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10/17/00
4:30 p.m. |
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Liberal lore continues to hold that voters discounted Ronald Reagan's simplistic Cold War views, antipathy to government, and nutty Star Wars schemes because they were won over by his genial personality. Conservative ideas weren't triumphant in the 1980s, because the "Great Communicator" was able to overcome the handicap of his unpopular agenda. Last evening on Fox News, Steve Roberts was the latest opinion-meister to attribute Gore's trailing in the polls to the simple fact that the vice president is a tough guy to like, before arguing that Bush had stolen Clinton's issues. The stolen goods? According to Roberts, Social Security and Medicare. Bush has played defense with a prescription-drug benefit of his own, but his Medicare proposal includes the free-market reforms that Clinton opposes, and he has boldly promoted private savings accounts as his Social Security reform. In recent polls, Bush is tied with Gore on education, with the governor backing vouchers for students in failing schools, and on maintaining economic prosperity and handling the budget surplus, despite the demagogic attacks on his supposedly reckless and unpopular tax-cut scheme. According to CNN/Time's most recent poll, Bush leads Gore on the tax issue and on the issue of guns. For the past month, Bush's stump speeches have slammed Gore for his own reckless spending schemes, and GOP ads in battleground states go after the vice president for proposing three times the amount of federal spending that Clinton advocated. The majority of respondents now tell pollsters that George W. Bush shares their views on the size and role of the federal government. It is true that Gore loses on likeability, but so too does the federal government, which is why Bush currently has an advantage in the race. |
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ven before tonight's
final debate, where a flub or fib could again change the dynamics of the
presidential race, some liberals are attempting to limit the collateral
damage of a Gore loss by arguing that he had a winning liberal agenda,
but a losing personality. Should Bush win in three weeks, be prepared
for this reverse-Reagan interpretation of his victory.
