A Nightmare for Bush

GEORGE BUSH canceled a two-week trip to Asia last Wednesday, the day after the nation's elections weren't so kind to Republicans. He might have wanted to stick around to keep an eye on Congress, as his spokespeople say. Or he could have been so jolted by the election results in Pennsylvania that he decided to stick close to home to solidify his shaky political position.

Republicans, and especially Bush, lost a big race on Tuesday, when Harris Wofford, a liberal Democrat and first-time politician, handily defeated Bush's former Attorney General Richard Thornburgh.

The results of this election will no doubt make a big difference in Congress this year since Democrats keep their majority of 57 to 43, created when Wofford was picked by Pennsylvania Governor Robert P. Casey to replace Republican Sen. John Heinz, who died last spring. Wofford's election also make a big difference to President Bush and the way he is going to have to run his presidential campaign. In the first place, the results are going to insure that he even has to run a presidential campaign.

ALL EYES were on Pennsylvania's Senate race when a very liberal Democratic newcomer (one who went to Selma, Alabama during the '50s--before Martin Luther King Jr.) started gaining on a former two-term governor whose politics are pure Pennsylvania--a middle-of-the-road Middle Atlantic state that hates both far-right candidates and most Democrats.

Pennsylvania hasn't had a Democratic senator in 26 years. Arlen Specter, who holds the other Pennsylvania Senate seat, made headlines recently sitting on the confirmation committee at the Clarence Thomas hearings. He's the one who asked Anita Hill the brilliant questions about a hypothetical situation, and then asked Hill if she would have remembered a situation like that had it actually happened. He is also the senator who chided Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54-'56 (D-Mass.) about Chappaquiddick during the final floor speeches of the confirmation debate.

Gov. Bob Casey is technically a Democrat, but he is against abortion and has succeed in passing some of the toughest anti-abortion statutes in the nation. When he came to my high school to cut the ribbon on our nursery for students' children, he focused his speech around the evils of abortion and birth control. The screaming babies in the hands of their teenage mothers, with few fathers in the audience, didn't strike him at all as ironic.

Harris Wofford infuses some liberalism into this bastion of moderation. He has never held a political office before. He did, however, help President John F. Kennedy '40 start the Peace Corps and served in his administration. He marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and he was president of Bryn Mawr College. Wofford voted against Clarence Thomas' confirmation, and he campaigned on a national health care program. Wofford is the traditional liberal candidate.

His opponent, Richard Thornburgh, is a long-time political insider and a quintessential Reagan/Bush Republican. Thornburgh had all the advantages in this campaign. He had a large bank roll--his opponents had to solicit money in television commercials. He was elected governor of Pennsylvania twice. Then he left the state to work for the Reagan administration. And until Heinz's death, he was Bush's Attorney General. Thornburgh tried running a campaign on the coattails of the current administration. He actually said voters should elect him because he knows "the corridors of power." Bush personally campaigned for Thornburgh three times.

So how did Wofford swing a victory in the face of all of these Republican advantages?

The voters liked Wofford more. People trusted him. And most of all, the citizens of Pennsylvania voted against Richard Thornburgh.

That's what has Republicans so flustered about the results of the election. Had Wofford been more of a moderate, or more of a politician, or had won by a smaller margin, there wouldn't be much fuss. But Wofford won big as a liberal and as a new-comer. People rejected the grand Republican machinery. People rejected Bush. With the economy still floundering, and critics becoming very vocal about Bush's neglect of domestic issues, this is not good time for Bush to have to deal with defeat.

With partisan politics at their height, it's also not a good time for the Republicans to lose ground in the Senate. Wofford only increases the Democratic majority by one vote, but it is solid liberal vote in the place of a moderate Republican one. In very close votes (such as Supreme Court confirmations, veto overrides on civil rights bills, etc.) this could make a big difference.

PENNSYLVANIA'S political scene is strange. This year's big elections for the Senate seat and also for the mayorship of Philadelphia were marked by death. In Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo, the Republican candidate was in much the same position as Thornburgh. He was an ex-mayor (although he was a Democrat back then). He was running on a traditional Republican platform (with an added tinge of racism that had nothing to do with Thornburgh). And his past had more than a twinge of corruption (Thornburgh had his association with another former Attorney General, Edwin Meese III, who retired amid scandal in 1987).

Rizzo would have made a difficult opponent for Edward G. Rendell, the Democratic candidate. But Rizzo died of a heart attack over the summer, and his replacement had none of his charisma. Rendell swept almost 70 percent of the vote.

The deaths of Rizzo and Heinz were unexpected, and Democrats were able to make the openings in the political scene work for them. The significance of these results for the rest of the nation has to take into consideration that this was not a normal convergence of events.

But that still doesn't erase the fact that the Republicans failed in Pennsylvania this year. The race was marked by all of the stand-bys of power politics--public disenchantment, influence pedaling, party-bashing, corruption and death. Thornburgh ran a traditional Republican campaign with all of the perks of a Washington insider. And he lost.

Maybe the race wasn't so strange after all. Maybe this is the time for Democrats to capitalize on the mistakes of Republicans.

The only thing worse that could happen for the Republicans now is if David Duke wins his run-off election in Louisiana next week. If that happens, maybe Bush will have to do more than just cancel a few trips. He'll have to close up that vacation resort in Kennebunkport, Maine and break out some bumper stickers and start campaigning.

Beth L. Pinsker '93, the assistant editorial chair, grew up in Lancaster, Penn.

Thornburgh campaigned as the ultimate insider. Wofford bludgeoned him with it.