nytimes.com
February 27, 2000
ON THE CARPET
Why Certain Political Symbols Stick
By RICHARD L. BERKE
WASHINGTON -- Gov. George W. Bush's advisers now say it
was the single most ill-considered decision of his presidential
campaign. Struggling for political redemption after his defeat in the New
Hampshire primary, Bush raced to Bob Jones University in Greenville,
S.C., the next morning.
At first glance, the pilgrimage
seemed logical. Bob Jones is
an evangelical institution that
has long been a must stop on
the court-the-conservatives
circuit. Ronald Reagan, Bob
Dole, Dan Quayle, Alan
Keyes and Pat Buchanan all
stumped there.
Warren Tompkins, a seasoned
strategist who ran Bush's
operation in South Carolina,
said the visit was not
impulsive; it had been planned for nearly a week. "We've always done it,"
Tompkins said in an interview in which he took the credit -- or blame --
for the decision. "To ignore that block of voters would be like running on
a Democratic ticket and ignoring African-Americans or labor unions."
But more than three weeks later, Bush is still scrambling to tamp down a
furor among Republicans, Democrats, Catholics, blacks, Jews and the
dreaded pundits -- even from many of his own supporters -- over why
he dared kick off his South Carolina campaign at a university that
prohibits interracial dating and promotes anti-Catholic teachings.
Even Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Coalition, who has had
his own share of stumbles, had no sympathy. "I'd have advised him not to
go," he said. "Bob Jones has been known as a rather extreme place.
Those people are really far out."
Bush's aides concede that this is not another mere bump on Bush's path
to the Republican presidential nomination. By the weekend, they were
huddling in Austin to come up with a way for the governor to publicly
admit the visit was a mistake -- without stirring up more bad publicity.
The commotion is the latest instance this year in which the Republican
candidates have found themselves stranded in the thicket of religion in
politics -- and have not quite figured out how to get out. First, Bush and
other candidates were pilloried for expressing their reverence for Jesus
Christ; critics found their comments off-putting and divisive. Now
Catholics are being pitted against the Christian right as Bush and his rival,
Sen. John McCain, make aggressive plays to both constituencies.
But more than anything else, the Bob Jones debacle is a telling case study
of the importance of symbolic politics. Candidates who are not
sufficiently sensitive to symbols can cause themselves irreparable damage
in one fleeting utterance or, in the case of Bush, one 45-minute
appearance.
A few days earlier, Bush committed another symbolic blunder when he
popped up at a rally in New Hampshire flanked by his parents. It fueled
an image that he would be nowhere without his kin.
The Bob Jones visit took on an outsized importance because Bush has
still been a relative blank slate ideologically. Since many voters do not
have a fixed image of him, the appearance allowed his more moderate
foes to depict him as dangerously conservative. When Dole visited the
university, he had a more centrist history, so people who objected to the
school's policies were willing to give him a pass, saying that his trip was
something he had to do.
But Bush's foray to Bob Jones, where he addressed 5,000 students on a
red-carpeted stage and delivered a speech trumpeting his conservative
credentials, has -- at least for now -- undermined his months-long appeal
to moderates who rallied to his "compassionate conservative" message.
Now, in the shorthand of a snippet of videotape, Bush can be depicted
by his rivals as a negative, intolerant, hard-edged conservative.
"The contrast was what was so jarring to people," said Michael K.
Deaver, who was Reagan's image consultant. "George W. had gone out
of his way to tell us he was a new kind of Republican."
The episode has left Bush struggling to put forth a positive message about
his agenda because McCain has refused to stop talking about the visit. In
fact, the matter may not have become an issue had McCain not been in
the picture -- and had his campaign not paid for automated calls to voters
in Michigan (where the population is more than one-quarter Catholic)
that lash Bush for failing to denounce Bob Jones' "anti-Catholic bigotry."
Bob Jones Jr., the son of the school's namesake, once called the Catholic
Church a "Satanic cult".
Bush's trip has been especially helpful to McCain, because the senator is
hardly considered a progressive. He, like Bush, had refused to weigh in
on whether a confederate flag should fly over the state Capitol. But the
visit gave Bush's detractors an opening to accuse him of something that
McCain was insulated against. McCain's aides insist that they never got
an invitation for the senator to speak at the university.
Beyond the candidate himself, the visit did not play well because many
Republicans have moved toward the center and have grown impatient
with religious conservatives. Bush's appearance has bothered
Republicans who are still haunted by Pat Buchanan's vitriol at the 1992
Republican convention in Houston.
The Bush campaign may simply not have adjusted to the reality that
candidates cannot make a pitch to one narrow group, or region, these
days without drawing national attention.
"Growing up in the South in the civil rights era, I know plenty of
politicians who would go to one side of town and say one thing and the
other side of town and say something else," said Bill Carrick, a
Democratic strategist. "You can't say things in South Carolina that voters
in Michigan aren't going to hear. It just doesn't happen in modern politics
any- more."
Sometimes, politicians get away with potentially risky alliances. When
Reagan took his 1980 presidential campaign to the Neshoba County Fair
in Philadelphia, Miss., near the dirt road where civil rights workers were
killed in the 1960s, he made no mention of the racial murder there. There
was no subsequent outcry.
No one has yet harpooned Bill Bradley for meeting recently with the
often divisive Rev. Al Sharpton. Vice President Al Gore also met with
Sharpton, but took pains to do it behind closed doors. (Perhaps he
learned his lesson from his much-ridiculed appearance at a fund-raising
event at a Buddhist temple.)
To be sure, symbols often work to a candidate's advantage. For
example, Bill Clinton stunned the Rev. Jesse Jackson in 1992 by
appearing before his organization and assailing the race-baiting rap singer
Sister Souljah -- a move that cemented his willingness to challenge core
Democratic groups.
Tompkins said he pressed for the Bob Jones visit because he thought it
would help assure a high turnout from religious conservatives. He was
probably right: Bush won the primary by 11 points, buoyed by a huge
showing from voters who consider themselves religious conservatives.
The journey took on even more significance because it was Bush's first
stop after New Hampshire. "That was pure accident; it was not done by
design," Tompkins said, explaining that it was the only time slot that
worked for the governor and school officials.
The content of Bush's speech at the university is of no consequence
(though the after-the-fact kibitzers say he could have diffused the whole
thing by telling the audience that he took issue with some of the school's
policies). Bush waited until a news conference after the speech to say he
disagreed with the school's racial policy and rejected any anti-Catholic
sentiment.
On a fundamental level, the visit may simply point to poor staff work in
the Bush campaign. Tompkins said he sent the campaign's top officials a
"very detailed briefing paper on questions that came up" at Bob Jones in
the past, notably on interracial dating and Catholic matters. (The
university began admitting black students after losing its tax-exempt status
in the 1970s for refusing to do so.)
Asked if there were any discussions with those officials about the
possible perils of the visit, Tompkins said none that he was involved in.
Tompkins acknowledges that the campaign needs to address the matter
quickly, particularly as the campaign turns to states where the Catholic
vote is crucial. "They're going to have to deal with the anti-Catholic stuff
straight up," he said. "I'd argue to be very aggressive."
William Bennett, who advises both Bush and McCain, said the problem
was not Bush's initial appearance, but his subsequent failure to more
aggressively denounce Bob Jones' policies. "It seemed somewhat
half-hearted," he said. "Governor Bush needs to be very firm here, and
very direct. That opportunity was lost."
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