-trans.gif) |
 |
|
|
Midwest Today, Summer 1999
By LARRY JORDAN / Copyright 1999
Shortly after he boarded his campaign
plane at 7:28 a.m., bound for Iowa, he spoke over the intercom,
and made fun of the precipice on which he stood. "Please
stow your expectations securely in your overhead bins, as they
may shift during the trip and can fall and hurt someone -- especially
me," said Gov. George W. Bush, who was wearing cowboy boots
and a shiny, brass belt buckle with his name emblazened on it.
As chuckles rolled through the cabin, Bush added: "Thanks
for coming. We know you have a choice of candidates when you fly
and we appreciate you choosing 'Great Expectations.'"
His reference was not only to the nickname of his plane, but also
the state of his campaign.
Even before coming to Iowa as he did on this trip in early June
to formally announce his candidacy for the year 2000 Republican
Presidential nomination, expectations about his election chances
were soaring to stratospheric heights.
Pursuing a strategy that dates back to Ohio's William McKinley
in 1896 and his "front porch campaign," for awhile this
son of a former President never seemed to leave his home turf.
Instead he hosted a series of party bigshots who made a pilgrimage
to see him. Capitalizing on his famous family name, and with virtually
no exposure among rank-and-file voters on the national scene,
George Bush managed to garner the endorsement of a majority of
GOP Governors and House members, raise millions more dollars than
all his competitors combined, and secure a comfortable lead in
the polls.
The nation would have to go back to 1952, and the nomination of
a war hero, Dwight D. Eisenhower, to find someone so untested
emerging this far ahead of his party's pack.
But George W. is no war hero. He avoided Vietnam by serving in
the Texas National Guard. His business career has been marked
by mediocrity or failure which nonetheless has resulted in him
getting lots of money from his father's political allies. And
his political career has been handed to him on a platter by his
famous name, and his dad's cronies.
A Governor for only 4-1/2 years, George Junior has compiled an
undistinguished record. In the process, he has taken millions
in campaign contributions from the same big businessmen who were
in on the insider deals that made him rich -- and who themselves
have received billions in sweet deals from the Texas state government
during Bush's term.
So what's going on here? Are there no candidates on the political
right who are more qualified to seek the nation's highest elected
office? And why is it that so many Republicans are writing a blank
check to a blank slate?
It could be that "The vacuum is sucking him into being the
pre-emptive front-runner," as GOP strategist Tony Fabrizio
delicately describes it.
Yet if one merely examines Bush's recent electoral performance,
it is hard not to be impressed.
In 1998, George W. Bush became the first politician in Texas history
to get himself re-elected to a second successive term as that
state's Governor. And most significantly, he carried key voting
blocs that could be the basis for a new Republican Presidential
coalition in 2000. Bush won not only more than two thirds of female
voters but 70% of independents, 60% of moderates, and nearly a
third of Democratic liberals. Perhaps his most impressive achievement
was in garnering the support of 49% of Hispanics, a group he made
a special effort to court.
Not surprisingly, Bush's across-the-board appeal has convinced
many of his party's faithful that he is the strongest possible
candidate to head his party's ticket next year. His stock is further
inflated by polls which show him trouncing Al Gore, the presumed
Demo nominee.
But Texas good-ole-boy politics is a lot different than a national
campaign. Despite all the hoopla that surrounds him at this stage,
the 53-year-old Bush, whose friends call simply "W"
--- pronounced "dub-ya" in Texas -- is largely untested.
His performance in office, as well as his close ties to controversial
GOP leaders in Congress, raise enough questions about him that
no one with any political sense would consider Bush a shoe-in.
In fact, as public awareness dawns about some of the drawbacks
to his candidacy, George Walker Bush could eventually join the
long list of political figures who looked great in the early going
but fell flat when it counted -- such as George Romney, Edmund
Muskie, Ted Kennedy, Robert Dole, John Glenn, and Bush's father,
George Herbert Walker Bush, who lost his first run for the GOP
nomination to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
One thing is certain. "His poll showings are grossly inflated,"
says Hugh Winebrenner, a political analyst at Drake University
in Des Moines. "Eventually they'll come down. And how the
press interprets that will be important."
