WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE POLITICS OF CRIME

GOP Plays Catch-Up On Wedge Issue That's Pulling Its Punch

In the 1988 presidential campaign, George Bush made Willie Horton the
personification of rampant lawlessness. Four years later, in Bill
Clinton's first run for president, he shrewdly played the death
penalty card. And in the 1996 campaign, with crime again a major
issue, Clinton garnered the support of most of the country's major
police groups -- a rare feat for a Democratic candidate.

But as the nation begins girding for Election Day 2000, crime has all
but disappeared as a campaign issue.

"There's certainly been some years when crime was one of the defining
issues," notes GOP pollster David Webber of the Luntz Research Co.
This year, he says, "it just isn't popping up on the radar."

Adds Jessica Gavora, policy director for GOP presidential candidate
Lamar Alexander: "When we ask the questions, it's just not something
that shows up out there in the room."

That's not necessarily good news for the Republican Party, whose
law-and-order image has been turning on and turning out a loyal base
of voters for years. And the GOP's captains in Congress know the
dimensions of the problem all too well, according to some who work
closely with them.

"People like [House Judiciary Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bill]
McCollum and [Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin] Hatch and
[House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry] Hyde, they all get it, they
understand the dilemma that confronts them -- finding a hook back into
crime," says James Pasco Jr., executive director of the national
Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), a group with historic GOP allegiances
that endorsed Clinton in 1996.

So how does the Republican Party surmount these obstacles and get back
in the game? By offering a host of smaller initiatives, fine-tuning
current laws on Capitol Hill, and going after the Democrats where they
may be most vulnerable: the war on drugs.

"There are target-rich opportunities in terms of drugs," says one
senior GOP Senate staffer, noting, for example, a recent surge in teen
drug use and what he says is a steep decline in the U.S. Customs
Service's narcotics control budget.

Republican strategists plotting a comeback on crime politics may
mirror a strategy on Capitol Hill, where the GOP majority is pushing
heightened drug interdiction efforts and a new juvenile crime bill in
the 106th Congress.

In the meantime, the GOP's playmakers are left to ponder what forces
have conspired to make one of the most potent political wedge issues
into a nonstarter.

STATISTICS AND SYMBOLISM First, violent crime is down, dramatically,
and there has been no shortage of press reports trumpeting that news.
Homicides, robbery, and assaults have all dropped significantly over
the last six years. The 18,210 murders in 1997, for example, were more
than a quarter fewer than those committed in 1993.

The decline may be in part due to policies dating from the Reagan-Bush
years. But the numbers started moving in the right direction on
Clinton's watch, and he has made sure the voters know it.

Second, Clinton co-opted the issue even before he took office. Rarely
has a president gotten more political mileage from an idea than
Clinton's announcement, in the summer of 1992, that he would add
100,000 officers to the nation's police forces. Republicans grumble
that the plan, passed by Congress as part of the mammoth 1994 crime
bill, has been more hype than help. But even some of the GOP's leading
strategists concede that the 100,000 cops program -- now 92,000 cops
strong and counting -- has been a political smash hit.

"There was a good symbol, those 100,000 cops," says veteran GOP
strategist and lobbyist Charles Black, "and he has ridden that hard."

Add in a soaring prison population and a period of untrammeled
economic expansion, and the crime issue begins to lose a bit of its
anxiety-driven appeal.

"Everything is anesthetized by a good economy," says John Bolton, who
ran the Justice Department's legislative shop under President Ronald
Reagan and is now at the American Enterprise Institute.

When Americans are feeling good, adds Webber, they worry less about
being mugged. "Crime is connected with some of the more negative
emotions," he says. "When people are feeling less concerned overall,
they are less concerned about crime."

Then there's the question for politicians of what's left to do on the
federal level. In recent years, Congress and the White House have
worked together to federalize a lot of criminal activity that used to
be handled at the state and local level. That's made it tough for
federal candidates from either party to articulate a fresh anti-crime
agenda.

"It's difficult to identify areas relating to drugs and violent crime
where federal crime legislation can be passed because most areas have
already been addressed," says Paul McNulty, chief counsel to the House
Judiciary Crime Subcommittee and a former Justice Department official
under Attorney General William Barr.

The trend took off most dramatically in the second year of the Clinton
administration, when the 1994 crime bill provided federal prosecution
and penalties for some 50 offenses, including carjacking and domestic
violence, and a "three strikes" law. It's a pattern abhorred, it
seems, by everyone but politicians.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist has spoken out against the pattern in
his annual address on the state of the judiciary. And just last month,
an American Bar Association panel chaired by former Attorney General
Edwin Meese III roundly condemned the practice, arguing that many of
the statutes federalizing criminal activity are empty political
gestures that have a minimal impact on most crime.

Lacking support to draw more state crimes into the federal arena,
Republican candidates may try to jump-start the issue by proposing
tougher and longer penalties for existing federal crimes. But that's
not likely to work either.

"The problem for Republicans now is that it's hard to get any tougher
than we've already gotten and not seem over the top," says Vincent
Schiraldi, who directs the liberal, nonprofit Center on Juvenile and
Criminal Justice. "We already have the highest incarceration rates in
the world. We already execute teen-agers. It's a real dilemma for
Republicans."

