RALEIGH, N.C. — Karl Rove’s midterm campaign analysis isn’t working — not here in this key Senate battleground state and nowhere else I can find.
As you may remember, President Bush’s political counselor made headlines in January when he told a meeting of the Republican National Committee that the war on terrorism would be the key to GOP victories in this November’s congressional elections.
Referring to the president’s leadership against terrorists and on homeland defense, Rove said, "We can go to the country on this issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America’s military might and thereby protecting America."
That was then, but it’s different now. Just ask the leading candidates in the race for the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Jesse Helms.
Former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, the front-runner in a nine-person Democratic primary field, told me that down-home issues — education, Social Security, and especially health care — are uppermost in voters’ minds. No surprise that a Democrat would want to play down Bush’s strong suit, you say?
Then hear Elizabeth Dole, the former Cabinet member and one-time presidential aspirant, who is cruising to the Republican nomination with the blessing of Bush and the White House.
When I asked her in an April 18 interview what she was hearing from the grass roots as she works her way through North Carolina’s 100 counties, this was her answer:
"First and foremost, it is the fact that the economy is in such transition. People are really afraid. … They’re afraid they’re going to lose their job, if they haven’t already lost it … Education comes up constantly. … We have an excellent network of 58 community colleges, but right now, the state is cutting back on their funding. … We really need more money to retrain people. And we need money to improve our information technology and infrastructure for the high-paying jobs we want. … "
Dole went on in this vein for some time, talking about the damage to the manufacturing and agriculture base of her state’s economy. I interrupted to ask, "Is the terrorist threat on their minds?"
"It is," she said, "but it’s not the thing they bring up that much, when I ask them what they have the most concern about. I think they have great faith in President Bush and Colin Powell and Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney in this state, and they feel it is being handled as well as it could be. Obviously it is of concern to everybody, but it’s more ‘what hits me, my family, my pocketbook, my fields and my factory’ that I hear more about."
North Carolina may be in particularly tough straits, with its textile and furniture manufacturers feeling the impact of imports, and tobacco growers wondering about their future. But barring another major international or domestic terrorist incident, both parties now believe domestic issues will count most heavily in the polling places in November.
The Democrats two weeks ago reduced their political agenda to a two-sided plastic card their members of Congress and candidates can keep in their shirt pockets. The message, distilled from polls and focus groups by John Podesta, Bowles’ successor in the Clinton White House, begins with a declaration that "Democrats are committed to winning the war on terrorism and making our country more secure." But then it moves quickly to familiar Democratic territory: Social Security, jobs, Medicare, prescription drugs and the environment.
The clearest acknowledgment that Republicans know this is the ground on which they must fight came in the speech Bush gave last week in San Jose, Calif., in which he returned to his campaign theme of "compassionate conservatism." Unlike his January State of the Union address, with its ringing rhetoric about combating terrorism and eliminating the "axis of evil" regimes in Iraq, Iran and North Korea, this one was heavily weighted to domestic issues.
Part of the purpose was to frame the coming budget debate, by rebutting Democratic claims Bush is short-changing domestic programs. Bush said that he will "spend on what works," and not for programs that yield no results. But the slogan of 2000 was also revived, as one senior White House aide told me, "to provide a framework that will allow local candidates to plug their particular issues into a cohesive approach."
Bush’s speech was plenty cohesive. It touched on every domestic issue on the Democratic list — and more. Not even the White House now believes this election will turn on terrorism or homeland defense.
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One more try. The name of that FASB outfit is not the Federal Accounting Standards Board, as first written here, nor the Fiscal Accounting Standards Board, as I "corrected" it recently. It is the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and I promise never to write about it again.
David Broder can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200.
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