The Silver Spoon
Like his probable Democratic opponent in the next election, Al
Gore, George Bush Jr. had a rarefied upbringing.
Born on July 6, 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut, George was a toddler
when his parents moved to Texas. He attended junior high school
in Midland, and the Kinkaid Academy in Houston. He was then sent
east to become a student at the elitist Phillips Academy in Andover,
Massachusetts, and finally to Yale University, both alma maters
of his father. Even then there was talk that he got into Yale
not on the basis of academic merit, but because of whose son he
was.
George W.'s scholastic career was anything but distinguished.
According to a Newsweek profile, he "went to Yale
but seems to have majored in drinking..."
Somehow, he managed to get a bachelor's degree from Yale University
and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Like Dan Quayle and Steve Forbes, two other politically-connected
rich kids, Bush Junior got into his home state's National Guard
in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam war, despite the fact that
there was a waiting list of 100,000 other young men nationwide.
A recent investigation by the Los Angeles Times showed
that W. was given a coveted spot in the Texas unit with a special
commission that made him an instant second lieutenant without
having to go through the rigors of training in officer candidate
school.
This was despite Bush having lacked the military experience and
aviation skills that some other applicants had when he was admitted
to the elite ranks. In fact, on a written test, Junior showed
below-average potential as a would-be flier.
Bush secured his slot in pilot
training school at a time when there was no shortage of pilots.
And w., whose father was a u.s. Congressman, was assigned to fly
a plane that was being phased out of Vietnam. Later, he was allowed
to transfer to Alabama to work in a political campaign, then left
the Guard seven months early.
In 1975, George started his business career in Midland with $17,000
from an educational trust provided by his parents. Family friends
invested hundreds of thousands, some persuaded by Jonathan Bush,
his uncle, who was a stockbroker.
When he ran into trouble, Junior sold 10% of the company to a
friend of his father's eventual Secretary of State, James Baker
III. Strangely, although the company was worth only $382,000,
for his 1/10th share W. received $1 million.
After a second merger, in 1986, Junior received stock and a position
on the board of Dallas-based Harken Energy Corp. Shortly thereafter,
it got a $25 million stock offering from an unusual bank with
CIA ties, and in 1990 won a surprise exclusive drilling contract
with Bahrain, a small Mideast country. It did so by beating out
Amoco, despite no offshore drilling experience. Then an Arab member
of its Board of Directors was suddenly admitted to the highest
levels of White House foreign policy meetings with President George
Bush. These were not Clintonesque meet-and-greet fundraisers,
but actual working policy meetings during a critical period.
There are also questions about George W.'s June 1990 sale of $848,000
of stock in Harken. That was brilliant timing because in August,
Iraq invaded Kuwait and Harken's stock dropped 25%. Soon after,
the company posted very poor quarterly earnings that caused the
stock's value to plummet an additional 25%.
Junior violated at least one Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) rule explicitly. He was required to register his sale as
an insider trade by July 10, 1990, but didn't until March 1991,
after the Gulf War was over. He claimed the paperwork got "lost
in the mail."
The SEC investigated Bush in 1991 for possible insider trading,
but after a two year review took no action.
W. then worked in his father's 1988 Presidential campaign, where
he bird-dogged the staff. This prompted one journalist to christen
him "the Nancy Reagan of the Bush White House."
After serving as his father's trusted consigliere, young
George became involved with the Texas Rangers baseball team in
1989. He was offered a piece of the valuable franchise by supporters
of his dad, who also bailed out his failing oil company. George
bought stock with borrowed money, then was made one of the managers.
His only qualification? That he worked at failing oil companies.
But Dubya's real wealth came from simply being given 10% of the
team (or $12.12 million) as a "bonus" for "putting
together the investment team." Yet the only investor Bush
actually brought in was Roland Betts, a Yale fraternity brother,
and that wasn't good enough.
