MISSOURI WATCH: MISSOURI TAKES ITS TURN

It may have been surprising, but it was not incomprehensible that a majority within a minority of Missouri's registered Republican voters would choose a familiar outsider to lead the 1996 presidential campaign. Numerous observers predicted Pat Buchanan would run ahead of Bob Dole in the March 9 caucuses, and while some were more accurate than this writer, virtually anyone even remotely in touch with the electorate sensed that Missourians were anxious to send a message to their party leaders and the country's political elite.

Exit polls taken around the state indicated that many voters agreed with Buchanan not necessarily in the details of his message but with its bitter tone of protest. Who better was able to express anger, distrust and, yes, disgust with America's political process than an unswerving pro-life, former St. Louis newspaper editorialist, ex-Nixon speech writer?

If Pat Buchanan hadn't become a candidate, the disenchanted would have had to invent someone like him.

Bob Dole may be disappointed in Missouri, but he has no right to be. His disenchantment should center on his campaign leaders in the state, those who enjoyed seeing their names in the public press more than the pleasure of hard work involved in getting out supporters for a cold-Saturday caucus in some remote hall. When voters feel strongly about a cause or issue, they will bend the wind to make their feelings known. When the cause seems only halfway important, and when issues become as fuzzy as a candidate's voting record, lethargy is the only expected, rational response.

To say that Buchanan's troops were better organized than the expected winner's is to state the obvious, except to note one essential difference: Buchanan evokes heartfelt cheers when he batters away on his central theme of voter fear, worker apprehension, middle-class distrust from yesterday's broken promises. Dole attracts cheers because of his responsible legislative record, his war injuries, his determination to overcome the natural obstacles of what certainly will be the last of a series of attempts to move into the Executive Office.

Dole is a true patriot; Buchanan speaks of his desire to be one.

Thus far this has not been a happy campaign year, with little evidence to indicate that times will become any better in the remaining eight months. But at least the tone of the campaign is true to the mood of the country, and that mood has been best expressed by the winner of the state's caucuses and least personified by the principal loser.

It is here, then, that the political machinery of the world's greatest democracy breaks down. It has happened dozens of time since the beginning of the Republic, and without redress it will happen time and time again in the future.

The process bears retelling, even if its details are uncomfortably familiar to millions of voters across the country. The campaign always starts with a long list of acceptable candidates, all of whom seem reasonably qualified to assume the job being sought and most of whom have names that are reasonably familiar in some American households. Once this process is completed, the second phase begins. This includes not only the gathering of a professional, competent campaign staff but the far more important task of raising millions of dollars to get the candidate's name before indifferent voters.

How well the candidate carries out this second phase will, within a relatively short period of time, determine the success or failure of his effort. Even those with superior credentials cannot hope to get beyond the first round of presidential preference primaries without several millions of dollars in the bank or pledged for delivery. Without adequate capitalization, a candidate's talents are of little assistance, and without it, his campaign workers leave, his television advertising disappears and the press relegates him to a status from which there is no delivery: loser.

If you examine their records, the also-rans of this year's GOP primary contests are as qualified and as competent as the winners. They have dropped out not because their records were rejected by the voters but because their message never got to the electorate.

At this midway point in the GOP campaign, many of the best and brightest have already departed, negative campaigning has crowded out the positive, and millions of dollars have gone down the drain in the vain attempt to elevate the most important political decision America will make in 1996.

America seems destined to wallow in the slime of its politics.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.