Clinton, Bush Borrow From Carter’s ‘76, ’80 Playbooks

One thirty a.m. is long past my bedtime, but I just couldn’t quit watching those presidential debates in the wee hours the other night. Not the replays of those with Clinton, Bush and Perot, but the ones involving those historical figures named Carter, Ford and Reagan.

In its brilliance, C-SPAN decided to dust off the TV-era debates, starting with Kennedy-Nixon in 1960. That was good theater, especially hearing Richard Nixon saying in no uncertain terms he wouldn’t hesitate to ask for a tax increase if it were needed to pay the nation’s bills.

But I digress.

It was the 1976 and 1980 debates--with Jimmy Carter on center stage in both--that most interested me.

The fascination was watching Carter, first as the fresh-faced challenger in 1976 and then, in the program that followed moments later, studying him as the beleaguered incumbent trying to defend himself four years later.

Given that Carter was a governor from a small Southern state challenging an incumbent Republican president, it didn’t take much to imagine You-Know-Who in place of Carter. Especially after one of the panelist’s questions for Carter dealt with his inexperience in the national and international arenas. How can you assure the country that you’re not in over your head, the questioner wanted to know.

The bet here is that the Bill Clinton campaign studied the Carter-Ford debate. Too bad they can’t get their hands on a tape of the entire Carter presidency, so they could figure out what to leave in and what to leave out.

Carter ran as an outsider coming to clean up Washington; Clinton is running on a platform of change. Carter distanced himself from the McGovern wing of the party that was slaughtered in the previous election; Clinton has taken pains to separate himself from the party’s liberal wing.

For Jimmy Carter, it worked the first time around. The economy was flagging during Gerald Ford’s administration, and the outsider was seen as a breath of fresh air after the Watergate-tainted era.

Let’s assume that Bill Clinton is going to be elected. I can’t shake the feeling that, more than most first-termers, he will be a president on probation.

Part of that stems from whatever negative feelings have stuck from the character attacks on him. Those attacks apparently won’t be enough to cost him the election, but they’re probably lodged somewhere in the back of people’s minds. Lots of Americans are arching an eyebrow and asking, ‘Just what kind of character do you have, President Clinton?’

Far more important than that, however, is the baggage Clinton carries from his own party. A roll call of the names McGovern, Kennedy, Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Cuomo and Jackson does not exactly inspire reverence when announced across this great land of ours.

So even more so than of Clinton, the country is wary of the Democratic leadership. Voters may have forgiven, but they haven’t forgotten: They remember that Carter was the only interloper on the Republican White House turf in the last 24 years and that the country was considered to be reeling when he left office.

The Democrats have been in presidential jail ever since. Redemption is at hand, but you get the very strong feeling that if they screw up one more time, they’ll be banished from the White House for another generation.

I assume Bill Clinton and the party leaders are aware of that.

What questions will Clinton--if he wins Nov. 3--be answering at the ’96 debates? Will he have lost his rosy-cheeked vigor of this campaign season and look as whip-sawed as Carter? Will he have the look of a man who has violated probation? Or will he (and the party) be smart enough to realize there aren’t that many second chances?

One last thought from Carter’s two go-rounds in the presidential campaign ring.

As a challenger, he talked about all the things that needed improving in the country. When it came to getting reelected, his main argument was how dangerous the world would be if left in the hands of Reagan, he of the supposedly itchy trigger finger. While the economy suffered, Reagan talked economics and inspiration; Carter talked fear.

For reasons you’d have to ask him about, George Bush must have admired Carter’s reelection strategy.

Faced with massive economic problems, Bush changed Carter’s script just enough to substitute an attack on his opponent’s character for an attack on his opponent’s judgment.

In 1980, you can look it up: Reagan won. In nine days, you can look up this year’s result and see that the Carter strategy works just as well as ever.