One of the most troubling aspects of George W.'s accumulation
of wealth is that he and his partners relied on massive government
intervention to do it.
Before he became Governor, George Bush, Jr. told the voters of
Texas that he would "do everything I can to defend the power
of private property and private property rights..." His opponents
charge that's hypocritical, given his history.
The main value of the Texas Rangers is its new stadium (ranked
by Financial World as the most profitable in baseball) and 300
acres the team owns near 6 Flags of Texas.
When George and his partners originally found the land, the private
owners didn't want to sell it. Bush and his partners gave them
only a lowball offer, and when it was rejected they arranged for
a new government agency (the Arlington Sports Facility Development
Authority) to condemn it.
The agency foreclosed the land and paid the owners a very low
price, which a jury later determined was only 1/6th of its actual
value. The agency also floated bonds, guaranteed and repaid by
taxpayers, to finance the purchase. This amounted to a $135 million
subsidy for Bush and partners, compared with the $80 million they
paid for the franchise. Since they later sold the entire franchise
for $250 million, it's easy to see whose money Bush pocketed.
On the campaign trail, when Junior talks about tax cuts, his opponents
are likely to point out that Arlington had to impose a new sales
tax just to pay for the subsidy Bush and his partners received.
He claims that he "wasn't aware of the details" of the
land condemnations, even though he was the team's managing general
partner and has bragged about personally getting the stadium built.
When the team was eventually sold, Bush received $14.9 million
on an investment that totaled $606,000 -- or a return of more
than 2,300%.
What Kind of Governor?
Though he lost his first bid for Congress in 1978, he rebounded
and defeated popular Democrat Ann Richards for Governor in 1994.
The conservative Manchester, New Hampshire Union-Leader
says of Junior's five years at the helm in Texas, that "the
Bush style is to lay low, look for popular issues, let others
do the hard work, and then step up to claim credit in the hour
of victory."
Though he's now singing W.'s praises, Wisconsin's Gov. Tommy Thompson
admitted in February that, "He hasn't really done much as
a Governor in regards of doing anything new or innovative."
In 1995 Bush made good on a promise to bring tort reform to Texas
-- but he also declined to veto a 1997 bill, the first of its
kind in the nation, exposing HMOs to malpractice suits. He believes
in helping business create jobs, but the rate-cutting and deregulation
policies of his appointees to the Public Utility Commission have
weakened Texas electric utilities.
The Governor has campaigned to eliminate the social promotion
of students who cannot read at grade level. He favors curbs on
punitive damages. He proposed raising the state sales tax, already
one of the highest in the nation, by half a cent (to 6.75 cents
per dollar) and also embraced a business activity tax. Bush has
gone against public opinion in opposing tougher gun laws.
W.'s one big idea flopped when he attempted to win legislative
approval for a massive property-tax reform package.
To a vacancy on the Texas Supreme Court, Bush appointed a defense
lawyer from Houston who has written one of the most radical anti-labor
decisions handed down by one of the most conservative courts in
the nation.
In 1997, Bush gave away a budget surplus to wealthy property owners
in a state that ranks 50th in per capita spending on government
programs and 5th in the number of people living in poverty.
Texas is the largest polluter in the nation, and while Bush has
been in office it bottomed out at 49th in spending on the environment.
A "Good Administrator?"
Bush has admitted that while he may not be an intellectual, at
least he's a good administrator. But a look at the Texax charter
school system belies that assertion.
In Milwaukee, he said when it comes to education we should "set
high standards and high expectations." He also said the charter
school movement "should encourage local folks to develop
accountability measures." But none of these things has occurred
under his guidance in Texas.
"The truth is that 10% of the independent charter schools
operating in Texas are currently under investigation by state
and federal governmental authorities for financial failures, student
abuses, fund misappropriation and forgery," says Jerry Politex
of the online Bush Watch (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3750/bush.htm).
