The Presidential Wannabes

[Tigermike 3,053]

The Presidential Wannabes

By Richard E. Cohen, National Journal

© National Journal Group Inc.

Friday, Feb. 11, 2005

Yes, it's only February 2005, just a little more than three months after last year's bitterly contested presidential campaign finally came to an end. But here in Washington, it's never too early to start thinking about the next election. And the shortlists of 2008 presidential contenders that are already circulating are chock-full of members of the World's Greatest Deliberative Body.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who himself waged a brief White House bid in 2000, recounted an old adage in his book Square Peg: "If you walk onto the Senate floor and say, 'Mr. President,' 100 senators turn around." While 100 may be stretching it, political insiders consider a dozen or so sitting senators to be potential presidential aspirants the next time around.

To be sure, many of these senators are playing coy, at least for now. Take Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who plans to retire from Congress at the end of 2006. At last summer's Republican National Convention in New York City, Frist insisted that he had made no decisions about 2008, even as he paid a visit to the New Hampshire delegation sporting a "First-in-the-Nation Primary" lapel button. "Whatever [my future] is, it will be in some kind of public service, but public service, to me, is working in delivering health care to people who wouldn't otherwise get it, or it could be in government," Frist told National Journal at the time. "I just don't know."

Other senators are more forthcoming about their intentions. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who failed to win his party's presidential nomination in 1988, bluntly declared during a December appearance on Don Imus's radio and television show, "I'm going to proceed as if I'm going to run" in 2008. Biden aides later downplayed those remarks. But then in January, when Biden was asked at a Pennsylvania AFL-CIO gathering, "When are you going to run for president?" the senator responded, "I think next time I will."

While the Senate's potential presidential wannabes may publicly voice varying levels of interest in waging the ultimate campaign, they have one thing in common: They've all cast thousands of congressional votes, some of which could come back to haunt them. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., learned that all too well during the 2004 White House contest, when the Bush campaign mined the votes that Kerry had cast during his nearly two decades in the Senate, looking for "flip-flops."

The fact that legislative track records can be prime fodder for opponents is one reason that, throughout history, incumbent senators have performed abysmally as presidential candidates. The last sitting senator to be elected president was Sen. John F. Kennedy, D-Mass., in 1960. In fact, in all of the nation's presidential elections, beginning in 1789, only 15 sitting or former senators have been elected president, according to a 2002 study by Barry Burden, a Harvard University government professor. (See NJ's cover story, "Breaking Out Is Hard to Do," 4/3/04.)

But statistics like those surely won't stop senators from trying. And now, several years out from the 2008 election, they are casting seemingly routine votes that could hurt them among the unforgiving hard-line activists who often dominate the presidential nominating process in each party.

As part of our annual congressional vote ratings for 2004, National Journal took an in-depth look at the voting patterns of seven Republican senators and six Democratic senators who are considered potential 2008 presidential candidates (see PDF charts: Republican and Democratic presidential wannabees). The analysis yielded some interesting results.

On the Republican side, for instance, Frist last year voted against the conservative position on a handful of economic and social-policy issues. Consequently, his composite scores in NJ's 2004 vote ratings placed him near the political center of Senate Republicans. Sen. George Allen, R-Va., who chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the past election cycle, followed a similar pattern.

Perhaps more striking, Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum, R-Pa., was rated slightly to the left of the GOP center in his combined scores for 2004. Santorum's vote ratings placed him closer to Sen. Arlen Specter, his moderate Republican Pennsylvania colleague, than to the Senate's conservative true believers. By contrast, in 2003, Frist, Allen, and Santorum were among the 13 Republican senators who had perfect conservative scores in the vote ratings.

Meanwhile, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and John McCain, R-Ariz. -- each of whom has styled himself as a maverick -- had even more-moderate scores that placed them close to the center of the entire Senate in 2004. For Hagel and McCain, their vote ratings continue the steady move each has made away from the Republican Right since joining the Senate. Graham has been in the Senate only since 2003, but during his previous eight years in the House, he often ranked among the more-conservative lawmakers.

Among the Democrats who are viewed as presidential prospects, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., sided with conservatives on several key economic and foreign-policy votes in 2004, which put her composite vote ratings slightly to the right of center among Senate Democrats. In each of the two previous years, Clinton was among the dozen most-liberal senators, according to the vote ratings.

Clinton's support among liberal activists may protect her against charges of apostasy. But Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., whose presidential ambitions have generated political buzz in recent weeks, could be more severely challenged to defend votes that have consistently placed him toward the conservative end of Senate Democrats. As Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., painfully learned in 2004, presidential primaries can be brutal on centrists. And both Bayh and Clinton had vote ratings close to Lieberman's.

On the other hand, Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., received the most-liberal scores in 2004 among the current Senate Democrats who might pursue a presidential campaign. Kerry did not cast enough Senate votes in 2004 to receive scores.

These results are among the highlights of National Journal's 2004 vote ratings, which have been compiled annually since 1981. The ratings rank members of Congress on how they vote relative to each other on a conservative-to-liberal scale in both the Senate and the House. The scores are based on lawmakers' votes in three areas: economic issues, social issues, and foreign policy. The scores are determined by a computer-assisted calculation that ranks members from one end of the ideological spectrum to the other, based on key votes -- 60 votes in the Senate and 80 votes in the House -- selected by National Journal reporters and editors.

