Shoot-Out At Gender Gap

By Margaret B. Carlson

Like Henry Higgins, George Bush must wish a woman were more like a man. After all, men support Bush as much as they do Michael Dukakis, and in some places more. But women are another matter. The latest polls, like those of the past few months, show Bush trailing Dukakis among women voters by anywhere from 17 to 32 points. Even among Republican women, regardless of age or class, Bush does far worse than he does among men. Lamented a Republican political consultant as he pored over poll data from a solidly conservative district in Ohio last week: "Among women under 40, he gets 35%; among women over 40, he gets 33%. Either way, he gets annihilated." Illinois Republican Congresswoman Lynn Martin, a Bush adviser, calls the gender gap the "400-lb. gorilla" of the campaign.

Last week both candidates courted women's votes by traveling the day-care circuit, hugging preschoolers, pushing children on swings and playing with goldfish. Bush tried to attack his gender-gap problem by proposing a $2.2 billion child-care program. In Republican fashion, the plan would rely on tax breaks and credits rather than a direct Government program. Still, it would cost money, and Bush, who says he will not raise taxes, is not saying where the funds would come from. Below a certain income level, every mother with small children would get a tax credit or refund of $1,000 -- whether or not she used it on outside child-care services. Bush argues that his bill is better because it keeps the Federal Government out of the day-care business. It also placates the right wing of the G.O.P., which, unlike Bush, is not yet sure workingwomen are such a good thing. Ethel Klein, author of Gender Politics and a professor of political science at Columbia University, says the bill is "aimed at helping women stay at home."

Dukakis, who visited the Harmony Early Learning Center in Secaucus, N.J., criticized Bush's plan as ill conceived. "Any policy that would require every welfare mother in the country to hire an accountant just doesn't make sense," he said. He supports in concept, but not with specifics about how he would pay for it, a $2.5 billion day-care plan introduced by Democrats in Congress that would apply federal standards to day-care facilities and provide money to states for subsidizing those who send their children to approved facilities. The two approaches illustrate a fundamental difference in the parties' philosophy: the Democrats prefer a directly financed Government program, Republicans tax incentives and less federal involvement.

Bush's interest in the issue of child care may be too sudden and too obviously political to help him much with the women's vote. Says Dukakis Campaign Manager Susan Estrich: "George Bush discovered child care last weekend. Most working women discovered it on their first day of work." In addition, the causes of Bush's problem with women voters are deeper. Among them: his personal characteristics, how he deals with women and, most important of all, women's concerns about the economy.

Republican Pollster Richard Wirthlin says, "Women rely heavily on their reading of a candidate's personality, the nature of the guy." Bush's mood shifts and jerky gestures come off as insincere to them, says Wirthlin. Bush has trouble conveying his qualities that would appeal to women: his bravery during World War II, his devotion to his family (he once said his finest achievement is that his children still like to come home), his risk taking in the oil fields of Texas, the personal and political loyalties he has built over the many years of his career, his basic decency. What comes across instead is a mannered preppie with a silly side that can act up at any time. His attempts at humor often fall flat, his speech is filled with masculine sports metaphors and boyish qualifiers like "all that sort of stuff." Despite his athletic prowess, he seems trapped inside his own body. When he tries to be humorous under pressure, his face gives way to a false smile, a lopsided grimace that does not involve his eyes.

Bush also comes across as uncomfortable with women. During the debate with Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, he showed that he did not know how to deal with a woman as an intellectual equal. The next day he showed more insensitivity when he bragged that he had "kicked a little ass." When he tries to show affection to his wife in public, Bush can be as stiff as a schoolboy. This in contrast to Dukakis, whose warmest moments are with his wife, dancing with her in an empty hallway to music only the two of them can hear, holding her hand as if he really means it.

Bush has not brought women into his inner circle, in either the West Wing or the campaign. Although he is filling the second tier of his organization with women, the top echelon of the Bush campaign, known as the group of six, is a preserve of white males. Dukakis, on the other hand, has put women, like Campaign Manager Estrich, in top policymaking roles and has shown at each level of his organization that he considers women to be equal partners.