"Although the state has poured $77 million into Texas charter
schools since 1996, the schools are only answerable to the Texas
Education Agency (TEA) for their financial, not their educational
activities, suggesting that Bush was more interested in the charter
schools as exercises in entrepreneurial privatizing, not education,"
Politex asserts.
"Also, he did not provide the TEA with the money or the manpower
needed to police the charter school system."
Bush's spinmeisters say that, like Reagan, Dubya's administrative
style is to come up with big ideas, then delegate the details
to others. However, it is obvious that often, as Bush Watch observes,
"his ideas have not been thought through, he has not provided
his administrators with the tools to do the work, and he fails
to make the needed corrections in time to head off disasters."
"Compassionate?"
Though George W. touts his "compassionate conservativism"
(sic), his record shows a certain hard-heartedness.
For instance, during his 1998 campaign for Governor, he jumped
on the "welfare reform" bandwagon, proposing withholding
benefits from the children of recipients if their parents are
deemed unwilling to work. Held hostage under Bush's plan was the
already meager $188 a month Texas bestows upon a welfare mother
and her two children.
Bush proposed these reforms because, he said, he wanted to help
"instill personal responsibility" in the poor people
of Texas, and give them "a future of opportunity, instead
of dependence on government." In other words: do as the Reverend
Bush says, not as he has done.
His first tax cut to pass both houses was an emergency bill for
his buddies in the oil business, remembers Joe Sanchez, a spokesman
for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Yet Bush recently vetoed a bill that backers said attempted to
balance the scales of justice for poor defendants.
"He is showing his conservatism to the poor and his compassion
to the rich," Sanchez said. "The people who are left
sitting there without appointed counsel for long periods of time
would take issue" with Bush.
"Governor Bush's action on the bill is an important indicator
of how much confidence we can have in his commitment to equal
justice for the poor, racial minorities and other disadvantaged
persons," said Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for
Human Rights in Atlanta.
Under Gov. Bush, Texas is cramming its massive prison system with
its social problems and carries out a third of all U.S. executions.
W. pushed through a measure that lowered to 14 the age at which
children can be tried as adults.
He refused to take a stand on a measure that would have included
gay-bashing as a hate crime and his anti-abortion views are too
extreme for most voters.
One particularly telling episode was a legislative battle over
implementation of a 1997 federal law -- passed with bipartisan
support in Congress -- called the State Children's Health Insurance
Program ("s-chip"). Under the terms of s-chip, the federal
government offers to subsidize health insurance for children whose
families make too little money to afford it, yet make too much
to qualify for Medicaid. Half of the uninsured children belong
to parents who hold low-paying jobs that lack benefits -- in other
words, just the kind of hard-working, responsible souls that compassionate
conservatives can feel good about supporting.
But even then George W. showed an aversion to government activism
on behalf of the poor and disadvantaged.
Although his state ranks second in the nation in the number of
children not covered by health insurance, and plenty of money
was available from both federal and state sources, he dragged
his feet in implementing the plan. Then he proposed funding levels
for the state's share of the program that would have left 250,000
uninsured children ineligible for coverage. Meanwhile, he pressed
for a $2.7 billion tax cut. So much for his "prosperity with
a purpose,"
In the end, the Texas legislature rejected Bush's philosophy,
and financed the state's share of the program with a portion of
tobacco settlement money. Bush, presented with a fait accompli,
made the best of it. At a signing ceremony, he hailed the bill's
supporters for "doing what's right for Texas," even
though they did so without his help.
While he casts himself as a solidly pro-education candidate, Bush
has tried to weaken the Texas Education Agency's ability to set
health, safety, and educational standards for public schools,
supported a voucher program that could have cost the state $1.6
billion at the expense of its public schools, and cut funding
for the state's Teacher Retirement System. While in his Presidential
stump speech he talks about giving a $3,000 raise to teachers
in Texas, that raise was part of a Democratic bill that he fought
against. Texas still ranks 38th in teacher salaries.
