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The Key Issues of Campaign '90
| Article
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18293 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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10 / 1990 |
2,292 Words |
| Author
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Donald Lambro
Donald Lambro is chief political correspondent for the
Washington Times. |
Until Iraq invaded Kuwait and sent the world's oil-dominated economies tumbling, the pivotal political issue of the 1990 campaign was as hard to identify as a politician who told the truth.
For the past two years no single issue has scored more than 3 to 9 percent in most major national voter issue surveys, with the lone exception of drugs, which polls showed hitting its highest scores - somewhere in the upper 40s - late last year and earlier this year.
But with the price of oil rising and its future course still unclear, the federal deficit growing by leaps and bounds, due in part to the burgeoning savings and loan bailout costs; and a dangerously sluggish economy limping into the fourth quarter amid fears of a recession, it does not take a genius to figure out what will be on voters' minds when they enter the voting booth on November 6.
Fear of an increasingly uncertain economy and the bread-and-butter concerns of job security, incomes inflation, and interest rates will undoubtedly be the driving factors in this year's midterm congressional elections and even in a number of gubernatorial elections in states where the economy has turned sour. How incumbents and their challengers handle these and other issues will determine the outcomes of their campaigns. But there can be no avoiding the often-inflexible law of politics that when things go wrong the voters take it out on those in office and reward those who want to replace them.
“Each race has its own issues, many of which are specific to the local or state or regional problems of that area,” said a key strategist at the National Republican Congressional Committee. “But all of our data suggest that the economy is becoming the core political issue that will drive this election, along with the overall voter discontent that is hard to pin down. People are going to vote their concerns. That's why it's so important that we get an agreement on the budget in order to restore confidence in the economy.”
Many months before the Kuwait invasion sent shock waves through Wall Street, political public opinion polls were revealing a surprisingly gloomy electorate and a widespread throw-the-rascals-out, anti-incumbency mood. For months that mood has been the talk of Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have been expressing an uneasy feeling about a brewing discontent at the grass roots.
“People out
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