The New Prince

by Dick Morris

  Hispanic candidates have an even easier time of it. Frederico Peña was elected mayor of Denver despite its solid Anglo majority. Most polls showed Henry Cisneros in Texas to be a strong statewide candidate before his scandal, even though Hispanics account for less than a fifth of the Texas vote.

  Most of the truly race-conscious ballots cast in America today are cast by African-Americans themselves. Democrats, of either race, can regularly count on over 80 percent of black votes against any white Republican candidate. Only rare Republicans like Governor Christie Whitman of New Jersey win significant black backing.

  As a result, African-Americans are basically disenfranchised in America today because they only vote for Democrats. To get political power, blacks must put themselves back in play by voting and running as Republicans. Only if they are up for grabs as an electorate will anybody pay attention to their needs. Republican clients usually ask me to poll among whites only. They’re not being racist, they just know that the black vote will go against them, so they don’t want to pay for the extra interviews.

  No Democratic candidate for whom I have ever worked has ever asked me, in a general election, “How can I win the black vote?” It is assumed. I’m often asked how to increase minority turnout mechanically, but never what issues will appeal to minority voters to win their support. Never.

  Democrats treat African-American voters like a golf handicap. In a typical state, assured of 13 percent of the vote by winning the blacks, they go out and campaign in search of the remaining 38 percent they need to win.

  Yet, America is ready for black Republicans, as the popularity of both General Colin Powell and J.C. Watts in Oklahoma demonstrates. Minority candidates who break with their ideological masters on the left attract flocks of white voters. African-Americans who speak for their growing middle class (now estimated to be about one-third of the black population) have an instant appeal to whites.

  Hispanic-Americans, too, can benefit from breaking away from liberalism. New York City’s perennial mayoral candidate, Hispanic Herman Badillo, came close to victory several times by having a tough stance on welfare and promoting English literacy and education standards.

  Minority candidates who defy their ethnic masters and Democratic Party orthodoxy by urging tough positions on crime, quotas, welfare, and the like win points for courage and independence among America’s voters. When they contest for votes with white conservatives, they tend to stand out and attract supporters because of the character it takes for them to turn away from the consensus of their leadership.

  The time is here for minorities to cross party lines as the swelling black middle class finds ideological affinity in Republican conservative positions. Racism is no longer at the core of the Republican Party. You can’t win an election on race anymore in America. Thank the Lord.

  Chapter 42

  Women Candidates: Using the Stereotype to Win

  THE STRATEGIC SITUATION women candidates face is totally different from that which black candidates confront. White voters are either racist or they are not. The minority who are bigots will never vote for an African-American. The majority don’t care much about race. By contrast, sexism is far more limited. Relatively few people are still opposed to women in politics. Many more voters of both genders want to see more women elected to office.

  But despite this relative lack of sexist bias, a woman has a harder time getting elected than does a black candidate. That’s why the Congress is 7 percent black. The percentage is low but relatively proportionate to the 12 percent of blacks in the U.S. population. Only 12 percent of the members of the House and Senate are female, even though women make up 52 percent of our population.

  American voters don’t dislike women candidates, but they do stereotype them. Men and women, sexists or not, all tend to share the same preconceptions about female candidates. A national survey in 1986 probed the extent of this stereotyping. Pollsters asked voters whether a male candidate or a female one would be more likely to be honest, compassionate, fiscally frugal, pro-defense, pro-education, and tough on crime.

  Voters answered that the man would do better on fiscal, defense, and crime issues while the woman would be better in the areas of integrity, compassion, and education. Curiously, it did not matter whether the respondents were men or women nor whether they supported or opposed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). All four groups of voters shared the exact same stereotypes about women candidates.

  The key in electing a woman is to make the stereotype work for her candidacy, not against it. This means two things:

  reducing the edge the man has on male stereotypical issues

  stressing the importance of female stereotypical issues in the campaign.

  Women who run should be Thatcheresque in their positions on crime, taxes, and defense. Iron ladies. But that’s not enough. No matter how strongly women take a posture on these issues, men candidates will usually have the advantage. But by closing the gap on the male issues, women candidates can emphasize issues like education, the environment, integrity, and other spheres where the female stereotype helps rather than hurts. By making the election turn on these issues, they can win.

  Bob Squier, the Democratic media consultant who consulted on the campaign advertisements for President Clinton’s campaign in 1996, helped William Winter, his candidate for governor of Mississippi, defeat his female opponent by shooting an ad that reminded voters that the governor was in charge of the state’s national guard. By posing his candidate surrounded by soldiers and tanks, he used gender stereotypes to defeat Winter’s opponent, Evelyn Gandy.

  In 1980, Paula Hawkins was elected to the Senate from Florida, becoming the first woman to sit in that body whose political career was not based on her husband’s or father’s public achievements. She won her seat by using the gender stereotype to aid her candidacy. On Florida’s Public Utility Commission, she first attracted public attention by fighting for consumers. Once elected to the Senate, she sustained her popularity by focusing on issues like child abuse and missing children. Only her poor performance in a 1986 debate, due in part to medical problems, blocked her bid for reelection.