During his tenure as Governor, the number of child abuse investigations
in Texas has declined because he hasn't simply given Child Protection
Services enough money to do the job. According to the Dallas
Morning News, 40% of the allegations of child abuse go uninvestigated,
and Bush Watch estimates that "25% of those cases would turn
up actual abuse or neglect. That's 17,000 children that have remained
abused and neglected in Texas in 1998."
Takes Care of His Friends
One thing the Governor is good about doing is making sure his
wealthy benefactors are taken care of. As R.G. Ratcliffe reported,
in a series of well-researched pieces in the Houston Chronicle,
"a pattern emerges: When a Bush is in office, Bush's business
associates benefit."
Michael King of the Texas Observer comments, "A diligent
prosecutor with subpoena power and a large staff might well find
evidence of specific crimes or corrupt practices by investigating
one or more of the [business practices of Governor Bush]. At a
minimum, the Bush biography should provoke the sort of public
and press scrutiny that, thus far, candidate Bush has avoided."
Even so, King says that "While specific state transactions
might indeed be subject to conflict-of-interest inquiries, the
state policies -- privatization, regressive taxation, state subsidies
and tax abatements for corporations, the systematic use of public
resources for the benefit of private power -- represent not a
conflict, but a confluence of interests, between the state's major
business entities and the politicians they support and underwrite.
The fact that among those entities are corporations and businessman
with whom Bush himself has done particular deals -- well, that's
not corruption, exactly. It's just business as usual."
Sins Of the Father
George W. is full of talk about "fresh starts" and "clean
slates." He tries to convince voters he is his own man.
"I'm not interested in the people who lost my dad's election,"
Bush told a conservative suitor recently. "This is going
to be my race, not my dad's."
Yet Time magazine asks: "If George W. wants his campaign
to look different from his dad's, why is he enlisting Dad's staff?"
Indeed, as the magazine reports, "W's Rolodex isn't that
different from his dad's. It's getting hard to keep count of all
the veterans of the old Bush Administration who are now house-hunting
in west Austin" (to be near Bush quarters).
Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21 and the eminence
grise of the campaign reform movement, wonders, "How
do you run as a Washington outsider when your campaign is loaded
with big-money players and lobbyists who are at the core of the
status quo?"
Sounding an even more ominous note, Robert Parry of the Consortium
for Independent Journalism, says since "George W.'s foreign
policy would likely be an extension of his father's...the lingering
suspicions about President Bush's involvement in a variety of
illegal acts are reasonable issues to weigh when considering George
w. Bush's candidacy for the Republican nomination."
Parry refers to unresolved questions about President Bush's "precise
role in the now-corroborated accounts of Republican secret contacts
with Iranian radicals holding 52 U.S. hostages in 1980, while
President Carter was trying to negotiate their release;
"Bush's knowledge about his Cuban-American allies and
their participation in cocaine trafficking under the umbrella
of President Reagan's Nicaraguan contra war in the 1980s;
"Bush's participation in supplying secret military assistance
to the armies of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, including
supplies and technology through Pinochet's Chile;
And "Bush's close financial relationship with Rev. Sun Myung
Moon, a major conservative political funder but also a controversial
religious-business figure who favors the subjugation of the American
people and who has close ties to figures from Asian and South
American organized crime."
Parry notes that after leaving office in 1993, George Senior "also
blocked closure about his responsibility for the Iran-contra scandal.
He stiffed Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, who
believed he had Bush's assurances to undergo a final interview
in 1993 but was denied access to the ex-President.
"Bush, therefore, was never questioned in detail and under
oath about any of these issues. He was able to escape with cursory
denials, often made in fleeting news conference comments."
So Parry asks "Is the personable Texas Governor, in part,
a front man for the restoration of his father's unsavory cronies
who relied on national security secrecy to avoid accountability
for serious mistakes and even criminal acts?"
The role that persons loyal to George Bush played in stirring
up the Whitewater scandal in which the Clintons became embroiled
is also suspect, especially given Kenneth Starr's eventual admission
that no prosecutable offense was committed by Bill or Hillary.
