PERSPECTIVES

	September 28, 2000
	Presidential historians discuss the issues at the center of the presidential campaign.

JIM LEHRER: Now an historical context look at this 2000 campaign. It comes from NewsHour regulars Presidential historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, and journalist and author Haynes Johnson; plus tonight, historian Richard Norton Smith, executive director of the Gerald R. Ford Foundation and professor of history at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Michael, comparatively speaking, how would you describe this campaign so far? MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It's a campaign that's had its high and low moments -- high moment I think actually today. I think those were very... two very good speeches, gave you a very good idea of where these two people are coming from. George Bush essentially is saying, "where there's a conflict between more government or less government, I want less." Al Gore is saying, "I'm probably a little bit quicker on the trigger in allowing government to do things, but at the same time I want to be fiscally responsible." At the same time, we've had low moments like the rats controversy, the so-called subliminal appearance of this word in a commercial, other things like that. JIM LEHRER: And the mole in one... Supposedly there's a Gore mole in the Bush campaign that took the debate tape, the prep tape, et cetera, right. MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: The rodent analogies are getting out of control, as may the campaign. But it's happened a lot of times. In 1960, Kennedy and Nixon got side-tracked on Chemoy Matsu, a slightly larger issue, but you know, 1980, I was looking back at the "New York Times," there were some times that the 1980 campaign, which was momentous, Reagan versus Carter, war and peace, what you do about a big recession, did not even make it under the onto the front page of the "New York Times". JIM LEHRER: Doris, context. Where would you put this campaign? DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: I think actually the focus that we've just seen in these two speeches, which is where I think it's going to keep going until the election, hopefully, is very encouraging. I mean think about the campaigns in t last 20 or 30 years. In 1988, for example, it wasn't really about the fundamental economic issues and choices that are being given to us now. It was about symbolic things as to whether or not Dukakis had enough patriotism in dealing with the Pledge of Allegiance, whether or not cultural issues such as soft on crime, should be the center of conversation, things that e federal government really couldn't do a lot about. Think about 1992 when Gennifer Flowers played such a large role in the primaries and through Clinton's whole presidency, the private lives of public figures major source of campaign conversation. It's still there subliminally, if I can use that word that's hard to pronounce, but it's not being made the center of Bush's campaign. And then you think about, in a certain sense, even a couple of weeks ago, we talked about personality was going to be the main focus of this campaign because we're in an age of television and issues don't matter and what matters is whether the person is likable. Well, both candidates, it seems to me, have com down to recognizing they have to tell the voters what kind of leader they're going to be, what kind of choices they have to make, and I say, "good for democracy." This is a pretty encouraging moment JIM LEHRER: Good for democracy, Richard Norton Smith? RICHARD NORTON SMITH: Oh, absolutely. You know, this year is so unusual. We're accustomed to seeing sharp differences, philosophical conflicts aired at times of crisis. You think of a war or the aftermath of a war or a depression or times of cultural upheaval, or Roosevelt, Wilke in '40, Nixon, Humphrey, Wallace in '68. This year, we have peace; we have prosperity; we have general contentment. And lo and behold we have, arguably, the most substantive policy debate going on between these two candidates in 20 years. And there are a number of factors that are at work, many of them beyond the control of either candidate: demographic changes, the aging of America, the financial condition of Social Security, Medicare, cultural changes. This is a more entrepreneurial country than 20 years ago. If you look at prosperity, prosperity levels the field, and you have a feeling that both candidates are pushing the old buttons, they're kind of groping for this post New Deal, post Reagan consensus, and neither issue is quite working because of prosperity. I mean, for example, the Vice President talks about Social Security, and yet, in this kind of entrepreneurial culture for young people, what is risky is not investing their money in the market. At the same time Governor Bush is having trouble getting traction on the tax issue. Most people feel more prosperous; they don't need a tax cut. JIM LEHRER: Have you ever seen anything like this one, Haynes? HAYNES JOHNSON: It's different. You know, Jim, it's wonderful the timing of this. Those two speeches, as my colleagues and friends have just said, really are about very important differences about where we're going, what kind of government we have, how it's served people, and there are big differences. I mean, they aren't ideological differences as such - philosophical differences. JIM LEHRER: Now, what's the difference - philosophical - HAYNES JOHNSON: The difference is in philosophically how do you use the public treasury - do you give it back to people and say this is an entrepreneurial nation, which is it, and then you use it for yourself and that'll generate another boom and keep it going, or do you say, that we have needs in this country - Richard just said about aging America-there are people who will live a lot longer at greater expense technologically. How do you pay for it? Where do you deal with all these other questions of social - they're big questions that are before the House right now, and we've been looking at - you said - where's the context and who kissed Oprah or how they kissed the wife or where the mole is burrowing in, or out or so forth - I mean, this is really important stuff. And I hope, as Doris said, we've