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Subject: A Strategy for Winning That Bush Never Saw; Mock Memo From a Clinton Aide:
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 92 08:40:52 EST
Message-ID: <14.1992Nov7.084053@AmeriCast.com>

A Strategy for Winning That Bush Never Saw; Mock Memo From a
Clinton Aide: Attack the Democrat on 'Values' and
Untrustworthiness<By E. J. Dionne Jr.=Washington Post Staff Writ-
er=

There was a way for President Bush to win the 1992 election, ac-
cording to a memo addressed to the president in July. It involved
focusing the campaign on "leadership and values," and painting
Bill Clinton as "a failed governor and untrustworthy person with
little foreign policy experience."

It required Bush to offer "a Republican hope for the future" and
be the candidate committed to "shaking up politics" through an
emphasis on "Congress, PACs (political action committees) and
balanced budgets." The Bush agenda needed to highlight "family
and social breakdown" and center on the issues of "education,
crime and welfare."

And the president needed to play on voter worries that Clinton
was "too political," would "say anything to get elected" and
"tries to be all things to all people."

Bush never saw the memo, because it was written by Stanley Green-
berg, Clinton's pollster. Greenberg's purpose in the July 27
memo, whimsically addressed to "President George Bush," was to
warn the Clinton campaign - at a time when it was flying high
after the Democratic convention - that there were ways in which
Clinton's large lead might be undermined.  Greenberg based his
memo on polling and focus groups in which he tested voter
response to a variety of attacks against the Arkansas governor.

The memo is quite gloomy on Bush's chances and urged "the
president" to abandon "traditional assumptions" about the elec-
toral college and accept that "it will never be the same with
Reagan Democrats (who) have extremely negative views of Ronald
Reagan and George Bush."

Greenberg's memo underscored the extent to which the Clinton cam-
paign tried to anticipate Bush's attacks and thought up many
lines of attack that the Bush forces would use.

Greenberg's Bush campaign was, in some ways, tougher than the one
Bush ran. Clinton, Greenberg wrote, "must be seen as culturally
permissive, promising the world to gays, lesbians and extreme fe-
minists and out-of-touch with southern voters in particular."

But Greenberg warned that some voters might see such a campaign
as embodying "divisiveness and discrimination."

Therefore, he said, "the campaign should think about the 'family
values' attack in more directed ways: Serious doubts about gay
rights are particularly pronounced in the deep South (51 percent)
and border South (47 percent). The campaign should begin an ag-
gressive early radio campaign across the South making clear how
far Clinton is from the mainstream on family values."

Greenberg also argued that "the Clinton campaign will falter
further among men if we can make Clinton's appeal to women look
narrow and extremist."

In other respects, Greenberg's strategy for Bush paralleled the
one the GOP pursued.

For example, Vice President Quayle in his debate with Albert Gore
Jr. attacked a suggestion in Gore's book, "Earth in the Balance,"
that the United States consider promoting a global Marshall Plan
for the environment. Greenberg anticipated Quayle's attack.
"There may be some payoff in talking about Gore's 'Marshall Plan'
that would 'cost U.S. taxpayers $100 billion a year in environ-
mental foreign aid,' " Greenberg wrote. Gore slipped the attack
by noting that his book never called for a specific program in-
volving $100 billion.

Greenberg also suggested that the Bush campaign attack Gore for
favoring "extremist environmental regulations" that "would cost
the jobs of hundreds of thousands of U.S. auto workers." Bush,
who took to calling Gore "Ozone Man" or simply "Ozone," did ex-
actly that.

Greenberg also thought it imperative that Bush go after Clinton's
record in Arkansas, which Bush did. "The Bush campaign must show
that Clinton is a failed governor, much as the '88 Bush campaign
did to Michael Dukakis," Greenberg wrote.

He said Bush must prevent the election from focusing on the econ-
omy. "Obviously, Clinton will try to keep this election focused
on the economy and middle-class America," wrote Greenberg.  "We
must wound Clinton on taxes, and then change the subject."

"The campaign will want the race to shift to leadership, particu-
larly after we have had the opportunity to portray Clinton as un-
steady, ineffectual and, in the end, unprepared to assume the of-
fice of president," Greenberg wrote.

Bush had some assets, according to Greenberg's polling. "People
give as the best reason to vote for Bush 'experience' and being
'comfortable' with what he will do . .

Greenberg suggested that Bush could turn around perceptions that
he didn't understand the suffering caused by the recession. "The
current images of a detached George Bush will be difficult to
undo," Greenberg said. "Nonetheless, voters do think of you as
'compassionate' (57 percent) and resist characterizations that
make you look like a bad person. It is plausible that George Bush
can be presented as moved by tragedy or people's personal pain."

The pollster said that by the end of the campaign, Bush needed to
give voters a sense that he had a program for the future. "A new
agenda of education, crime and welfare is not plausible now,"
Greenberg wrote. "But late in this race, after Clinton has become
tarnished, voters will be looking for a way out of this malaise,
and we must be ready to make George Bush the answer."<02:12 11-
07C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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