Tsongas knows he’s no star. But his resolutely unstellar campaign is finally above the waterline in New Hampshire. A thoughtful economic program and a blunt, truth-squad style have slowly lifted the former Massachusetts senator into a strong second place behind Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and far ahead of contenders with more flash and lots more cash–Sens. Bob Kerrey and Tom Harkin. “He’s a real tortoise,” says Mike Blastos, a Keene, N.H., restaurant owner and one of the few Tsongas supporters who sit on the state Democratic committee. “He plods and plods and plods. He picks up a friend here and a friend there.” Party pros, while still skeptical about his long-term prospects, are impressed with a candidacy that seemed laughably quixotic when it began 10 months ago. “He’s done a good job establishing himself as the uncandidate,” says Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin. “Right now, he’s the alternative to Bill Clinton in New Hampshire.”
A traditional liberal on social issues, Tsongas is pushing a boardroom-friendly economic plan. He rejects any short-term relief for middle- and low-income Americans in favor of pouring money into the country’s manufacturing base. Like George Bush, Tsongas favors a capital-gains tax cut, but only for long-term investments in companies. Tsongas also proposes relaxing antitrust laws to encourage joint ventures that he says will make U.S. corporations more competitive in world markets. Companies would get tax credits for investing in research and development. Tsongas would tax the rich to make up the revenues lost through his capital-gains cut, hike the gasoline tax every year to encourage conservation and finance infrastructure repair, and reduce defense spending to increase funding for programs like Head Start.
But the core of his program sounds like refried Reagan trickle-down. He says new social programs and tax breaks will have to wait until the economy is producing more high-wage jobs to finance them. “Someday you may get to the issue of tax fairness,” Tsongas told NEWSWEEK. “But to use up your bullets on [anything other than] the fundamental issue of how you make us competitive is to doom the country to long-term decline.” Tsongas has found an audience in economically moribund New Hampshire. Many voters are suspicious of sweeping promises and short-term fixes. He’s given away 140,000 copies of his 86-page manifesto, “A Call to Economic Arms.”
There’s a moral passion to Tsongas’s politics that’s drawing voters as well. His speeches are laced with appeals to service and generational obligation. “What we haven’t had in the last 12 years was a president who offered something beyond self,” he told University of Maryland students to exuberant applause. “Life is not a beer commercial.”
Tsongas traces his breakthrough to the Jan. 19 candidates’ debate in Manchester, where he was able to lay out his economic ideas in detail. Crowds and press attention in New Hampshire soon picked up. National fund raising improved as well: Tsongas took in $250,000 last week, more than in an entire three-month period last summer. He followed up with a strong performance at last Friday’s PBS debate in Washington, slamming fellow Democrats for pandering on tax cuts and depicting Bush as a leader with no moral compass. “There is no principle George Bush is not willing to sabotage for his own benefit,” Tsongas said. The nose-to-nose television time with other contenders has given him new credibility. “People have always been very supportive of me substantively,” he said. “But you have to give them a whiff that you can win.” He’s also reluctantly retained his first debate coach. Joyce Tsongas (once married to a cousin of Tsongas’s), a Portland, Ore., communications consultant, has helped him focus his arguments and bulk up his often awkward, milquetoast delivery. His surge comes as no surprise to his cadre of longtime aides. “This is a typical Tsongas campaign,” says campaign manager Dennis Kanin, who ran his come-from-behind 1978 U.S. Senate race. “We always start out with everyone saying it can’t be done.”
Tsongas has parlayed his lack of star quality into an asset, honing a don’t-get-no-respect shtik that connects with crowds. “We did all the polling and we figured out what the American people want in 1992 is a Greek from Massachusetts,” is a favorite one-liner. He also has a compelling personal story in his successful battle with lymphoma, a form of cancer that forced him to leave the Senate in 1984. At a kitchen-table discussion of health care in Hudson, N.H., last week, he offered quiet encouragement to a 28-year-old woman recovering from serious head injuries after a car crash. “You feel good about how far you’ve come. I feel the same way,” he said.
But if life isn’t a beer commercial, it isn’t a PBS debate, either. Even supporters who admire his message worry that his low-key and somewhat pious style will limit his appeal. And despite a clean bill from doctors-he’s been free of malignancy for more than five years–a grueling schedule and frequent swims (he recently headed a coed relay team that set a new world record for his age group in the 200-meter freestyle), his droopy appearance still fuels lingering questions about his health. An infection during cancer treatment destroyed his left eardrum; radical radiation therapy also diminished his lung capacity-though not enough to impair his daily activity-and leaves him with a chronically dry throat that he habitually clears. While Tsongas was battling a cold last week, a host at one of his appearances asked if he wanted some hot tea with honey. “I need a new body,” he lamented. Then there’s also the question of where he goes-if any place -after New Hampshire. It’s taken Tsongas 10 months to gain traction in a state where he is a respected neighbor. Kanin says Maryland, Maine, Washington and Colorado are the next targets on the calendar. But Tsongas has some work to do. At the University of Maryland last week, a school official greeted one of his campaign staffers with a friendly, “Mr. Tsongas?” Down the road, his fairness-can-wait assertions are bound to get a chilly reception from key Democratic constituencies like labor and African-Americans. But Tsongas says there will be no trimming back. Staring into the abyss of early death has freed him from what he calls “avoidance politics.” If voters don’t want to face up to hard economic truths, “it’s better we simply kiss and say goodbye,” he said. It’s already been a longer embrace than anyone imagined.