The elder Bush's long history of association with questionable
and even sinister characters from the intelligence world surely
poses troubling questions about the political rise of his oldest
son.
Lying About Religion, Campaign Strategy
George W.'s spokeswoman Karen Hughes "keeps a straight face
while spinning yarns to reporters," says Jerry Politex. "Her
most memorable mythology," he says, was that last January
when Bush heard a sermon by an Austin pastor, Rev. Mayfield, it
was instrumental in convincing Dubya to run for President. "The
sermon was about the need for good men such as Moses to step forward
to lead the children into the promised land," Bush Watch
reports.
Many wonder: If you're willing to lie about religion, what else
will you lie about?
Hughes' story is absurd, says Politex, because as far back as
1996, George's "operatives made their first fund-raising
trips and stealth missions to primary states.
"By 1997, GOP chairman Rich Bond was spending time in Iowa
stirring up Bush Presidential support. In June of that year, the
Zogby American poll had 21% of the Republicans polled favoring
Bush."
Bush Watch says W. "claimed [at the time] that he was amazed
by the poll, although [one has to] wonder why, since he had spent
a year in the field priming the political pump."
R. G. Ratcliffe, writing in the Houston Chronicle, reported
that "On the surface, it appears that Bush's bid for the
Republican Presidential nomination -- unprecedented in its early
popularity -- ignited spontaneously in the eight months after
his landslide re-election as Texas Governor. But Bush's campaign
success is actually based on more than two years of strategic
planning and preparation as his aides and allies built a network
of potential supporters and financiers."
Be that as it may, there's no denying George W. is at the top
of his game.
"The assumption of political pundits is that 40% of the voters
in next year's Presidential election will go Republican and 40%
will vote Democratic," reflects Jerry Politex. "The
belief is that the two parties are more evenly matched than ever.
That leaves Bush and Gore to fight over the remaining 20% in the
center."
To do this, Junior is "going to have to start filling in
the blanks," said Peverill Squire, a political science professor
at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. "I can't think of
anybody who has come into the state with such expectations."
Still, his stump speech these days is a kind of Rorschach test
for Republican activists, a mirror that allows people to see in
it anything they want.
Robert Novak, the dean of right-wing columnists, admits that George
W. is a "blank page when it comes to foreign and much of
national policy."
It's always been said that elections turn on pocketbook issues.
If that's the case, then Bush will have to make the case for evicting
a party that might as well change its name to Dow 10,000.
The unwavering public support for President Clinton's policies
through a solid year of calamitous publicity and conservative
moral thunder has to make conservatives wonder if the same public
might elect Al Gore in 2000.
Columnist Chris Mathews reflects that, "Whatever it may have
proven about Clinton, the sordid impeachment drama of months past
showed a face of the political Right that is not presentable in
electoral prime time."
So Bush will put a smile, not a frown, on conservatism. Bush claims
to be an optimist who dares to accentuate the positive. Where
Clinton felt our pain, Bush will say he wants to heal the wounds
that the pain-feeler caused. He is a tax-cuttin', pro-gun, pro-life
conservative, painted yellow and decorated with a smiley face.
But is this just a clever ruse? Conservative James Robinson, in
a revealing commentary in the Los Angeles Times, gloats
that, "just as Ronald Reagan's infectious congeniality gave
him cover to pursue bold conservative policies, in the right hands
the cloak of 'compassionate conservatism' can perform a similar
function."
Writes Jon Pepper in the Detroit News, "The key to
Bush's success so far is to pitch basic conservative values in
a more positive way, to include minorities and talk about his
ideas in emotional terms that suggests some feel for the people
involved."
The GOP is apparently willing to sacrifice much of the conservative
message that brought Ronald Reagan to power in 1980 and Newt Gingrich
in 1994. All for a poll-created candidate whose only apparent
asset, besides setting fund-raising records, is that he leads
in the polls.
