In the spring of 1986, 30 months before the 1988 presidential election, Gary Hart had already said yes and Mario Cuomo had already said no. George Bush had his campaign team in place.
Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware was forming a political action committee. Former Arizona Gov. Bruce Babbitt was pedaling across Iowa, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri was collecting endorsements from his Democratic colleagues in the House and Gov. Michael Dukakis was issuing pronunciamentos on ”the Massachusetts miracle.”
With Ronald Reagan bound for California after eight years in the White House, the race to succeed him started early, perhaps too early.
But in the spring of 1990, 31 months before the next presidential election, Democrats are becalmed. There is no activity, no boomlet, and only a few quiet trips to Iowa, where the 1992 campaign will begin.
Instead there is a profound silence from the usual suspects, the platoon of ambitious Democrats most often mentioned when the presidential name game is played.
Given the current level of President Bush`s popularity, the silence of the Democratic lambs is understandable. Polls indicate that most voters surveyed like everything about Bush. They like his style, his spouse, his anti-tax rhetoric, his dealings with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and his antipathy toward certain green vegetables.
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According to the pollsters, continuing voter unhappiness with Vice President Dan Quayle is about the only drag on the Bush juggernaut.
Democrats are not inclined to wish any bad news on the president, but at a meeting of prominent Democrats in New Orleans last month, there were some definite signs of frustration.
”The way things are going for Bush,” said one congressional Democrat,
”he`ll probably get some hostages out and his approval ratings will go right off the chart.”
When the polls show a politician with approval ratings in the 70 percent area-and they don`t often show those sorts of high numbers-rivals avoid confrontation the way a pork chop avoids the grinder.
The consensus among Democratic wise guys is that barring a sudden slump in the economy, the 1992 election is a fool`s errand. That`s why, for example, Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee is crowding the set on the ”MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour” with his global-warming speech rather than forming the old presidential ”exploratory committee.”
That`s why Cuomo, the governor of New York, is talking about the rigors of state government in Albany and why Sen. Bill Bradley is insisting that the millions of dollars he`s collected in campaign contributions reflect nothing more than his passion for serving the good people of New Jersey in the U.S. Senate for another term.
That`s why, as a rule, Democrats in the shadow of age 50 are staring hard at 1996, when Bush will retire to the ancestral halls, presumably leaving the field to his loyal vice president, Quayle of Indiana.
At the New Orleans gathering, there was talk among Democrats of a stop-gap, geriatric Bentsen-Wilder ticket for 1992. That`s Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, the Democrats` vice presidential candidate in 1988, and Gov. Douglas Wilder of Virginia, the first black elected to a governor`s mansion since Reconstruction.
While both men are held in considerable regard among Democratic professionals, the fact that Bentsen is now 69 and Wilder 59 is considered a plus. At this moment, 1992 is not considered a young man`s game for Democrats. In the words of one party strategist, ”That ticket would get a few things done, presuming you`re really not going to beat George Bush.
Both these guys are a little long in the tooth, especially if you look past 1992.
”Bentsen wants to make a run, and a lot of people feel he maybe deserves it after holding up the ticket two years ago. He`s not going to embarrass you, which for Democrats would be a nice change.
”Wilder is perfect,” the Democrat continued, ”even if he keeps yelling that all he wants to be is governor of Virginia. People are impressed. You look what he did in his own campaign, you explore the idea of putting a black on a national ticket, you raise this guy up and maybe solve what a lot of us see as the Jesse Jackson problem.”
Jackson has ideas, a tireless faith in traditional party values and a proven national constituency, qualities lacking in most of his Democratic peers. But he is perceived as a problem, and his party may use the futility of 1992 to neutralize him.
Beyond that, there isn`t much in the way of a mission for Democrats two years from now.