Last October, Republican state Rep. David Duke of Louisiana watched from the gallery as Senate Democrats failed to override President Bush`s veto of the 1990 civil rights bill.
”This bill was a civil wrong in the name of civil rights,” Duke said after the vote, adding that he wished he could have helped Bush on the veto.
Within minutes, presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater was in the White House briefing room, saying the administration disavowed the former Ku Klux Klansman ”in every way, shape and form.”
Last week, Duke was campaigning for governor of the Pelican State as Bush endorsed a retooled 1991 civil rights bill. But the specter of the former Grand Wizard was palpable as the Bush administration sorted through the troublesome calculations of racial politics.
More than any other American politician, it seems, David Duke has the capacity to make George Bush nervous.
”Personally, he hates the association with Duke, hates it when Duke does things like he did at the veto vote last year, saying he (Duke) is a part of it,” said one Republican political consultant in Washington.
Along with the personal antipathy, Bush feels compelled to address the concerns of some of his moderate GOP supporters, many of whom feel the president has been too willing to play the race card in politics.
It is a charge that stretches back to Republican use of Willie Horton and the prison furlough issue in the 1988 presidential campaign. Horton, a black man from Massachusetts, is a convicted murderer who committed rape while on furlough. The GOP used the issue to attack the Democratic candidate, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, for being soft on crime. Many Democrats and civil rights leaders saw the tactic as an attempt to exploit racial fears and stereotypes.
Duke`s electoral credibility-he won 44 percent of the total vote and 58 percent of the white vote in losing a U.S. Senate race last year-provides the one sour note in the Bush administration`s handling of racial politics to its own advantage.
Indeed, many observers-not all of them Democrats-believe it was Duke`s strong showing in the Louisiana gubernatorial primary earlier this month that drove Bush to seek a compromise with sponsors of the current civil rights legislation.
In terms of the actual legislation, backers such as Sen. John Danforth
(R-Mo.) argue there was little if any change in the substance of the bill before and after Bush`s sudden decision to endorse it.
”Conceptually, it`s the same bill,” Danforth said Friday.
The difference in the mix is political. Republicans believe that their support of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas-and the perception that Democrats were out to get him in the confirmation process-could generate support among black voters long ceded to the Democrats.
From the moment Thomas began talking of a congressional ”high-tech lynching for uppity blacks,” Republicans realized that the nature of the debate had changed and that, in racial terms, Democrats were on the defensive. Polls showing widespread black support for Thomas after law professor Anita Hill charged he had sexually harassed her emboldened Bush in his commitment to his nominee. His political operatives saw that Bush might win the Senate fight over Thomas` confirmation and prosper at the ballot box as well, making inroads into a traditional Democratic constituency.
With the Thomas debate couched in terms of fairness to the nominee, with talk of ”character assassination” and ”lynching,” they could reap a harvest of black voters without risking the support of the middle-class white voters cultivated throughout the Reagan years.
Into this win-win scenario, and out of the recesses of Louisiana politics, stepped David Duke.
Duke`s second-place showing in his state`s gubernatorial open primary Oct. 19 sent a chill through the White House. Duke bested the sanctioned Republican candidate, incumbent Gov. Buddy Roemer, and is headed for a Nov. 16 runoff against former Democratic Gov. Edwin Edwards.
Many Republicans squirmed over Duke`s declared affiliation with their party and his claims that, on many issues, he merely echoed the tenets of the party platform.
The rogue candidate sniffed at attempts by Vice President Dan Quayle and Republican National Committee Chairman Clayton Yeutter, among others, to read him out of the GOP. And he seemed to revel in opportunities to tweak the administration and his adopted party.
Asked last week if he might mount a right-wing challenge to Bush next year, Duke told reporters, ”No, I want to help George Bush win re-election.” On Friday, Bush appeared rattled by suggestions that, in this instance, he ought to endorse the Democratic candidate in Louisiana. Although he didn`t go that far, he labored to distance himself from Duke.
”I could not possibly support David Duke,” Bush said, ”because of the racism and because of the very recent statements that are very troubling in terms of bigotry and all of this.”
The political reality is that Bush is confronted with the possibility of a Republican governor with a neo-Nazi past, a Republican governor who as recently as 1989 was selling Klan literature inside his Metairie, La., district office.
There is also the chance, despite Duke`s demurral, that he will stage a presidential primary fight next year. And he might well use Bush`s backing of the current civil rights bill as a wedge against the administration.
Knowing all that, the Bush administration had to find a way to react to David Duke. And, last week, they decided to find a civil rights bill they could live with.
