Dwarfs No More

By John F. Stacks

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

-- Henry Adams, 1907

Just a month ago the confusing, arcane and jerry-built 1988 presidential selection process appeared to be producing only chaos. The Democratic field was crowded. To many, it was deficient in both distinction and definition. The Republican side had its own afflictions. The front runner had been humiliated in the first contest, his principal challenger was manifestly disorganized, and a wild-card televangelist threatened to disrupt the entire game.

To make matters worse, the latest electoral invention, the concatenation of primaries and caucuses known as Super Tuesday, loomed as a fulfillment of the Law of Unintended Consequences. Rather than give the South a major role in selecting nominees who reflected the region's more conservative leanings, it threatened to sow further confusion by enhancing candidates with no chance of being elected. For the Democrats, ironically, Super Tuesday looked in advance as though it might give lifts to the very Northern and liberal candidates the South had been hoping to diminish.

Yet in the avalanche of delegates picked on a single day last week, there emerged a curious sort of order. The so-called dwarfs who had swarmed onto debate stages over the past year started to grow, enlarged by the sheer act of winning. Men who seemed implausible as potential Presidents suddenly began to - come into sharper focus as plausible leaders of the nation. Not perfect, to be sure, not yet exciting in most cases, but no longer presumptuous in their ambition. Super Tuesday rearranged the presidential race with unexpected logic and sense.

For George Bush, the day produced a triumph that rewarded his greatest assets: superb organization, widespread if not passionate support, an ability during two decades in public life to make almost no real enemies. With his mastery of the political game, Bush has virtually ensured his nomination.

The inventors of this Southern primary were Democrats who reasoned that their party's inability to win the White House in four of the past five elections was rooted in the process's bias toward more liberal venues. They wanted the South to have a voice -- and they succeeded. Although Tennessee Senator Albert Gore is only a sometime Southerner, he is distinctly more centrist than the two front runners in his party. His strong performance last week gives him a chance to capture the nomination, or at least the second spot. The region's views will certainly be heard as the campaign unfolds.

Super Tuesday strengthened Northerner Michael Dukakis. Picking his shots carefully in Florida and Texas, the Massachusetts Governor also added delegates from the few non-Southern states that held their contests on Tuesday. By avoiding a drubbing in a region far from his own, emotionally as well as geographically, he remains the front runner.

Jesse Jackson profited in the South, winning more votes than any other Democrat. He enlarged his delegate count to the extent that his candidacy, his point of view and, most important, his constituency will have to be courted carefully and sincerely by his party.

Although Super Tuesday did not settle things for the Democrats, it left the party with a field that accurately represents its three main political wings: New Deal liberals, more conservative Southerners, and blacks. Now these groups must bridge their differences -- at least if they want to win in the fall.

In a larger sense, the post-Super Tuesday race for the nomination reflects the national state of mind in the twilight of the Reagan years. Despite some of his recent blunders, the President is still regarded with a powerful affection that has bred a certain reluctance to say goodbye to a gauzy era of good feeling. Bush benefits from this kind of contemporary nostalgia. His dogged loyalty to the President enables him to inherit some of Reagan's popularity.

At the same time, part of the national mind knows it is time to get back to work, to solve the problems Reagan has both created and left unattended. The concerns of the poor have gone largely unaddressed during the reign of Reaganism. The power of Jackson's candidacy is rooted in their claim for renewed attention.

Similarly, the country knows that Reagan's greatest flaw was a White House management style that can most charitably be called "hands off." Bush, with a resume that has been ridiculed perhaps too glibly, is a Reagan corrective in this respect. Dukakis also offers a record of tight management, if not inspirational leadership. Gore's strongest suit is his grasp of international issues, notably his strong sense of the dangers and potentials in the new relationship with the Soviet Union.

America's presidential-selection process is an accretion of reforms enacted over the years, each aimed at correcting the worst excesses of past elections and past presidencies. Bizarre and complex as it may be, the process may, paradoxically, be serving the country well. Certainly no system can guarantee the election of great Presidents. There is ample evidence in history that greatness is the product of chance, as much as any factor under any system. So far in the 1988 marathon, the process has performed suitably.

One measure of the system is whether it serves as an early-warning system for potentially fatal flaws. This year the least able of the contenders have been dealt with swiftly. Jack Kemp's economic unorthodoxy clearly hampered his campaign. Pat Robertson's loose-lipped irresponsibility did little for his hopes. Last week Bob Dole paid the price for his inability to organize a campaign, presaging a potentially important flaw as President.

The selection system dealt harshly with Gary Hart's defective personal behavior. Dick Gephardt, whose candidacy teeters on the brink of destruction, probably lost ground because he came across as having far greater ambitions than convictions. The one candidate who was perhaps disposed of too quickly was Bruce Babbitt, who brought refreshing candor and intellectual rigor to the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Yet he too was burdened with a major shortcoming. Until the very end of his campaign, he failed to master a primary presidential skill -- the effective use of television as a tool of leadership.

For all its problems, the chaotic primary system has infused American politics with the life and energy it needs. The process offers unknowns a chance to shine in the early, small-state races. It permits the best organized and the best financed to show their stuff in Olympian contests like Super Tuesday. And although one can argue that money and TV advertising distorted last week's results, the ability to raise a lot of cash in small amounts from a lot of people is a kind of plebiscite in itself, a test of a candidate's core support. In its very complexity, the system tests those who would be President in many ways, most of which are relevant to the qualities necessary to be an effective President.