A brisk coup in Moscow, in which Boris Yeltsin is replaced by a group of hard-line ex-Communists and military men who announce that they will not be dismantling those SS-18 heavy missiles, might just save the day for Bush's presidency.
It sounds unlikely. It sounds downright dangerous for the world, and for Europe, and for whichever president occupies the White House after Nov. 3. It also sounds deeply unpleasant for Yeltsin and the Russian people.
But it is a measure of the desperation felt by the Bush-Quayle campaign that they now count on a miracle to avert what the opinion polls say will be the biggest electoral landslide for the Democrats since Lyndon Johnson swamped the arch-conservative Barry Goldwater back in 1964.
The scale of Bush's deficit in the opinion polls is breaking all the rules of American politics. Florida, which he carried by 20 percent four years ago, now has Clinton leading by seven points. States that have not voted for a Democrat since 1964, like Colorado and New Mexico and the traditional Republican heartland of New Hampshire and Vermont, are looking to be solidly Democratic this year. Bush will even have trouble holding his home state of Texas.
Back in the summer, there was a lot of nervousness in the Clinton camp about a new onslaught against the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Saddam last week appealed to the U. N. to delay the visit of the next inspection team until after the U. S. election. Iraq claimed that Bush was looking for an excuse to start the war all over again, and save his presidency in the process.
Even that might not be enough. American voters have made it clear that they are tired and turned off by the Bush campaign's attacks on Clinton's character. A nakedly opportunist attack on Baghdad on election eve might offend as many voters as it rallies to the president's cause.
But a sudden and frightening international crisis that cannot be blamed on the White House would be a very different factor in the election's closing days. and from the bizarre attacks upon Clinton's student tour of Moscow and Leningrad back in 1969, we know that Moscow is very much on the mind of the Bush campaign staff.
While all the opinion polls suggest that Busirs support is lower now than it has been throughout this year, there is one opinion poll which has been constant: that Bush is more trusted by the voters to handle foreign policy, and they would feel " safer with him in the White House if the world suddenly became a dangerous place once more.
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