The Question Republican Candidates Fear Most In 2018 - by Mark Shields

June 24, 2018 4:50 am

Alan Baron, who was a wise and witty man of politics, used to tell this true story to remind those who worked in politics like he did that in some election years, the outcome is determined by events and forces completely beyond any candidate’s or her campaign’s control.

As a 21-year-old, Baron was managing in his heavily Republican hometown of Sioux City, Iowa, a long-shot congressional campaign for an underfunded Democrat when Vincent Burke, the frankly sacrificial Democratic nominee for a solidly Republican state Senate seat, approached him with a request for $300. Burke wanted to rent a sound truck on which he would put signs endorsing all the Democratic candidates and drive around the county urging all within earshot to vote for incumbent Lyndon Johnson for president, Harold Hughes for governor, Stan Greigg for Congress and himself for state Senate. Baron, who doubted the persuasive effectiveness of a sound truck and did not have the $300, gently turned down Burke, who somewhere found the money, got the truck and drove it blaring throughout the county.

On Tuesday, as you may have figured, came a historic Democratic landslide In Iowa. Hughes cruised to the governorship. LBJ rolled to victory. In a major upset, congressional candidate Stan Greigg won, as did, to nearly everyone’s surprise, Burke, who explained his victory to Baron this way: “You see, kid. The truck. It worked.” Baron, keenly aware that the Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, had been an albatross to all Republican candidates and an unalloyed gift to all Democrats running, responded simply: “It’s a shame Adlai Stevenson” — (the former governor who had twice lost as Democratic nominee in landslides to Republican Dwight Eisenhower) — “didn’t know about the truck.”

Sometimes in election years, Baron understood, it makes little difference how brilliant — or how flawed — a campaign a candidate runs; the outcome is beyond his control. In 2018, there is one poll question that, frankly, terrifies Republican candidates. It is this: Which one of the following statements best describes your feelings toward the president?

A) Like him personally and approve of many of his policies.

B) Like him personally but disapprove of most policies.

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