  Women must “hug” male opponents—by agreeing with them—on issues that favor men while drawing sharp distinctions from them on issues that help women.

  Republicans always supposed that their pro-life position on abortion caused the gender gap to widen in Clinton’s favor in 1996. Undoubtedly, it played a role. But Clinton’s differences with the Republicans on education policy, gun control, and family-leave laws were far more important in bringing him a disproportionate share of the female vote.

  The Republican Party is in danger of acquiring a reputation for opposing public education. Their advocacy of funding cuts, opposition to federally mandated higher standards, and support for the voucher system all lead women to suspect that the GOP would like to see private and parochial schools predominate.

  The Republican Party needs to develop its own agenda for reforming public schools. Abolition of teacher tenure—a view the teacher’s unions won’t let Democrats embrace—could be the cornerstone of a GOP comeback on the public-education issue. This could be the key to closing the gender gap.

  Chapter 43

  Debates: Dominating the Dialogue

  POLITICAL DEBATING has as little to do with the science of debate being practiced in high schools and colleges across America as military music has to do with classical music. A good way to do well in a political debate, if you were a member of your debating team in school, is to forget everything you learned and start again.

  A political debate between candidates is about ratifying your issues and the issues in the campaign and looking good on camera while doing so. It is not about defeating your adversary’s arguments, proving your case, or—least of all—answering the questions reporters put to you.

  When the candidates square off in the thick of the campaign, the debate is really a chance for each campaign’s issue schematic to go up against t
hat of the opposition, to see which is more worthy of public focus. It is the content of the debate, more than the performance of its participants, that will determine the winner of the election.

  One night’s debate is not going to change voter opinions on the key issues. Nor will it change the basic bias of issues like crime, taxes, and defense toward Republicans or that of education, the elderly, and the environment toward Democrats. Even if you “defeat” your opponent on his issues, he’ll win because his issues will be ratified as the issues of the campaign.

  You may have persuaded the voters who watched that night that you are as tough as your opponent is on crime, but if you are a Democrat and your opponent is a Republican, the crime issue is going to work for him regardless of one night’s debate. If the debate was about crime, then crime is the issue and if crime is the issue, you’ll lose. But if you succeeded, as a Democrat, in making the debate more about education than about crime, the odds are you will gain the edge even if your adversary argued well on the education issue.

  The trick is to make sure that your content and your issues predominate. That’s tough to do when reporters are asking the questions. They have the power to take the debate where they want. Most debates allow for follow-up questions where reporters can complain if the candidates don’t prove responsive to their questions. So a candidate can’t just ignore what the reporter asks. Instead, he must practice giving short and crisp answers so that he can use the balance of his answering time to talk about what he really wants to talk about—his issues.

  A reporter might ask a Democrat, “Why did you vote to raise taxes sixty times in the state legislature?” His answer might be, “You know that most of those votes were unanimous and were for minor increases in fees so that the users of the service paid for it, and the taxpayers didn’t have to kick in. But sometimes budget issues concern education. As you know, I’ve always been a strong supporter of programs for our children.…” Now, the candidate is free to fill the balance of his time talking about his issue—education.

  In this struggle to dominate the content and subject matter of the debate, attacks on one’s opponent serve not merely to besmirch him, but to distract him from talking about his own issues and force him to address your candidate’s concerns instead. Even if every one of candidate A’s attacks on candidate B are fully rebutted and factually answered, if B uses all his time answering A’s attacks, he will have lost the chance to inject his own issues into the debate. The counter, of course, is to answer attacks in the shortest possible time, allowing the candidate under attack to spend most of his time limit talking about his affirmative issues.

  Want to know who won a debate? Don’t listen to the pundits. Just add up the number of minutes spent on each issue by the two candidates combined and figure out if the issue favors the Democrat or the Republican. If a Democrat spent ten minutes talking about education and ten talking about taxes, but the Republican talked about schools for only two minutes and devoted fifteen minutes of his time to discussing taxes, a total of twelve minutes would have been spent on education and twenty-five on taxes. Education is a Democratic issue and taxes are a Republican issue, so the advantage in this debate would go to the Republican.

  The image part of a debate is overrated. Sometimes, a candidate looks or sounds awful: Nixon in 1960, Carter in 1980, or Reagan in the first debate of 1984. But the vast majority of debates show little that is new about either candidate’s style. An embarrassing moment can sometimes cast a pall over a debate—Ford’s refusal to admit that the nations of Eastern Europe were Soviet satellites in 1976; Bentsen’s “you are no Jack Kennedy” line in the vice presidential debate of 1988; or Dukakis’s lame answer on the death penalty in 1988—but again, these instances are rare. Most debates are won or lost based on the issue content of the clash, not on the charisma of the candidates.