all said in a different way, I hope the country will now have this from here on out. Don't count on it, but this was a good setup today. JIM LEHRER: Michael, what's driving - what has driven this down this good road? Is this the result of just simple politics at the highest level? In other words, the candidates and their advisers said, hey, look, maybe we need to talk about issues, or did the press drive this agenda, or what's going on? MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: It's the environment. Let's say we were in 1980, Jim. Americans were held hostage in Iran; the Russians were marching into Afghanistan; we had 21 percent interest rates. Let's say Ronald Reagan had wanted to talk about rodents or about prescription drugs; people would say get on the program, that's not what we're thinking about. But in the year 2000, thank God, we haven't got an overwhelming crisis or an overwhelming national need of the magnitude of something like civil rights. So what you've got basically is the candidates returning to the same difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties that has been there really for the last 78 years. What do you do about government? And also more minor issues important to us but in the stretch of history more minor like aspects of health and education and Social Security, and Gore and Bush had differences on those things - they relate to their feelings about the size of government - when you compare that to Reagan and Carter, for instance, in 1980, Roosevelt and Wilke, as Richard was saying, in 1940, on World War II, diametrically opposite positions on central issues of our time, it's really pretty small potatoes. JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Richard, kind of small potatoes, when you put it in a historical - put it on a historical table? RICHARD NORTON SMITH: Well, I guess. It's a luxury we have, in effect, because of a surplus. But there are a couple of other factors here at work as well. These candidates in some ways have been driven to deal with substance because the other things weren't working. Governor Bush discovered that attacking Al Gore's character, his personality wasn't getting him anywhere in the polls. The Vice President, for his part, is not getting the usual bounce that you would expect from an incumbent party presiding over this kind of peace and prosperity, so to some degree, they almost have to talk about real things because the usual strategies and diversions and one-liners just weren't working. JIM LEHRER: Doris, real and important things they're talking about, would you agree? DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: I think that's right. I think that over the years the public has expressed its anger and disgust when candidates don't do this. I mean, after 1988, for example, one of the most negative campaigns in our history, a lot of people didn't vote, a lot of people said it was the worst election they knew, and then the media stepped up to the plate and said we'll watch over these ads, we're not going to allow them to be negative and unfactual. After the whole Clinton scandal, the public in poll after poll kept saying we want to talk about the country's problems, not simply his private problems, and that, I think, has reduced some of the extent to which the Republicans might have made Bill Clinton a central issue in this campaign. So now you have got the Republicans and Democrats, as was said earlier, I think, falling back on more of their own philosophical differences, and they're pretty large, because at this moment in time when you do have a surplus like this, you have peace and prosperity, you really can shape the future of the country in different ways, and I think the fact that the public has asked these leaders and they're responding to it means they're responding to polls - the very things I don't usually like - but the polls are telling them do this right this time. JIM LEHRER: The public has taken over this election process, Haynes? HAYNES JOHNSON: Well, I hope so, Jim. We've got 40 days to go, as I say right now, but we'll see. And it's going to get tough from here on, but behind all of the polling and so forth there is something really important. This is an absence of crisis, war, and depression, and all the rest of it, and civil rights, murders in the streets, and assassinations, and it really is a chance for you to look to the future. Elections are about the future. And that's what people are talking about now. It's a fascinating disconnect almost that people say 64 percent of the American people today think they're better off than they were four years ago. You would think that would end the election; it hasn't. JIM LEHRER: Richard's point. HAYNES JOHNSON: And they're really saying, okay, where do we really go from here, what else do we need to do with it? I salute it, and I don't know, let's hope it keeps going. JIM LEHRER: Michael? MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Also, for most of American history if your candidate wanted to get through a campaign and not just discuss something, you could. 1968 there were no debates; the media was not what it is nowadays. Richard Nixon was able to get through an entire campaign without telling Americans what he was going to do about the Vietnam War, the biggest issue of that year; in the year 2000 that could never happen. JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, Richard, that this is just a different year to run for President and that has a lot to do with it as well as all the other things in terms of - in other words - you agree with Michael? RICHARD NORTON SMITH: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. But, you know, it's interesting, because Haynes is right; elections are about the future. But if you listened to those two speeches today, it's also a referendum on the past. Each candidate accuses the other of planning to squander the surplus. Al Gore says George Bush will take us back to the deficits of the 80s and trickle-down economics; Bush says that Gore will take us back to spend-and-tax policies of Lyndon Johnson. So in that sense they both agree - they're both fighting over the same turf, and they're both looking over their shoulder, even while they're pointing the way to the future.