Betsy Hart, a commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel, feels
that "George W. is vague on his positions on everything from
taxes to abortion to racial preferences to why in the world he
wants to be President anyway... And a portrait in courage he's
not. While light-years ahead in the polls and fund-raising, Bush
still found it necessary to pander to Iowans by supporting the
boondoggle of ethanol subsidies there, a low his major rivals
haven't stooped to."
And he is willing to bend the message. On a Wednesday in Los Angeles,
Bush praised a group of teachers and said he understood how hard
it is to be a teacher. On Thursday in Silicon Valley, he condemned
teachers' unions for resisting change.
Manipulating the Media
A generation ago, Jimmy Carter arrived in Iowa carrying his own
garment bag, to make the state a foundry for political underdogs
in the first-in-the-nation Presidential caucuses. When George
W. arrived in the state this year, he had 200 members of the press
in tow, producing the kind of frenzied campaign day that Iowans
usually don't see until Winter.
Some politicians are snakes. Bush is a charmer. Aboard the plane
in June enroute to Iowa, he pushed a meal cart down the aisle,
shook the hand of every journalist, and even tweaked the suspenders
of one.
On the tarmac at the Cedar Rapids airport, he took to the crowd
like a pickpocket to Times Square on New Year's Eve.
He playfully punched the upper arms of three teenage boys he had
just met. He cocked his head forward as an older woman talked
to him, gently resting his hand on her shoulder. He acted downright
chummy to a down-home fellow dressed in overalls. He mingled with
kids from 4-H.
"He looks like a winner, walks like a winner, talks like
a winner, smells like a winner," reflects Stu Rothenberg,
editor of The Political Report newsletter.
Bush's talent for "retail politics" should "send
a shiver down the spines" of Democratic hopefuls Al Gore
and Bill Bradley, says Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary to
President Clinton. W.'s social skills and memory for names are
Clintonesque.
But unlike Bill Clinton, the Guv is far more comfortable as a
salesman than a thinker, and it shows.
There was, for example, his disastrous interview with C-SPAN's
Brian Lamb last year, in which Dubya's head bobbed and weaved
like a boxer's, and he seemed incapable of thinking on his feet.
And while Al Gore is often berated as being wooden, George W.s
performance at the podium isn't good either. His flat delivery
tends to suck the life out of a live speech and undercut his message
His smirkiness makes him look cocky.
Given George's weaknesses, his handlers have apparently concluded
it's prudent to keep him insulated from meaningful interchanges
with reporters or even voters.
While the media are thus invited only to stage-managed events,
W.'s traveling retinue is so large it prevents the sort of one-on-one
exchange with average people that Heartlanders have grown to expect
from candidates. When it comes time for Bush to do his fundraising
schtick, reporters are often shunted into press-quarantine areas
and plied with opulent spreads like poached salmon and imported
beer to while away the time.
Recently at an upscale home on the shores of Lake Minnetonka,
there was puff pastry with spinach filling, smoked salmon, pate,
crostini and wine. Hundreds of cars were parked in the yard: Mercedes,
Lexuses and SUVs. Rattling around inside the 30,000-square-foot
home (the size of a football field) were 600 Republicans, some
of them going down a two-story water slide and splashing in an
indoor pool.
But no Minnesotan saw this on television.
While Bush was collecting more than $500,000 in contributions
at the home of information impresario Rick Born, his face was
all over TV, showing a stop he'd made at Sharing and Caring Hands,
a well-loved local charity. There W. was, putting on a grand display
of compassion for po' folk while putting a big fig leaf over his
fat-cat fraternizing.
All this prompted Nick Coleman of the St. Paul Pioneer Press
to wonder "whether we in the media are bigger saps than we
already suspect. We seem to have learned nothing from 'Primary
Colors' and other revelations of how politicians play us for fools,
feeding us shallow photo ops while shutting us out of the real
action."
And, warns psychologist Aubrey Immelman, "Political charisma
creates a dangerous illusion. It can trick voters into attributing
other admirable qualities to a candidate -- often for no good
reason."
Texas-based syndicated columnist Molly Ivins observes, "The
main thing about Bush is that there's not much 'there' there.
