(7 of 7)
"The impression was left I was trying to avoid that debate, being too cautious." He was anything but cautious Friday afternoon, repeatedly assailing Hart by name in a press conference and then in a speech in the rotunda of the Maine capitol building in Augusta. Voice booming, face flushed, fists pounding the lectern, Mondale accused Hart of siding with Big Oil (by voting against the windfall-profits tax and proposing a $10 per bbl. fee on imported oil that would "add at least a full percentage point" to the inflation rate) and of pleasing "the hospital lobby" (by helping to kill a 1979 hospital cost-containment bill). Hart, on a Southern swing, blasted back that his oil-tax ideas were intended to reduce U.S. dependence on imports and "avoid the unnecessary loss of American lives in the Persian Gulf " since fighting might be required to keep the imports flowing. Said Hart: "Apparently, Mr. Mondale's position is that he wants to continue to rely on foreign supplies, and that must mean that if he cares about the country or its security he's prepared to go to war for that oil."
The prospect of a closely contested and possibly bloody Democratic nomination battle cheered Reagan's campaign strategists. Said one: "The longer the Democratic race goes on, the more it serves our purposes.
They'll have to spend their time and money fighting each other rather than uniting their side to beat up on the President."
Also, the fiercer the fight gets, the more difficulty the eventual winner may have unifying the party for the fall campaign.
But, Reagan's aides admit, there is a catch. They still assume the nominee will be Mondale, and are well prepared for a campaign against him. They will assail him as an oldfashioned, free-spending, solve-every-problem-with-a-new-Government-program liberal, and as the Vice President in the highly unpopular Carter Administration to boot. But just suppose Hart wins? The Republicans have not even begun to figure out what his vulnerabilities might be and how they might attack him. One top White House aide was asking reporters last week, in tones of genuine curiosity: "What does this guy really stand for? Is he more or less liberal than Mondale?" If nothing else, Hart's win in New Hampshire guarantees that Democrats will be asking one another similar questions in living rooms all over the country for the next few weeks. —By George J. Church. Reported by Sam Allis with Mondale and Jack E. White with Hart, and other bureaus