George Bush, the early bird for Reagan’s job, gets off to a bad start

Press, 13 June 1986, Page 18

George Bush, the early bird for Reagan’s job, gets off to a bad start

From

SIMON HOGGART

in Washington

There are just 125 weeks to the next United States presidential election, a mere 874 campaigning days until the vote, so naturally the leading candidates are working flat out. Some have been at it for more than a year.

The first formal contest between the Republican frontrunners was held last month. It was an event which created a new milestone in American political life: the first primary to be nearer to the previous election than to the next.

Well, it was not really a primary, though given the effort and money the candidates invested, it might as well have been. In an attempt to win themselves members and influence, Republicans in Michigan have devised an elborate, three-tiered method to choose their 77 delegates for the party’s national convention in 1988.

The startling success of the first stage was the Ultra-Right TV evangelist, Pat Robertson. The three candidates who had begun their presidential campaign in Michigan were Robertson, VicePresident George Bush, and Jack Kemp, a conservative Congressman from New York.

The beginning of the state’s elaborate process is the selection of several thousand “precinct delegates.” The actual vote for this lowly title takes place In

August, but the majority of the delegates will run unopposed. This means it was vital for the big three candidates to get as many of their supporters on to the ballot as possible. George Bush was expected to be the runaway winner, though in the end he took only around 50 per cent. Robertson shocked everyone with thousands of lastminute filings, making him a clear second and the undoubted moral victor.

The wretched loser was Kemp, a fiscal Right-winger who had spent the best part of the year working on Michigan Republican activists.

Kemp Is the darling of the conservative, a man who represents Reaganomics in its purest form — without Ronald Reagan to mess it up. This may not be an attractive combination to many Americans.

“Robertson has become,” in the words of one malicious Democratic observer, “the Republicans’ Jesse Jackson.” Like the black Jackson, Robertson represents a loyal minority in his party who will stick by him to the end. He is unlikely to win the nomination but could easily gather enough votes to help determine who does.

The loser again seems to be Bush, who, in spite of his status

as front-runner, is already beginning to look like a national joke — an easy subject for any hardup comedian, like Dean Martin’s drinking or Joan Collins’ sex life. (“The President sent George out for a coffee and Danish, so he flew to Copenhagen.”) Desperate to pick up crumbs of Reagan’s popularity, Bush seems ready to agree to almost any position provided it will catch a few precious votes.

His advisers are most worried about his views on abortion, perhaps the favourite issue of the evangelical Right. In the past he has supported legal abortion in certain circumstances: this is

unlikely to be enough to placate Robertson’s vocal, well-organ-ised, and now jubilant supporters.

Worst of all from Bush’s point of view, the new cliche is that he is the Walter Mondale of the Republicans: a candidate who might struggle to his party’s nomination but who has little chance of winning the subsequent election.

Bush’s consolation is that he remains well ahead of his rivals. Some 58 per cent of Republicans who say they will vote in primaries are backing him, with his nearest challenger, Howard Baker of Tennessee, running at only 14 per cent. Less happily for Bush, he is just neck-and-neck with the Democrats’ Gary Hart.

Many Republicans are already casting round for alternatives, A name which increasingly crops up is Senator Paul Laxalt, President Reagan’s best friend in politics. He is highly attractive to many conservatives in the party, though he faces one severe problem: he comes from Nevada, the centre of American gambling, and not a state associated in the public mind with impeccable probity.

Over in the Democratic camp, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York has told friends he will be running. He has not yet made an official announcement, largely because he fears it would damage his vote in the November gubernatorial election.