For example, the results show that, on social issues, Frist had a conservative score of 66 and a liberal score of 31. That means that he was more conservative than 66 percent of the other senators on social issues and more liberal than 31 percent; he tied with the rest. The scores do not mean that Frist voted with conservatives 66 percent of the time, nor that he was 66 percent "correct" from a conservative perspective. (See the methodology for more details on how the vote ratings are calculated.)

Republican Presidential Wannabes

Of the seven GOP senators who are viewed as possible presidential candidates, five had a less conservative score last year than they did among the same 100 senators in 2003, according to the vote ratings. The two exceptions were Graham and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. Brownback has the most conservative lifetime-average composite conservative score, and Graham is the most liberal among the seven senators, according to an analysis of their year-by-year scores since entering the Senate.

Because the differences in the ratings from one member to another -- or in one lawmaker's ratings from one year to the next -- may be based on only a vote or two, overanalyzing the evolution of an individual's vote ratings can be risky. But an examination of the actual votes where senators parted company with the party faithful reveals some of the legislative factors that were in play.

For Frist, his 2004 ratings on social issues included two votes in which he sided with liberals and against a sizable number of other GOP senators. He voted in favor of a proposal to require the increased use of seat belts as a condition for states to receive highway funds, and he voted for a measure to prohibit the sale or transfer of handguns lacking a safety device. Frist also voted against the conservative position on some economic issues. He supported restrictions on the outsourcing of federal contracts overseas and a proposal to increase federal spending on child care.

Frist's composite score for 2004 returned him to the center of Senate Republicans, where he had been during his first term. He had shifted to the right in the vote ratings after he ascended to the Senate GOP leadership in 2001, which was also when President Bush took office.

For Santorum, his composite score last year was his least conservative during his decade in the Senate. In part, he may have been responding to home-state pressures, because Democrats have promised to give him a hard-fought re-election challenge in 2006. Santorum's conservative score also dipped in 1999, the year before his first re-election bid. He will be running next year in a state that Kerry narrowly won in the 2004 presidential race.

Like Frist, Santorum voted for the gun-safety measure, which was his only "liberal" vote on social issues in 2004. He sided with liberals on two economic votes included in the ratings: on outsourcing and on additional health care spending. On foreign policy, he voted against conservatives once -- to require disclosure of U.S. intelligence funding. But because 33 senators had a perfect conservative score on foreign policy, Santorum's single vote against the conservative position dropped his score down to 60 percent in that category.

Allen cast one vote with liberals on social issues last year: He favored expanding federal hate crimes protections to include offenses motivated by gender, sexual orientation, and disability. He also sided with liberals on several economic issues among the key roll-call votes, including additional federal spending on homeland security and health care.

Brownback's conservative score went up last year, after moderating in 2003. He voted with liberals last year on only two economic votes, dealing with pension liability and child care funding, and on one social-issue vote, on gun safety.

McCain, who is among the three maverick Republican senators who might appeal to centrist voters in a presidential campaign, increasingly bucked his party on a host of Senate issues in 2004, including appropriations, environmental hazards, intelligence information, gun control, and same-sex marriage. He tied with Specter as the third-most-liberal Senate Republican last year.

Hagel's distancing from the Republican mainstream also became more pronounced in 2004, especially on foreign policy, where he strongly criticized Bush's handling of Iraq. In contrast to McCain and Hagel, Graham has maintained a solidly conservative score on social issues. But Graham has sided with the liberals on many economic and foreign-policy issues.

Democratic Presidential Wannabes

In contrast to the Republican lineup, the Democratic senators thought to be contemplating a presidential run have more experience in the national spotlight and have averaged longer service in the Senate. Their tenure has given them more opportunities to make occasional shifts -- deliberate or otherwise -- in their vote rankings within the Senate.

Both Biden and Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., the only potential presidential candidates who have been senators ever since the start of NJ's vote ratings, have been rated among the most-liberal members of the Senate in some years, and within the center in other years. Dodd's relatively conservative period was in 1991 and 1992; Biden's comparable interval was from 1995 to 1998. Last year, each fit comfortably in the center of Senate Democrats.

Biden had a perfect liberal score on economic issues. But he voted with conservatives on foreign-policy matters, such as the U.S.-Australia free-trade agreement and the confirmation of Porter Goss as Central Intelligence Agency director; he also voted to approve some of Bush's controversial appeals court nominees. Dodd sided with conservatives in last year's key votes on issues such as military assistance to Colombia and the Australia trade deal.

Clinton also separated herself from Senate liberals on foreign policy, in her votes on issues including missile defense, Iraq, and aid to Colombia. She also split from some of her usual allies on some economic votes. She voted to approve legislation providing new corporate tax breaks and to pass the fiscal 2005 omnibus appropriations bill.

By contrast, Bayh has consistently demonstrated a centrist voting pattern. Last month, however, he was one of 13 Senate Democrats to vote against Bush's nomination of Condoleezza Rice to be secretary of State, a move that led some to suggest that he might be starting to pursue a more liberal tack.

Feingold's recent liberal tilt follows a period from 1998 to 2001 in which he ranked in the center or slightly to the right among Senate Democrats. His few votes with conservatives last year included two social issues on which his actions may have reflected home-state pressures: He opposed mandating increased seat belt use and extending the assault weapons ban.

-- Correspondent Kirk Victor contributed to this story. Assisting with tabulating and analyzing this year's vote ratings were Almanac of American Politics Researchers Peter Bell, Jessica Brady, Josh Kraushaar, and Tom Rains, and Intern Sarah John.

link