coalition that sustains it, and no reason on earth why it shouldn't.

Let us be clear, then, about one thing: the designation of a vice-presidential candidate from a Northeastern, East Central, or Border state, identified principally with the economic-conservative wing of the Republican Party (let alone its so-called "moderate" element), would be a disaster of monumental proportions: literally, a prescription for defeat.

Fortunately there are plenty of alternatives, above all in the West. It is a striking fact that every winning Republican ticket since 1924 has had a Californian on it. And while Governor Deukmejian is far from charismatic, and in any case is desperately needed in Sacramento to fight the 1990 reapportionment battles (his lieutenant governor is a Democrat), there are a number of other Wester leaders in the party who are closely identified with its social-conservative wing and who would serve many of the same purposes as a Californian.

For example, early this year the Western States Political Caucus, an influential group of conservative party officials and activists founded in 1976 to support Governor Reagan, issued a "short list" of possible Western vice-presidential choices, in the following order: Interior Secretary Donald Hodel (who hails from Oregon); Senator James McClure of Idaho; former Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada; Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah; and Senator John McCain of Arizona. Governor Deukmejian's name was appended to the list, subject to the aforementioned qualification about reapportionment, and that of Senator William Armstrong of Colorado could well be added to it.

In addition, there are at least three major figures not identified with the West whose support among social conservatives entitles them to serious consideration: Congressman Jack Kemp of New York, former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Secretary of Education William Bennett. All three, like all of the Western possibilities listed above, have both advantages and disadvantages; but there is certainly no reason to conclude that a candidate who will appeal strongly to the social conservatives can't be found.

THANKS TO gerrymanders locked into place during its long ascendancy, plus laws that render incumbents almost invincible, the Democratic Party contrives to dominate the House of Representatives by an impressive margin, despite the fact that substantially equal numbers of Americans cast their ballots for Republican and Democratic candidates for that body. The Senate, as the past decade has demonstrated, is a far less predictable matter.

But in the great quadrennial presidential contests, in which the largest number of Americans vote and which present the clearest-cut choice over the whole range of national issues, the past two decades have demonstrated the powerful and persistent sway of the impressive coalition of Americans who have chosen to make the Republican Party their base. They are people who understand that, in order to remain free and deal effectively with both its domestic problems and its foreign enemies, America must be strong, both morally and militarily; who know, moreover, that military strength must be based on economic strength--and that this, in turn, is the product of the energies of free men and women, not of bureaucracies, regulations, or subsidies. They will know how to assess a party that slyly fails even to mention the word "taxes" in its platform, and that tries, all too belatedly and mechanically, to identify itself with "family values" by parading its leaders' progeny on national television.

As long as the Republican Party remains loyal to the conservative social and economic principles that have led it to victory, the great coalition forged through dedication to those principles will remain loyal to it.