The New Democrats defeat Gingrich, but look vulnerable at the last hurdle.
Should they be answering the charge of big government by being more explicit about the influence of big money on the whole election contest?
Chris Burford
London
Bush pulls ahead after tarring Gore as lover of big government
Special report: the US elections
Martin Kettle in Washington, Guardian
Saturday October 14, 2000
George W Bush has recovered his lead in the American presidential election opinion polls in part because more voters have come to see Al Gore as a traditional liberal advocate of big government, advisers to both White House candidates believe.
Republican strategists urged Mr Bush to put the "big government" issue at the centre of his case against Mr Gore during the second presidential debate earlier this week in North Carolina.
Mr Bush, as usual, carried out his advisers' wishes to the full.
President Clinton is believed to be among the Democratic moderates who counselled Mr Gore to place more emphasis on the government's role as a promoter of opportunity rather than as a provider of solutions, an approach that Mr Gore tried to follow with limited success in the debate.
While recent US campaign headlines have focused on aspects of the candidates' characters, Mr Bush's current surge has been accompanied by the emergence of strong public support for a smaller and less activist government than Mr Gore proposes.
Results of a Washington Post survey of public opinion this week showed that Americans prefer a less interventionist government by a margin of nearly two to one, a finding which could make it very hard for Mr Gore to capture centre-ground voters, who are particularly sceptical about government activism.
According to the Post poll, 58% of voters say that they would favour "smaller government with fewer services", as against 32% of Americans who prefer "larger government with many services". When asked which of the two candidates would do a better job "holding down the size of government", 54% chose Mr Bush, while only 33% chose Mr Gore.
Mr Gore's dilemma is that almost all of the individual programmes he supports are very popular; he revived his flagging candidacy this summer by pledging to use government spending to help "working families" and the poor.
Yet, as the election nears, those promises seem not to hold such attraction for the affluent minority of Americans who are expected to vote on November 7.
"Gore's reliance on government solutions has been very successful in rallying the Democratic base, but it does not play well with the independent voters whose support he also now needs," a leading Democratic moderate said this week.
Mr Bush, who has placed a $1,300bn (£885bn) tax cut over 10 years at the centre of his programme, relentlessly painted Mr Gore as a supporter of big government during their debate.
"I don't believe, like the vice-president does, in huge government," Mr Bush said Wednesday during his closing remarks."I believe in limited government. And by having a limited government and a focused government we can send some of the money back to the people that pay the bills."
On several occasions during the debate, Mr Gore tried to stress his credentials as a limited-government man. "I'm for shrinking the size of government. I want a smaller and smarter government," he said.
"I'm not for command and control techniques," he said later in the debate.
At times, however, Mr Gore also seemed an enthusiast for government intervention at home and abroad; responding to Mr Bush's calls for limited US foreign engagement, Mr Gore said that the US should "provide the leadership on the environment, leadership to make sure the world economy keeps moving in the right direction".
And when he talked about subjects such as healthcare, hate crimes and education, Mr Gore seemed to embrace government activism very willingly.
In 1992 and 1996, Mr Clinton successfully finessed the issue with his "third way" strategy, in which he reinvented the Democrats as the party of more limited government activism.
Mr Gore has not been able to follow through on that approach in the way that hardcore moderates - such as his running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, and President Clinton - would normally favour.
As he saw his support languishing throughout the first half of this year, Mr Gore was compelled to move to the left, trying to inspire traditional Democratic voters with promises of big spending programmes - especially on pensions and prescription drug benefits for the elderly - made possible by the surplus in the federal budget.
That strategy restored Mr Gore's candidacy to health in August and for much of September. But in the past three weeks the vice-president has lost ground as Mr Bush regained it with promises of tax cuts.
Win or lose, the issue is certain to be at the heart of the election post-mortems after November 7.