Smelling "the Big Kill"

By Evan Thomas

The fall campaign kicks off with Reagan rolling and Mondale limping

Open with the upbeat scene of Ronald Reagan standing tall in bright California sunshine before almost 50,000 true believers. Balloons float, flags wave, optimism abounds. "You ain't seen nothing yet," declares the President. "Four more years!" the crowd roars. "You talked me into it!" chortles Reagan, pink cheeks glowing, head bobbing happily.

Cut to the downbeat shot of Walter Mondale and Running Mate Geraldine Ferraro trudging down New York City streets that are almost eerily empty. Smiles fixed, they wave energetically at no one in particular. CBS describes the Labor Day parade crowd as "puny." Poor timing is blamed: the 9 a.m. start on a holiday is too early for most New Yorkers. On to Merrill, Wis., where Congressman David Obey warms up the crowd by exclaiming, "When the sun comes out in Merrill, the Democrats are going to win!" Intermittent rain begins to fall. Mondale gamely pushes on to Long Beach, Calif; the sound system fails three times. Each time Mondale has to stop, and then must pretend to be emotionally worked up as he starts again. Few are moved.

To millions watching the evening news, such were the images of the traditional Labor Day launching of the 1984 presidential campaign. So stark were the contrasts between the two campaigns that they almost seemed contrived, a TV producer's artifice. They were not. Rarely has one candidate set out on the trail seeming so buoyant and secure, his challenger appearing so flat and snakebit.

Beneath the hoopla and posturing lurk many serious and even critical issues, from arms control to tax reform. The newest is also one of the nation's oldest: the role religion should play in political and public affairs. Both candidates made major pronouncements last week. Mondale attacked Reagan for breaching the historic separation between church and state, while Reagan insisted that he did not seek to establish a national religion (see following story),

Yet it was mainly the contrasting images that provided the most indelible opening-week impressions: Reagan on a roll, Mondale limping along in search of the spark he so desperately needs in order to save his come-from-behind campaign. Though Reagan's lead in the polls, usually about 15 points, did not in itself seem insurmountable, there is a growing feeling among political insiders and pundits that unless Mondale finds a way of personally catching fire with voters, he is heading for political disaster.

Reagan's own advisers are hungrily eyeing what they call "the Big Kill," an overwhelming electoral mandate to carry through the Reagan Revolution. They believe that 1984 could be for the Republicans what 1936 was for the Democrats: the beginning of at least a decade of party dominance. They feel so confident that they plan to play it safe, to ride the current wave of economic prosperity and renewed patriotism. Reagan's speeches are full of phrases like "the surging spirit of boundless opportunity." His television ads, beginning this week, will be "soft" -evocations of the American spirit, not discussions of substantive issues. Reagan himself will try to appear "presidential," to float above political acrimony. He does not even mention his opponent by name. Asked why not by reporters, Reagan loftily replied, "Why should I?" Though Reagan will not hesitate to turn on his opponent if pressed, Mondale bashing is for now left to Reagan's surrogates, principally Vice President George Bush.

Mondale's aides have long since given up hope of making their man telegenic. He is a buttoned-up Norwegian with a reedy voice who likes to say about himself, "What you see is what you get." But they were anxious for Mondale to "come out smoking" against Reagan last week, to pound away at issues that might puncture the personal popularity that is among the President's prime assets. In an unusual and revealing plea, House Speaker Tip O'Neill last week begged Mondale to stop allowing himself "to be punched around by Reagan," to "stop acting like a gentleman and come out fighting, to come out slugging." Mondale indeed tried to show the fire that earned him the name Fighting Fritz during the primaries. He stripped off his jacket, pulled down his tie and pounded on the lectern. Yet even when giving impassioned speeches in his shirtsleeves, he still appeared, particularly on television, to be stiff, mechanical and uninspiring. Despite his strong social conscience and heartfelt political convictions, Mondale often seems incapable of conveying an aura of zeal or inspiring passion.

