Change Issue Dominates a Changing GOP Race

IRMO, S.C. —  Obscured by angry personal attacks and a bitter television advertising war, John McCain and George W. Bush have begun presenting Republican voters very different visions of a conservative reform agenda for the new century.

Rhetorically, the two men have converged, with Bush in South Carolina now overtly echoing the promise to reform Washington that has powered McCain’s insurgent campaign. But, in substance, Bush and McCain are still defining reform in ways that point toward contrasting priorities in the White House.

McCain places his greatest emphasis on measures to reform the political process--above all, a ban on the unlimited and unregulated “soft money” contributions to the political parties. Bush focuses most on reforming public programs--above all, education, entitlements and the social welfare system.

Though each man gestures toward the other’s priorities, they leave little doubt where their true passions lie. McCain’s agenda points toward big changes in the way Washington does business and more modest shifts in domestic policy; Bush is generally seeking more sweeping changes in policy and gentler adjustments in the way Washington works.

Along with their differing priorities for the White House, the two men also are offering different conceptions of how Republicans can return there.

McCain’s agenda envisions a new majority coalition of “the radical center,” united by antipathy toward the political system and special interests.

Though McCain cites as his models Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, the more telling precedents may be the diverse voter blocs that assembled around Jesse Ventura in his 1998 Minnesota gubernatorial victory and Ross Perot in the initial months of his 1992 presidential campaign. Like these two examples, McCain is attracting many voters less through his agenda than through a sense he has the personal strength to shake up the political system.

McCain Camp Calls Bush an Imitator

Bush’s agenda is aimed at building a different governing majority: a center-right coalition that holds conservatives with calls to limit government and cut taxes and attracts moderates with plans to rethink basic public programs--such as public education or Medicare--that voters historically have trusted Democrats more to reform.

“In every election there is a reform undercurrent,” Bush insisted this week. “Americans by nature are reformers. They are never really satisfied with government.”

To the McCain camp, the only meaningful distinction in this debate about reform is the difference between an original and an imitator. Through 1999, Bush touted himself as a “compassionate conservative.” It wasn’t until McCain dominated centrist voters and thumped Bush in New Hampshire that the Texas governor reemerged in South Carolina as a “reformer with results.”

“The central premise of what they did I think is undeniable: We have been beaten by McCain, therefore imitate McCain,” says Mike Murphy, McCain’s chief strategist.

When it comes to campaign finance reform, McCain’s signature issue, even neutral observers say Murphy has a point. Having raised more money than any presidential candidate ever and opted out of the public financing system in the primaries, Bush strikes campaign finance reform advocates as an unlikely champion of their cause.

“If he is elected president, he is going to come to Washington with more financial IOUs than any mortal human being could possibly comprehend,” Larry Makinson of the Center for Responsive Politics said this week.

Indeed, critics say Bush has virtually ensured that no serious campaign finance reform could pass in his presidency by insisting that it be linked to a measure allowing union members to withhold dues used for political purposes, a provision many consider a “poison pill” designed to force Democrats to oppose reform.

But Bush is on stronger ground in portraying himself as a policy reformer. In Texas, he has signed legislation reforming the education, welfare, juvenile justice and civil litigation systems. With its balance of tax cuts and domestic policy reforms, his national agenda generally reflects the balance struck by the most successful GOP governors around the country.

Like the governors, Bush is trying to develop conservative solutions to “social problems that the liberal welfare state has not been able to solve,” says Adam Meyerson, vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

From these distinct starting points, Bush and McCain push down different tracks. On measures to clean up the political system, McCain’s agenda is more robust and his personal commitment more intense. While Bush’s reforms aim mostly at predominantly Democratic constituencies, such as trial lawyers and teachers’ unions, McCain gleefully skewers powerful interests in both parties.

On the stump, McCain rails against pork-barrel spending, a subject on which Bush says little. To pay for his tax cut, McCain proposes to close $150 billion in corporate tax loopholes; Bush hasn’t specified any he’d like to cut and rejects McCain’s contention that eliminating such provisions should be the central goal of tax reform. “The core issue of tax reform is giving people their money back,” Bush said. “There are a lot of corporate loopholes that are there for a reason, a beneficial reason.”

Campaign Finance Reform Emphasized

While Bush insists other reforms can proceed without changing the campaign finance system, McCain says: “I think you have to have campaign finance reform in order to reform the other institutions of government.” Both men say they want to radically restructure the military to project power more efficiently, but while Bush talks vaguely about eliminating “pork or patronage,” McCain has specified more than $20 billion in “wasteful defense spending” that he would cut.

Bush, though, has offered more detailed plans and speaks with more command on questions of broad social policy reform.

On education, for instance, McCain’s agenda has only two principal components: a nationwide test of school vouchers and a plan to convert virtually all federal education programs into a no-strings check to the states, an approach known as block grants.

Delving more deeply, Bush has proposed a series of interlocked reforms built on diffusing authority while solidifying accountability. He wants to restructure both Head Start and Title I, the two major federal programs for low-income students, to strengthen their academics and impose penalties on facilities and schools that don’t demonstrate progress.

And while also endorsing education block grants, Bush said they should be linked to requirements that states annually test students in math and reading, and lose federal funds if they fail to show progress. Bush also wants to restructure social welfare programs to allow a larger role for local religiously based charities and has started urging that governors be given both more flexibility and money to use an existing federal program for children to provide health benefits for uninsured adults.

Likewise, while both men want to create personal investment accounts in the Social Security system, Bush goes further by proposing a comparably ambitious change in Medicare. Bush wants to convert Medicare, which now directly provides health care for the elderly, into a subsidy program that gives seniors funds to purchase private insurance, with the poorest receiving more money; McCain says he would need “a lot more information” before embracing “a radical proposal like that.”

Many analysts believe that McCain could sell his version of reform more easily in the fall than in the primaries, where it strikes many GOP conservatives as too great a change in the party’s direction. Bush’s problem could be the opposite: His agenda, particularly his $1-trillion-plus tax cut and Medicare proposal, could seem to a general election audience like too much change at a time when polls show a majority of Americans are satisfied with the country’s direction.