This is not a person of great depth or complexity or intelligence;
he does not have many ideas... If you think his daddy had trouble
with 'the vision thing,' wait'll you meet this one. I don't think
he has any idea why he's running for the Presidency, except that
he's competitive and he can."
While Bush and his staff try to convince voters he is running
a different kind of campaign, in at least one respect they're
resorting to the same old focus-group approach.
For instance, in May, in several critical states including Michigan,
the Bush campaign assembled groups of average citizens to watch
films of the candidate. Each person held a meter in his hand with
a knob that he turned one way or the other, depending on whether
he liked what he was seeing or not. Bush and his aides later watched
graphs superimposed on the films, showing exactly what lines,
what gestures, what facial expressions made people like or dislike
Bush.
Sometimes all this contrivance doesn't keep him out of trouble,
however, as when he made a tasteless public joke about dyslexics
and later one about Jews.
Trouble Looms On the Horizon
George W. has a long history of flare-ups and tough-guy tactics.
Declaring that "There ought to be limits to freedom,"
Bush directed his campaign staff to file a complaint in April
about a website that parodied him. When that wasn't good enough,
Bush lawyers filed suit against the site in May.
"In unguarded moments he sometimes lapses into a dour, self-pitying
mode, perhaps a throwback to his boozing years," says Bush
Watch's Jerry Politex. "He is disciplined enough to repeat
what he is told to say, limited enough not to be particularly
bothered by philosophical contradictions, and political enough
to do and say whatever it takes to win. One senses that condescension
is sometimes just below the surface."
Writing in Texas Monthly, Paul Burka gives Dubya a grade
of "F" for attitude, saying he "grumbles,"
he "bristles," and he's "testy."
A case in point: The day before his announcement speech in Iowa,
the Bush campaign had the candidate scheduled in Chicago and St.
Louis, for some heavy-duty fundraisers, where he raised $1.5 million.
This meant Bush was visibly fatigued when he set out from Austin,
Texas, to Iowa the next day. "I only got six hours' sleep
last night," he complained, with a weary shake of his head.
"I need more than that."
Privately, Bush had been outraged that his schedule meant he wouldn't
get home until late. He fumed, "What you're telling me is
that because you guys f----d-up, I got to break my ass all day
and won't get home until midnight?"
Feet Of Clay?
And other dangers may lay ahead. Recent polls suggest that Americans
are fed up with politicians who have feet of clay. They're tired
of the hypocritical public posturing and the private dirty deeds.
It's obvious that what this country doesn't need right now, as
we approach the new millineum, is to get bogged down in still
another distracting scandal.
A large percentage of the people who are supporting George W.'s
nomination are doing so because they say they liked his dad, and
they think Junior is a highly moral man.
"There's the feeling that President Bush would never have
asked Monica Lewinsky to be anything but an intern," says
Steffen Schmidt, a political science professor at Iowa State University.
But do voters know the real Dubya?
"I'm interested in things like taxes and military readiness,"
says Dan Keith, an investment rep in Iowa City. "But the
most important thing is having a good character."
Dawn Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore at Drake University in Des
Moines, says, "He's like so moral on family issues that my
first vote for President will be that much more memorable."
"He doesn't have some kind of a scandalized background,"
his father, the former President, insists. "As Barbara put
it, rumors to the contrary are baloney."
It's all a matter of perspective. Aside from the questionable
way in which George W. amassed his fortune, there are questions
about his private life as well. Friends nicknamed him "Bombastic
Bushkin" and say he partied from high school until he was
40, spending a lot of time in bars and being a bully.
He's foresworn liquor, and invokes his friendship with the Rev.
Billy Graham as evidence of religious conversion.
But when Newsweek probed "If you're asked specifically
about marijuana or cocaine, what's the answer?", Bush replied
what he did until age 40 "is irrelevant to this campaign.
What is relevant is, have you grown up, and I have."
Back to the top
Contents copyright 1999. All rights reserved.