Issues may be the most basic factor in Bush's widening gender gap. Many women's groups came to distrust the Vice President after he abandoned his support for the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion in order to agree with Reagan. Women feel less sanguine than men about the economy. As newcomers to jobs in the workplace, women will be the first to suffer in an economic downturn. Like many economists, women hear a bomb ticking away ominously behind the rosy employment and inflation figures. Says Republican Consultant Douglas Bailey: "Job security is a greater worry for women." Women still earn less than men and make up a disproportionate share of the poor and working poor: 80% of those who work full time earn $20,000 a year or less. A Republican consultant admits, "It may be morning in America for men. But for women it's late afternoon, and they're dog tired."

Pollsters find that women believe Democrats tend to care more about the issues that matter to them, most notably job security, health insurance, medical care, schools. And women tend to be more sympathetic to the basic Democratic Party notion that Government should play an active role in seeking to improve people's lives. The Vice President will have a hard time countering that belief after seven years of domestic budget cuts. As Irene Natividad, chair of the National Women's Political Caucus, points out, "Women have undergone two terms when their issues were not addressed, and Bush is running on the Administration's record."

Rather than proposing more specific programs like the child-care credit, Bush aides say they will close the gender gap by stressing economic prosperity and trying to convince women that the G.O.P.'s free-enterprise, anti- Government approach to the economy is the better way to go. Says Bush Chief of Staff Craig Fuller: "Our major job is to improve understanding across the board about the underlying strength of the economy." Deborah Steelman, domestic policy adviser for Bush, is one of the late-arriving female officials in the Bush campaign. "As soon as we connect Republican superiority in managing the economy to these quality-of-life issues -- education, crime prevention, environmental protection -- the gender gap will disappear," she says.

The other Bush tack will be to play up the flip side of the gender gap: Dukakis' relative inability to attract as high a level of support among men as he does among women. A man who takes out the garbage, does the weekly grocery shopping and mows the lawn without a four-horsepower engine backing him up may be somewhat unappealing to many Southern white males, already alienated from the Democrats.

Dukakis' problem is more partisan than personal -- men seem more wary of Democrats in general but not him in particular -- hence more curable than Bush's. It is also smaller: Dukakis trails among men in California, where a poll of 450 people two weeks ago showed that males favored Bush 45% to 38%. "You could say we have a weakness among men," admits Dukakis Pollster Irwin ("Tubby") Harrison. "But look at where we are with men compared to where they are with women." Electoral mathematics makes Bush's woman problem more serious than Dukakis' male one: 8 million to 10 million more women than men are expected to vote this fall.

Until 1980, women generally voted like men, or so it appeared. But Ronald Reagan's opposition to equal rights, abortion and comparable pay and his tough line on the Soviets turned women off. Reagan was able to overcome the gender gap in 1980 and 1984 not by changing his positions on women's issues but by sheer force of personality. With his moist eyes, avuncular delivery and perfectly pitched TV ads, he convinced women he was not trigger-happy and that a strong economy was a top priority. The media-conscious Reagan campaign made the most out of the President's time at the ranch riding his horse and chopping wood, especially after his age emerged as an issue of concern to women in 1984.

Bush is not as good an actor as Reagan, and the campaign has no plans to spend much money on television ads or direct mail specifically aimed at allaying women's concerns. Along with emphasizing the economic recovery, Bush will play on men's fears about Dukakis, painting the Massachusetts Governor as a big-spending liberal who is weak on defense and soft on crime. But any strategy aimed at men could backfire, of course, widening the gap between the sexes that Bush so desperately needs to close.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY MIRKO ILIC

CAPTION: Whom would you vote for?

DESCRIPTION: Percentage of men and of women favoring Michael Dukakis and George Bush for President; color illustrations of Dukakis and Bush balancing on bar graphs.

With reporting by David Beckwith/Washington and Michael Duffy with Dukakis