WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- A modern-day Rip van Winkle just emerging from a twenty-year long slumber could tell a lot about the state of American politics by looking at this year's list of candidates for U.S. Senate. The list of familiar names is long.
There are the candidates who represent families who have been a presence on the political scene for close to 100 years -- the Kennedys and the Rockefellers.
There is also a Dole. A Pryor. An Alexander. A Lautenberg. A Clement. A Coombs. A Sununu. And, as of Wednesday, there is a Mondale in the mix.
Whether out of nostalgia or desperation, the Democrats and the Republicans are trying to ride old political warhorses and their legacies in the race to define America's priorities and win political power.
For all the talk of how Reagan changed the Republicans and Clinton changed the Democrats, names on both slates suggest the parties are closer to where they started in the 1970s than either might comfortably admit.
Walter "Fritz" Mondale last appeared on the Minnesota ballot in 1984, carrying his home state for president by only 3,761 votes out of more than 2.08 million cast. He lost the other 49.
Mondale has never been elected to an office to which he was not first appointed. He knows how to make effective use of the powers that come with incumbency.
In 1984, he campaigned as the last hope of the old Democrats -- the candidate of the FDR, Lyndon Johnson, and Hubert Humphrey, trade union heavy party that Ronald Reagan vanquished in the 1980s.
Remember how Mondale relied on the political muscle of organized labor to prevent Colo. Sen. Gary Hart from beating him in the primaries? That year Hart represented what were called the "Atari Democrats" -- named after an almost forgotten home video game manufacturer that was once an industry leader. The "Atari Democrats" were heavily into high tech and modernization and were the first in a long line of "new" Democrats.
Mondale represented the "old" Democrats in 1984 -- the very same people from whom the Clinton-dominated Democratic Leadership Council eventually wrested control of the party. As some political veterans can remember, the phrase "new Democrats" came about in reaction to Mondale and the thumping defeat he received at the hands of Reagan.
Now the Democrats have pulled him out of retirement to try and save their control of the Senate rather than taking a chance on a new name with, presumably, new ideas.
In some ways the Republicans are not much better.
North Carolina's Elizabeth Dole has never held elective office. She served in the Reagan cabinet but most would not call her a Reaganite -- a term of respect in most GOP circles.
Her brand of Republicanism is much closer to that exhibited by the first Bush administration, where she was U.S. secretary of labor, then to Reaganism. The Republican she most resembles is the one whose name she has shared since their marriage: former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas.
Just across the border in Tennessee, former governor and US Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander is trying to retain the seat of retiring Republican Sen. Fred Thompson.
Though Alexander was once a national example of the politics of the "new South," he has not been on the general election ballot in Tennessee since 1982, when he was re-elected governor with just under 60 percent of the vote. During this year's Senate primary some conservatives suggested that a small edit of his trademark "Lamar!" signs -- making them read "Lamar?" -- would better serve the voters as few can figure out why, besides a desire to win, he is running.
If Alexander is a throwback to the old "new South," his opponent, U.S. Rep. Bob Clement, reaches back farther than that.
Clement is a little-known congressman from Nashville whose principal qualification is that his father, Frank Clement, was a two-term governor of Tennessee in the 1950s. He was not the party's first choice. That honor went to U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. of Memphis, who declined to make the race, preferring to remain in the House seat his father held for 22 years before him.
The same is true in Kentucky, where the Democrat candidate for Senate is Lois Weinberg, another legacy. Bert Coombs, her father, was governor from 1959 to 1963 -- which may explain why she is campaigning as Lois Coombs Weinberg.
On its face, there is nothing particularly wrong with political legatees trying to win elective office. The Senate was well served by leaders like Robert Taft, Robert M. Follette, Jr. and Hubert Humphrey in the years after his vice presidency.
Bit in the current context, the big names contesting for seats in the U.S. Senate represent political short cuts. The focus of their campaigns is on the name, not the issue.
Voters are assumed to be making favorable assumptions about the candidates based on long ago records of achievement. Many of these candidates are husbanding their political capital, hoping their name will carry them through by mobilizing the partisan base and bringing in independent-minded voters who feel good about them without necessarily thinking too much about what they stand for. For the parties it is a good strategy but for the voters, it may not lead to the best representation.
It would be better if all the candidates, new names and familiar faces, would engage in an energetic debate, bringing forward new ideas. A vigorous nation requires vigorous leadership -- campaigns should be about more than what's in a name.
