Ed Rollins, the self-proclaimed ”campaign hack” who managed the Reagan- Bush effort in 1984, assayed the field for 1992 last week and came to an unsurprising conclusion.
”I don`t think there`s a Democrat who can beat George Bush,” said Rollins, who has left the Republican preserve for the blandishments of the consultant`s life.
”It seems to me that he`s in the strongest position (for re-election) of any modern president.”
That assessment is shared by most Americans, including the gaggle of Democrats who may challenge President Bush next year. Few voters are persuaded that we`re going to be talking about President Paul Tsongas when Election Day `92 rolls around.
A president with an approval rating above 70 percent, a military victory to his credit and a recession that may be easing offers the prospect of a daunting encounter to a group Rollins refers to as ”Mario Cuomo and a bunch of boys.”
Still, Rollins has sweated out enough races to know that taking the electorate for granted is the first step toward ”Dewey Defeats Truman.”
Last week, talking about 1984, Rollins recalled that the Reagan campaign ran scared against Democrat Walter Mondale, right up until the landslide broke.
”It was not the Susan Estriches (Michael Dukakis` 1988 campaign manager) of the world running that campaign,” Rollins said.
”We anticipated a close election. The other side had an all-star team, and many of us thought we were looking at a 51-49 race.”
The Democratic gene for self-destruction took care of that concern for Rollins` party, but the former White House political director believes the same cautionary approach ought to apply to Bush-Quayle 1992.
He is concerned that Bush`s allies are buying into the conventional wisdom, the belief that the president is to be awarded a second term by a contented electorate.
While almost every barometer indicates that Bush is on his way to a coronation next year, there are signs of voter disaffection.
And Rollins numbers himself among those who believe that there will be a genuine presidential contest next year, and the result may be closer than most Americans expect.
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Republican mood-watchers are as aware as their Democratic counterparts that Americans are worried about their economic future, about education and long-term health care, about crime and drugs and the deficit. And the electorate does not appear convinced that either political party is addressing those concerns.
Two weeks ago, Republican pollster Richard Wirthlin, who parted company with Bush in 1988, said the incumbent president was in better re-election shape than Ronald Reagan was in 1983, 15 months before his landslide victory over Mondale.
”What the president needs to do is provide some sense of direction to the party on these issues,” Wirthlin said.
Last week, a bipartisan poll by Republican Fred Steeper and Democrat Stan Greenberg offered another of the sort of contradictory assessments that cloud the political horizon.
In March 1991, 56 percent of those surveyed said they thought the country was moving in the right direction. Coming in the afterglow of Operation Desert Storm, even a continuing economic recession could not stem the tide of good feeling rolling toward the Bush presidency.
This month, that number is down to 40 percent, and Democrats are, finally, picking up a campaign drumbeat.
In recent days, a host of Democrats, from Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton to Democratic Party Chairman Ron Brown, have strummed away at the same chord.
They are painting Bush as an absentee landlord, a globe-trotting crisis manager who can`t stay in the White House long enough to notice that the schools don`t work and the health-care system is dysfunctional and the wealth of the 1980s did not find its way to the middle class.
”Part of the problem for Republicans is that they deny the nature of our problems at home,” Clinton said last week. ”The Republican way is to neglect big problems because you don`t want to be associated with failure.”
Over the last generation, failure on Election Day has not been a problem for Republicans seeking the White House. Rollins` warning is that does not come with a guarantee.
”My great fear,” said Rollins, ”is that they`re sitting in the White House thinking this thing is a slam-dunk. They`re not running scared, and you simply can`t predict, 15 months before an election, what`s going to happen.”