By LEE HOWELL
Politically Speaking

When the delegates to the Republican National Convention next summer pick their nominee for president — or, actually, when the Republican caucus and primary voters bind those delegates to vote for one or the other of the current crop of candidates — they will be deciding more than just the man (or woman) they want to be their party's standard-bearer in the 2000 election.

They will be determining the type of election they want to see next year.

And, that, in turn, may determine the type of politics which this country will have for far longer than the one or two terms their nominee, if elected, will serve.

For, the eight current candidates for the GOP nomination can roughly be broken down into two major groups.

On the one hand, you have those candidates who appeal to the stridently ideological voters who are demanding to see an issue-based campaign.

They are: multimillionaire magazine publisher Steve Forbes, former Vice President Dan Quayle, conservative television commentator Pat Buchanan, and Religious Right activist Gary Bauer.

You could take these four men, drop them in a bag, shake it up, pour out one of them, and you would not know the difference.

Oh, sure, there are minor differences in backgrounds and experiences. But, you basically have four conservative clones.

Pretty much the same could be said about the other four candidates as well — Texas Gov. George W. Bush, former Red Cross director Elizabeth Dole, Arizona Sen. John McClain, and former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander.

They are not all ideological clones like the first group, but they are very similar in campaign styles, personality, and their politics.

The voters who will choose them will want to see a candidate who exhibits somewhat moderate leadership traits and are somewhat more subtle in their criticism of the incumbent Democratic administration.

Now, be careful about using that term moderate: Every Republican contender this year — as in years gone by and probably in years to come — is a conservative.

The 2000 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is not going to be any philosophical battle like 1964 between a liberal in the mold of former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and a conservative in the mold of former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater.

Rather, it will be a fight to determine whether the 2000 election will be a rerun of the 1980 presidential race — which pitted a “true believer” conservative Republican against a wimpy, moderate Democrat — or of the 1960 presidential campaign — which pitted two nice guys with very similar political philosophies against one another.

Personally, I believe it will be the latter — especially if Bush maintains his front-runner position and eventually wins the nomination.

And, it may very well turn out like that election as well — with the sitting vice president narrowly losing to the nonthreatening (and somewhat nontraditional) challenger.

The 1960 election — unlike virtually all the presidential races over the succeeding four decades — was not an ideological battle.

There were no major competing visions of where the two candidates wanted to lead the nation: It was a choice between personalities, styles and images.

(Now, I am not suggesting that there were no issue differences between the two candidates; there were; but, those differences — even in foreign policy, where they were most evident — were not portrayed as some type of great moral crusade between the two parties' philosophies as has been the case since Vietnam hardened our partisan divergences.)

If Bush is the nominee, he will not be a strident voice like that of former U. S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich whom voters in this area came to know and love (or hate) so well.

Rather, he will run like JFK, depending on his personality — rather than his issues — to sway the voters.

And, that might very well be the type of leaders the voters will seek in 2000.

[Lee N. Howell is an award-winning writer who has been observing politics and society in the Southern Crescent, the state, and nation for the past 25 years.

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