How Bush Can Beat Gore
We've all heard a lot of talk, in this primary season that is near its end, about how George W. Bush beat John McCain in the Republican primaries by running as the more conservative candidate. This came as a surprise to some people since, before the primary campaign, McCain's record suggested that he was the more conservative of the two.
But an influential group of Republicans saw George Bush as the conservative candidate from the beginning, and backed him in large part because of it. Not conservative ideologically. Conservative strategically.
Many were the Wednesday-morning quarterbacks who, after Super Tuesday, clucked that the Republicans had punted by giving their primary votes to George W. Bush instead of John McCain. John McCain, these folks said, would have been the better, bolder choice for the general election, and they'd show you polls that had McCain at his height doing at least as well as Bush in a showdown with Gore.
These voices revel in the irony that Bush's first big selling point was that he was the man who could beat Gore. In the Bush family idiom, the invincibility thing.
Well, no one's invincible. But those in the Republican establishment who have put their money on Bush and who have worked hard to make sure rank-and-file GOP voters do the same aren't as out of touch with reality as some have made them out to be. Not by half.
What the Republican back-roomers have always held in sight is the simple fact that the American popular vote - which polls seek to predict - does not gain anyone the White House. The Electoral College has to put him there.
It's more than a matter of Civics 101 semantics. Much more. And the state-by-state, winner-take-all system prescribed by our Founding Fathers must dominate when assessing George W. Bush's chances in the general election.
Republican kingmakers knew going in that this would be a tough election. The likely Democratic nominee was a sitting vice president. From the South. Served two terms during which American prosperity exploded. But the scandals of the Clinton years and the way, despite "no controlling legal authority," that they had touched his Vice President, presented an opening.
In the beginning, before McCain's candidacy caught fire, George W. Bush was the obvious choice to go up against Gore in an undistinguished field of Republican hopefuls. But once McCain won New Hampshire, the GOP leadership was presented with a clear choice, strategically: switch to a maverick with genuine crossover appeal and a hot issue - but who might not win you a single big state - or stick with your guy who, come hell or high water, is going to give you one of the big three, and probably two of the five biggest electoral states. (Bush's bankroll didn't hurt either.)
Well, we know what choice they made.
Much has been made of Bush's family connections in this context, and understandably so. But in all fairness to George W., a "young, moderate, charismatic" goernor of Texas would have made an attractive Republican candidate this year no matter what his last name.
Because for a Republican presidential candidate in this day and age, Texas, with its 32 electoral votes, is the whole enchilada. Nixon and Reagan came out of California, with its electoral bonanza of 54 votes. Bush the Elder won the state in 1988 on a combination of Reagan momentum and the incompetent campaigning of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. But California is Clinton country now and that means that a Republican candidate cannot, must not, better not lose the Lone Star State.
And Bush can deliver it. What's more - and this is where the family name comes in - he can likely deliver the 25 electoral votes held by Florida, where his brother Jeb is governor. He even has an outside chance to pick up some more - and subtract some from the Gore column - in New England states like Maine and Connecticut, where the Bush family has had a presence for generations.
Say, just for the sake of argument, that Bush could give you all these states, you'd be looking at a candidate who could bring 69 votes to the table. A good, solid start on the way to the 270 needed to win. Bush has a chance to bring neighboring states New Mexico and Louisiana back into the GOP fold, too, after they both went for Clinton against Dole in 1996. He'll take Oklahoma and yes, he'll likely take John McCain's Arizona, too.
The Republicans will likely score big this year in the mountain and desert West - Utah, Idaho, Montana, Nevada. And look for a possible Bush upset in Colorado, where Clinton won narrow victories in 1992 and '96 with a big assist from Ross Perot.
If all goes well for Bush in the West and he takes all his "home" states, he'd now have 116 electoral votes. Getting there.
Then the South: Another do-or-die region for the Republicans and one in which a Republican candidate always has a chance to clean up - the "Southern Strategy" of Republican campaigns since Nixon went after the Wallace bloc in 1972. It was the geographical reasoning behind the all-good-old-boy Clinton/Gore ticket. Bush could take it, save for Arkansas, which Clinton will win for Gore as a point of pride, and Gore's home state of Tennessee. If we set aside Missouri for the moment, that's another 64 votes - 180 in all.
In the Midwest and plains, if we give Bush every state that Dole won in '96, that's another 29. Throw in Iowa by dint of Midwestern disgust at Clinton's morals and Bush's strong organization on the ground there (reflected in his showing at the state's G.O.P. caucuses) and there's another 36 - 216.
The question then becomes for Bush, as it would for just about any other Republican: what next?
California and the West Coast? Gore - 72 votes. New York? Gore again - add another 33. New England - give Bush Connecticut and Maine to make it interesting and Gore's up to 128. The Middle Atlantic states will bring him to 159. Then the Rust Belt Democratic, union strongholds like Illinois and Michigan - takes Gore to 200, charitably. Add home state Tennessee and he's at 210.
Bush's best-case scenario for his base states barely edges out Gore's.
To win, Bush will have to make a spear thrust up from Austin to Kennebunkport - because that's where the battleground is and will be this fall: Missouri, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Ohio.
Especially Pennsylvania and Ohio. Clinton won both states in '92 and '96 but his victories were by margins that could be accounted for by the Perot factor - if you subscribe to the theory that Ross Perot mostly took votes away from Bush senior and Dole in those elections. Both states have Republican governors. And if they can help win the state for George W., if he can scrap out wins there and get a split with Missouri and Kentucky, they could put him over the edge. Just barely.
In the current set of political circumstances, if everything goes just, just right for Bush, he could win by a nose in what would likely be one of the closest elections in history. Would McCain fare better against Gore in expanding the state-by-state electoral base? We won't get the chance to find out, not this year at least, unless he reverses himself and makes a third-party bid. But while he may well have made the margins closer in a lot of states, to overcome the Democrats' built-in electoral advantage he would have had to keep his star bright over a long summer.
As for Bush, the strategically conservative candidate, he can take solace in the fact that "the current set of political circumstances" rarely holds for a week, much less seven-odd months. The combination of high oil costs and rising interest rates could knock the economy down a few pegs, even into recession. Forthcoming reports from the Whitewater Independent Counsel's office could build into all sorts of bad news for Gore. Who knows - the divisive Senate race in New York between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani could even bring some electoral volatility to a state that the Democrats are counting on big time.
That's why they actually play 'em, and this election season, look for the Republicans' conservative candidate to pursue the game hardest on the playing fields of the Southern border states and the Rust Belt.
This is not to say that Bush will win or lose in November. But it is to remind that his candidacy was built in part on electoral realities that give him a chance and not a bad one - certainly better than he is given just now by many observers outside of Texas and the South.