  Chapter 44

  What Is Momentum?

  GEORGE BUSH CALLED IT “the big Mo” after his pace-setting defeat of Bob Dole in the 1988 New Hampshire Republican Primary.

  Momentum. What is it?

  In football games, it is the increased adrenaline flow, fan support, motivation, and desire brought about by a touchdown on offense or an interception on defense. In politics, it is the increase in donations, voter awareness, news coverage, and receptivity to advertising caused by an unexpected win or a stronger-than-anticipated finish.

  The key words here are “unexpected” and “stronger than anticipated.” We are the worst enemies of our own momentum. As candidates, staff, and consultants swell with pride and ego as the surge of victory approaches, we talk and we talk and we talk. Our talk, the natural emission of grandiosity within, kills our momentum. It makes the unexpected, expected; the stronger-than-anticipated, the anticipated.

  In the 1976 presidential race of Senator Birch Bayh of Indiana for the Democratic nomination, everybody knew that Jimmy Carter was the front-runner. Most people felt that liberal Arizona congressman Mo Udall was his main challenger. Behind these two ran a pack of candidates that included Washington Senator Henry Jackson, Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris, and Birch Bayh.

  One day, Bayh’s tracking polls showed that he had taken second place in New Hampshire on the heels of an exceptionally strong showing in the Iowa caucuses. From an also-ran, Bayh’s people now saw their candidate in contention—the putative “alternative to Carter.” Sugar plums danced before their eyes. From here, they imagined that Bayh’s magnetic personality and warm smile would defeat Carter’s personality and smile. They saw how they could win the nomination. From there, they could see him defeating Gerry Ford in the November election. From there…

  Alas, they talked and talked and talked. The press heard them. It published a prediction that Bayh would finish in second place in New Hampshire. But it was not to be. Bayh fell just slightly short of Udall and finished a close third, well above the other candidates. Bayh’s finish was a very strong one—light-years ahead of the also-ran status he had been assigned. On its face, it looked like a three-way race for the nomination.

  But Bayh’s staff had talked too much. Their talk of finishing second finished them. Now they had finished third, so the results were not “better than anticipated” but “worse than anticipated.” It was a “blow,” not a “boost,” in the eyes and words of the press. Bayh’s goose was cooked. His people had cooked it by blabbing.

  The lesson: Momentum is one part victory combined with one part secrecy and one part bluff. You have to let the press dump on you, deride your chances, say you’re finished, and call you “history” to be able to capture momentum when you confound their predictions. It’s a little like hazing to enter a college fraternity. You have to pay your dues.

  Then, when you come out “better than anticipated,” you have to let the press discover you and publicize that you now have “momentum.” Donors, voters, politicians, and more importantly, other reporters read the stories and presto: momentum.

  Then, fasten your seat belts and keep your wits about you. It’s a heady ride.

  Chapter 45

  The Uses of Defeat

  IN POLITICS, neither victory nor defeat is all it’s made up to be. Some defeats resemble Carthage, where the Romans burned and sacked the city and then plowed salt into the soil so it would never rise again. Other defeats are only temporary. The loser can recover and fight again another day.

  Candidates look to the day of the election as the end of the process. True professionals realize it’s just a way station. The real questions remain after election day the same as they were before: What are your vital signs? What is your name recognition? Your favorability? Your vote share? After all, the electorate isn’t going anywhere; they’ll stay in the district until the next election day. If you came through defeat with a high vote share, though short of a majority, with good recognition and acceptable favorability, you’ve only lost a battle, not the war.

  On the other hand, there’s Carthage. When your image has been scorched with effective and unans
wered negative ads, and the other side has plowed salt into your soil by driving your favorability to hell and back, it’s time to think about selling insurance for a living.

  In many states, the electorate just doesn’t like to elect you the first time out. They want to see you come back the next time, having taken your licking. Pennsylvania is like that. In 1978, Bob Casey lost his race for governor. He lost again in 1982 and came back to win in 1986. Why do states torment their candidates so? Sometimes, they want to get to know you over many years before they’ll let you win. Perhaps voters like chastened and humiliated candidates—they make more tractable governors. Or maybe they just get tired of watching you die.

  In many congressional districts, losing is an integral part of winning the next time out. Familiarity and intimacy between the candidate and the voter is a key part of the equation in the election of a congressman. Unlike a senator or governor, voters see their local representative as more like their personal advocate in the distant dome of Congress. In many House races, they won’t kiss on the first date. Remember: Newt Gingrich lost twice before he was elected to Congress—both in the same district.

  So how do you fall so you can get up again?

  The more positive your campaign, the better your chances of not wearing out your welcome. Scorched-earth campaigns alienate everybody who doesn’t vote for you and a lot of the people who do. Negative ads trigger negatives back—negatives that don’t do your credibility or your favorability any good. But positive, issue-oriented commercials that spell out the differences you have with your adversary in respectful, objective terms only serve to build your reputation for the next time out.