Last week Mondale doggedly chased after Reagan from Orange County in California to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City to a B'nai B'rith meeting in Washington. He poked and prodded, looking for soft spots. To a group of grocery workers in Compton, Calif., he portrayed Reagan as the friend of the rich, and tried hard to show his own indignation. "I'm mad. I'm angry. I'm damn mad," he insisted, looking pained. But speaking in Cupertino, Calif., the day before, Reagan had simply scoffed at "that pack of pessimists roaming the land" and turned up his red-white-and-blue rhetoric. He was able to inspire the crowds with slogans and phrases that would sound hokey from others. "Let's make America great again and let the eagle soar," he told the fervent, flag-waving crowd.

The Mondale strategy is to force Reagan off his high road and into a debate on specific issues. Says Senior Adviser Richard Leone: "We want this race to be a toe-to-toe contest. We want to pin Reagan down. If we can't debate him, we want to stay as close to him as possible." Yet the era of good feeling that Reagan is riding partly reflects a public appreciation of his leadership in certain substantive areas of policy. Indeed, the contest will involve an unusually stark ideological clash over the course that Reagan has set and its chances for success in the future. The principal battlegrounds:

The Economy. With low inflation, a sustained though slowing recovery, and unemployment stable at a reduced rate of 7.5%, Reagan can rely on an incumbent's best defense: economic prosperity. He plans to deal with the one truly dark cloud, the deficit (projected at $174 billion this year) largely by ignoring it. In his Labor Day opener in California, he never even mentioned the word. Asked about the deficit two days later by businessmen at the Economic Club of Chicago, the President blandly replied that economic growth would produce higher revenues. To restrain congressional spending, Reagan again advocated a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget, even though he has yet to propose one of his own. Taxes, Reagan maintained, should be raised only as a "last resort." He left it to Treasury Secretary Donald Regan to claim last week that Mondale's plan to raise taxes would cost the average household more than $1,500.

Such painless prosperity has obvious political appeal, but Reagan may not be able to finesse the deficit issue forever. Mondale is continuing the attack he began at the Democratic Convention, where he charged that Reagan has a secret plan to raise taxes. As he declared in Wisconsin last week, "Whoever is elected, this budget must be squeezed and revenues restored. But the question is: Will it be done fairly? The question is: Who will pay?"

Pulling out charts and graphs at the Compton, Calif., gathering, Mondale hammered home on the "fairness issue, charging that the Administration's tax cuts are "tilted toward Mr. Reagan's rich friends." Using figures provided by the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and congressional sources, he showed that Reagan actually raised taxes 22% for those earning less than $10,000 a year, while families making between $20,000 and $30,000 "stayed even." By contrast, those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 got an 8% tax cut, worth $8,916 a year. Mondale promises to reveal next week a plan to reduce the deficit by two-thirds by 1989. But many political observers wonder whether he can be specific about spending cuts without offending the traditional Democratic constituencies.

Foreign Policy. On the stump last week Reagan harped on the surefire subject of patriotism. He touched on the Olympics, the successful military operation in Grenada, and even a new television series called Call to Glory about a brave Air Force colonel in the Kennedy era. To a wildly cheering packed house at the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, Reagan echoed all the New Frontier chords: must continue our forward strategy for freedom ... We Americans cannot turn our backs on what history has asked of us. Keeping alive the hope of human freedom is America's mission, and we cannot shrink from that task or falter in the call to duty."

Sensitive to concerns, particularly among women, that he is too belligerent in his foreign policy, Reagan has toned down some of his sharp anti-Communist rhetoric. Instead he let his running mate do it. To the "Aggie whoops" of 2,500 students at Texas A.&M. University last week, Bush accused Mondale of being soft on Communism in Nicaragua: "If you walk like a duck and you quack like a duck and you say you're a duck, you're a duck. They are Marxist-Leninists. They are not liberals, as Mondale says." (Bush later admitted that Mondale had actually used the word leftists.) Bush argued that in arms control the U.S. must "negotiate from strength," and he claimed that Mondale would "drastically cut military spending." (Mondale wants to reduce the rate of increase from Reagan's proposed 7% to between 4% and 5% a year.)