The increased complexity of gun politics these days has produced yet
another dilemma for Republicans. The Democrats' threat to introduce
gun control amendments into every crime bill has effectively stymied
Republican efforts -- especially in the Senate -- to bring major crime
legislation to the floor for a vote.

"The Clinton administration and the Democrats in Congress have been
very successful framing crime issues as firearm issues, and firearm
issues are so problematic within the Republican Party because of the
[National Rifle Association]. It's difficult to get anywhere," says
Pasco of the FOP.

Faced with falling crime rates, tough sentences already in place, and
a president who refuses to be outflanked on any law enforcement issue,
Republicans are pinning their political fortunes on leading the war on
drugs.

The fattest target: Since Clinton took office, teen-age drug use has
soared, up from 14 percent in 1993 to 21.5 percent in 1998, according
to a University of Michigan survey. Republicans say that legacy is the
direct result of a failed Clinton drug policy.

Administration officials, while not shying away from the numbers, have
other explanations, including the "generational forgetting" that
occurs when a new crop of high school students, unaware of the dangers
of drug use, reach adolescence. And, trying to emphasize a silver
lining, they are quick to mention that today's figures, regardless of
how dire, are down sharply from 20 years ago.

"Teen-age drug use has essentially gone up 50 percent since the early
1990s," acknowledges Pancho Kinney, the acting strategy director at
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. "But it is
still half of the rate of the late 1970s and early 1980s."

The teen-age drug numbers not only provide the GOP with real political
grist, but also they point to one of the few areas left where
Republicans can continue to stand apart from Democrats.

There are differences on interdiction policy -- whether to pour money
into attacking the source or concentrate on protecting the border. And
there is a clear philosophical divide on how to deal with drug
offenders once they're caught.

Republicans like to emphasize punishment, while many Democrats still
prefer to stress prevention and treatment.

"At their core, Democrats have very strong feelings when it comes to
drugs: more treatment, more compassion for drug offenders, more
dismantling of drug laws," argues McNulty. "And yet, if you look at
American attitudes toward drugs, there's still a get-tough attitude.
The man on the street doesn't lose any sleep over zealous drug laws."

And with the Clinton administration leaving the Democratic Party
vulnerable on issues of morality, GOP candidates are certain to stress
the effect that "good morals" can have on cutting down crime.

"This administration lacks the moral authority that made 'Just Say No'
so effective," says George Terwilliger, former deputy attorney general
in the Bush administration, who is now a partner in the D.C. office of
Richmond's McGuire, Woods, Battle & Boothe.

"It's less tangible," explains Gavora, Lamar Alexander's policy
director. "It's setting the tone at the top. Obviously, these guys
have not, and I'm not just talking about inhaling or not inhaling."

Rep. McCollum says the seeds of a strategy are there. "Accountability
vs. prevention," says McCollum, describing the difference he sees in
Republican and Democratic philosophies on crime. "The Republican
message is that you have to have consequences from the very first act."

Presidential candidate Robert Smith, a Republican senator from New
Hampshire, puts it this way: "Everybody's against crime. I'm not going
to make the accusation that President Clinton or anybody else is not
against crime. It's how do we punish them. Violent offenders shouldn't
get a second opportunity in society to do it again."

Clinton may have moved dramatically in that direction -- he constantly
notes that, under his administration, a federal three-strikes policy
is now in effect for violent crimes. Smith, apparently, would go him
one better.

And GOP presidential candidate Dan Quayle plans to continue his
"Murphy Brown" emphasis on family values.

"He is irritated that people are saying: 'The crime rate has dropped,'
and patting ourselves on the back, when the big picture, the values
being transmitted, are getting worse," says Quayle campaign manager
Kyle McSlarrow. While getting tough on crime will certainly be part of
Quayle's portfolio, says McSlarrow, "That a Band-Aid. He's looking at
the larger problem."

SELF-AWARENESS Democrats realize their vulnerabilities, especially on
the drug issue. In February, the administration unveiled its 1999
National Drug Control Strategy in a press release heralding outlays of
$1.3 billion for 50,000 additional police officers, $195 million for a
national anti-drug media campaign targeted at kids -- and just $85
million for drug treatment.

The message was delivered, not coincidentally, by Vice President Al
Gore, the party front-runner for president. "It was interesting to see
Gore unveiling the drug strategy," says Dennis Shea, a lobbyist at
Black, Kelly, Scruggs & Healey and former policy director of Robert
Dole's 1996 presidential bid. "This is a pre-emptive strategy because
the drug numbers are not good."

Gore's spokesman, Chris Lehane, disagrees: "One of the great legacies
of the Clinton/Gore administration has been their ability to take
crime off the table as a political issue because their policies have
been effective," he says. The drug strategy, adds Lehane, is simply
good policy, not mere politics.

What Republicans must do to retake the lead on crime issues, says
McCollum, is demonstrate to voters that local and state
law-enforcement successes have flowed from GOP-sponsored programs in
Washington -- such as forcing inmates to serve at least 80 percent of
their sentences and giving state prosecutors sole discretion to try
juveniles as adults.

"We've done a lot of things in D.C. that have translated to the
benefit of [New York GOP Gov. George] Pataki, to the benefit of [New
York City Mayor Rudolph] Giuliani, to the benefit of Florida, where we
have a Republican governor," McCollum says. "So the president may have
a transitory moment that he's done well by crime at the state and
local level. But it's Republicans who are benefiting, and we've helped
them benefit from this."