Votes for Bush from TV dash?

Press, 28 January 1988, Page 6

Votes for Bush from TV dash?

NZPA-Reuter Washington Vice President George Bush hopes public sympathy and votes in the forthcoming Presidential primary season will result from a clash with a prominent television journalist. Most political experts said Mr Bush’s testy nineminute joust on Monday night with the CBS newscaster, Dan Rather, should help his bid for the Republican Presidential nomination. “Republicans saw their Vice-President kick the main television anchorman in the teeth — and they loved it,” said William Schneider, a nonpartisan political analyst. A former White House political director, Mitchell Daniels, said the tiff, in

which Mr Bush turned interrogator by asking Rather about his embarrassing walkout that left CBS with several minutes of blank airtime, undercut the “wimp” label often pinned on the VicePresident. "To Republican voters anybody who Dan Rather is out to get can’t be all bad,” he told Reuters. Mr Bush also got a boost from President Reagan, who said yesterday he was fully in accord with the Vice-President’s refusal to divulge his private advice on the Iran arms deal. “I think he has been exactly right,” Mr Reagan told reporters. Rather made no apology on the CBS Evening News on Tuesday for

his tone in the interview, saying that he respected the Vice-President but "trying to ask tough questions and trying to be persistent about answers is part of the reporter’s job.” Mr Bush complained angrily during the interview that he had been led to believe it would be a general political profile but that it then focused narrowly on the Irancontra affair. Rather said on Tuesday: “CBS News did not mislead the Vice-Presi-dent about the subject of the interview. We dealt extensively with his staff about our intentions, we dealt truthfully with them and we stated our intentions publicly well before the interview.”