Mondale wants to make arms control a top campaign issue. Eyeing a Gallup poll that gives him a 47%-to-35% edge over Reagan on the question of who would do a better job of "keeping the country out of war," Mondale last week renewed his promise to seek a summit meeting with Soviet leaders to negotiate a nuclear freeze within six months of taking office. He has also advocated a pause in testing nuclear and space weapons. "Today strength is no longer enough," he told the American Legion. "The atom bomb has changed all the rules. Sensible arms control is not weakness." The Legionnaires in the half-empty hall applauded tepidly.

Geraldine Ferraro is better able to rouse audiences on the "war-peace" issue by reminding them that as a mother she fears that Reagan will send her son, John, 20, off to war. Warm and spirited, Ferraro has the touch with crowds and the telegenic appeal that Mondale sorely lacks. Her inexperience and lack of sophistication on foreign policy questions began to show through last week, however. Answering a Missouri high school student's question about when the U.S. would use nuclear weapons, she confused the concept of "first use" (which means resorting to nuclear weapons on the battlefield after conventional weapons have failed) with "first strike" (meaning an all-out preemptive nuclear attack to eliminate the enemy's ability to retaliate). Her aides hastily tried to explain to reporters that she had not heard the question correctly.

Leadership. The Reagan campaign likes to refer to Mondale as "Carter-Mondale," to taint him with the image of fecklessness that is associated with Jimmy Carter's term. Again, the hatchet work has been delegated to Bush. He pointedly told voters that a leading Democrat, Mondale's primary opponent Colorado Senator Gary Hart, referred to the Carter Administration's handling of the Iran hostage crisis as "our days of shame." Bush also swiped at Mondale as the tool of "special interests" who is "asking the working people to pay off his billion-dollar promises."

Mondale is reluctant to attack Reagan personally. But he does intimate that Reagan is a detached, even dangerous, Chief Executive who falls asleep in Cabinet meetings and makes light of bombing the Russians. Said Mondale to the American Legion: "He even jokes about nuclear war. It's not funny." When the Soviets negotiate arms control with Mondale, said Running Mate Ferraro, "they'll have to deal with a man who understands the world and knows what he is doing." Ferraro also contrasted Reagan's show-business past with Mondale's career in Government. "While Ronald Reagan was host of Death Valley Days, Fritz Mondale was trying to get Medicare passed for senior citizens," she told the Merrill, Wis., crowd.

Traditional Values. Reagan refers to the return to "family values" at almost every stop, and takes full credit for it. In Chicago he proclaimed an end to "something of a hedonistic heyday," and stated that "many of us turned away from the enduring values" of faith, hard work and family, "but it's passing; we've righted ourselves." Mondale also embraces family values, but defines them differently. Borrowing from New York Governor Mario Cuomo's much praised keynote address at the Democratic Convention, Mondale said that family means sharing and taking care of the weak and sick.

With some skill, Mondale has used the family issue to turn around attacks on him as an avatar of Big Government. He says that the more sinister threat of Big Brother comes from the Republicans' moral agenda -legislation to ban abortion and permit prayer in schools. "I want a future where Government watches out for you, not over you," he said.

The question on each of issues is: How well will they serve to attract crucial swing voters? Each side can fairly well count on its core constituency: for Mondale, minorities, the poor, organized labor; for Reagan, religious fundamentalists, the well-to-do and conservatives of every stripe. The real battle is for the middle, in particular two key groups: the blue-collar middle class and the smaller but influential core of young professionals sometimes called Yuppies.

Mondale pursues the blue-collar middle class with his charts and graphs showing that the rich directly benefited the most from the Reagan tax cuts. "We've got to force them to figure out who's on their side," says a Mondale aide. "They must ask the question: Who cares about people like you? Despite his statements, Mr. Reagan has provided them with no tax relief."

