Presidential Candidates "Always Attack, Never Defend"

By Laurence I. Barrett/Washington

Combat. If one noun sums up Tom Harkin's political program and persona, it is combat. The Iowa Democrat proudly describes the strategy that won him five terms in the House and two in the Senate: "Always attack, never defend." He believes that a pugnacity gap kept Democrats out of the White House through the '80s. Now, as he runs for President, he proposes to fill that gap by waging class warfare against George Bush and guerrilla operations against Democrats he considers timid. "The only thing Americans like less than a dirty fighter," he says, "is someone who won't fight back."

He is hardly waiting for an excuse to counterpunch. For months Harkin, 51, prepared for his formal announcement of candidacy last weekend by conducting the kind of aggressive populist campaign at which he excels. When he castigates the Reagan and Bush administrations for favoring the rich and harming the less affluent, he sings from the standard party hymnal. But when Harkin gets personal, he deftly exploits the politics of roots and resentment. He is the son of a Slovene immigrant mother who died young and an Iowan coal miner who never got to high school. In attacking the patrician President he keenly dislikes, Harkin can make the incumbent's very name sound odious.

"I've got news for you, George . . . Herbert . . . Walker . . . Bush," he says, jabbing his forefinger in the air. "Next year the American working people are going to veto you!" Lines like that evoke applause from blue- collar workers, farmers and party activists. So does Harkin's hectoring of new-wave Democrats who would move the party toward the center. Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder, who became a candidate on Friday, glories in his record of fiscal austerity. Paul Tsongas, the earliest aspirant, styles himself a pro-business Democrat. Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, still mulling a run, comes across as a middle-roader. Of Harkin's rivals, actual or potential, only Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey might match him as an unapologetic prairie populist.

For now, Harkin is the preacher of traditional liberal psalms: a massive public-works scheme, increased spending for education and health, lower taxes for the working class and higher levies on the affluent. He promises "a bold plan for a new economic structure." But many Americans long ago lost faith in such primordial liberalism. Nathan Landow, Maryland party chairman and a major campaign fund raiser, concedes that Harkin's record could turn off wealthy contributors, not to mention moderate voters. "But Tom has a fiery way about him that will catch on," Landow says. "Maybe this time we need the messenger and can relax a little about the message."

Harkin's Senate colleagues last week were anything but relaxed as he irked them with one of his guerrilla maneuvers. As chairman of an appropriations subcommittee, he proposed moving $3 billion from the Defense Department to popular education and health programs. That would violate the constraints in the 1990 deficit-reduction compromise reached after much anguish, but Harkin thinks the five-year plan inhibits flexibility and should be abolished. After an afternoon of contentious debate, Harkin lost by a vote of 69 to 28, as he knew he would. But among liberal political junkies who vote in primaries, he scored points.

Willingness, even eagerness, to take on any establishment is part of Harkin's credo. He caused his first stir in Congress well before being elected. In 1970, as a young congressional staff member, he accompanied a dozen Representatives on a fact-finding trip to South Vietnam. He discovered -- and photographed -- abusive conditions at a camp for political prisoners. When the committee's report glossed over the "tiger cages," Harkin denounced it as a "whitewash" and sold his photos to LIFE. Harkin, who was attending Catholic University's law school at night and Saturdays, lost his job.

Five years later, having defeated a veteran Republican for a House seat, Harkin made larger waves. He bucked the Ford White House and his own party leadership to pass a measure forcing the Administration to use human rights as a criterion in dispensing foreign aid. It was an unusual success for a freshman who was not even on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Many Harkin amendments on diverse subjects followed. Like last week's Senate effort, most were doomed, but Harkin insists, "A vote should be taken. People should express themselves." His habit of forcing difficult votes is one reason Harkin never became a Hill insider. Democratic Representative Dan Glickman of Kansas, though a friend, says of Harkin, "He's a passion guy, not a dealmaker. You wouldn't want all 535 lawmakers to be passion guys. The place would be chaos."

After he got to the Senate by defeating the Republican incumbent, Roger Jepsen, in 1984, Harkin managed to combine dealmaking and passion to pass the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, a major statute that extends civil rights protection to the handicapped. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the key Republican in the deal, credits Harkin with skillful accommodation on that issue. Yet Hatch also observes, "Some on our side feel that he is the liberal equivalent of Jesse Helms."

Harkin can probably live with the criticism that he is a noisy ideologue. Other accusations carry a sharper sting. Some Democratic associates in Iowa and Washington describe him as a thin-skinned loner, quick to take offense and slow to form close links with allies or underlings. Republican opponents routinely accuse him of foul political play. His first adversary was Congressman Bill Scherle, who beat Harkin in 1972 but lost to him two years later. Scherle recalls Harkin's approach as "fabrication and exaggeration." One ostensible example of that dogged Harkin in later years. In a 1980 book by David Broder, Changing of the Guard, Harkin is quoted as saying he spent one of his five years as a Navy pilot in Vietnam flying reconnaissance and patrol missions. In fact, as he carefully makes clear today, he was based in Japan ferrying damaged aircraft from Vietnam and other Asian sites.

In his 1984 race against Jepsen, abortion was a significant issue. At churches Harkin's camp distrib uted a highly misleading handbill. It asserted, "As a Catholic, Tom Harkin has always been opposed to abortion." In fact, he professes philosophical qualms but usually votes on the pro-choice side. The sheet also wrongly accused Jepsen of supporting the death penalty "if your daughter, sister or mother is raped and has an abortion."

Tactics that raw have disappeared from Harkin's script, but he often declines to let accuracy ruin a witty line or blunt a political dart. Angry that Bush may provide emergency assistance to the Soviet Union if food shortages worsen, Harkin says that G.O.P. niggardliness toward elderly Americans will force many of them "to choose this winter between heating and eating." Harkin dismisses the possibility of starvation in the Soviet Union: "I keep seeing these pictures of Russians. I've never seen a picture of a skinny one yet." When he argues for rapid reduction of U.S. forces in Europe, he uses the figure of 350,000. He doesn't mention that a drawdown is well under way; according to the Pentagon, the number of troops still in Europe is only 214,000.

Under the intense scrutiny of a Presidential campaign, this cunning carelessness could be a liability. But voters tend to ignore such details, and Harkin's obviously heartfelt commitment to his causes overshadows his lapses. Last week when he pleaded for expanding immunization services for impoverished children, he recalled getting shots from the visiting nurse at his "two-room country schoolhouse, middle of nowhere, Iowa." Neither he nor his five siblings had easy access to medical care in the town of Cumming (pop. 139). When he fought for the disabilities act, he had in mind his eldest brother, Frank, who lost his hearing at nine when he contracted spinal meningitis.

Bush's political handlers say they are eager to have Harkin as an opponent because his old-fashioned liberalism makes him an easy target. But Orrin Hatch, who knows Harkin better, predicts that "he's going to be a very formidable candidate." Conviction is a candidate's heavy armor, and Harkin's is thick. Those who disparage him as too ideological, too careless with facts, should remember 1980. Democratic strategists used the same points in explaining why they wanted the G.O.P. to nominate Ronald Reagan.

With reporting by Nancy Traver/Washington