Reagan has, however, given them at least the hope of economic prosperity. Particularly in times of prosperity and secure employment, most people in the middle class tend to associate themselves with those higher on the economic ladder, not those lower. Middle-class parents want to believe that their children will do better. Furthermore, many of the old blue-collar class are now more accurately called the subprofessional white-collar class, working in offices and not on assembly lines. Unlike their parents, they no longer identify with organized labor and traditional Democratic issues. They are more worried about higher taxes and crime than programs to create jobs or help welfare mothers.

This upward identification is doubly strong with the Yuppies. Mondale's share-the-wealth rhetoric is not all that enticing to those with visions of BMWs dancing in their heads. Reagan, on the other hand, courts them with lines like "we believe in high tech, not high taxes."

Though conservative on some economic issues, Yuppies tend to be liberal on social issues; many are put off by the demand for organized school prayer or by crusades to ban abortion. Reagan has to be careful not to sound like a hectoring maiden aunt. Ever so slightly, he has modulated his message: last week, for instance, he spoke not about a ";return to" but rather a "rebirth of traditional values. Similarly, Reagan does not advertise his opposition to abortion, mentioning the issue only rarely.

Historically, most voters do not think of themselves as Republicans. Less than a third use the label in most surveys, compared with the more than 40% who identify themselves as Democrats. But Reagan has been able to cut across party lines. He is not a member of the old Republican Establishment -indeed, he ran against it in 1976 -and he rarely uses the G.O.P label on himself. Says an adviser: "You cannot get a lot of Democrats to become regular Republicans. But you can interest them in 'America's party' or 'the Grand Opportunity Party.'" Reagan regularly invokes the names of popular Democrats, including Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and the late Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, a leading military hawk. So broad is Reagan's reach that he even plans to honor Mondale's liberal mentor, Hubert Humphrey, by presenting a congressional commemorative medal to Humphrey's family at the White House this week.

Though Reagan's natural base -is in the South and West, he plans to take his case into traditional Democratic strongholds this fall, particularly blue-collar areas. His advisers expect him to spend up to three-quarters of his time in the next few weeks in the Northeast and Midwest. The reason: they want not only to win but to triumph in a nationwide landslide of the land that swept the Tories into power in Canada.

The Reaganauts' optimism is matched by Democratic foreboding. "Mondale's campaign is getting into a position where only public drooling by Reagan will get them back into it," says a former aide to Gary Hart's campaign. "It's not hopeless, but that's the way it's heading." His views are privately shared by many Democratic leaders.

Democrats cling to a few wild cards. Although the choice of Ferraro as running mate does not seem to have helped Mondale much in the polls, it may have stemmed further erosion. Many reporters watching Ferraro on the stump feel that the excitement she generates at almost every stop may translate into an unexpectedly large number of votes for the ticket in November, particularly among the Yuppies. Typical was an impromptu rally last week in a hotel lobby in conservative Spokane, Wash.: it was so jammed that the fire marshal had to turn away 300 to 500 people, but most waited around for 40 minutes just for a glimpse of Ferraro.

The hubbub may be only curiosity-seeking, but it contrasts sharply with the lack of spirit that greets Mondale on the road. When the two travel together as they did last week, Ferraro usually speaks first. When Mondale comes to the podium, the crowd often starts to thin out.

Hard as he tries, Mondale simply cannot engage an audience. But his problems run deeper than a poor speaking voice and stiff manner. It is not surprising that most people would rather hear Reagan's good tidings than Mondale's jeremiads. Mondale's empathy with the poor is noble but out of sync with the popular mood.

Most important, Reagan is able to convey a simple, powerful vision of America. Mondale cannot. He is a retail politician, familiar with the back room and able to appeal to interest groups by intimately understanding their issues and voicing their concerns. After two long and exhausting years campaigning for the presidency, Mondale still has not shaped an overarching theme or articulated an inspiring vision that could spark zeal among those who agree with him on specific issues. With only eight weeks left before the election, he must soon begin kindling some fires.

With reporting by Sam Allis, Laurence I. Barrett