Catcalls echo along the vote trail

Press, 29 September 1988, Page 11

Catcalls echo along the vote trail

NZPA-Reuter Washington George Bush and Michael Dukakis insist they want to talk about the issues, but catcalls and ridicule have remained high on the campaign agenda since last Sunday’s debate. The Republican Presidential candidate, Mr Bush, offered a new taxfree savings scheme yesterday that he said would help Americans cope with higher costs for housing and college education, but drew ridicule from his rival’s camp because the plan would provide a maximum benefit of just SUS2B a year. In a speech in Columbus, Ohio, the Vice-Presi-dent said he would allow individuals making up to SUSSO,OOO a year to earn tax-free interest on SUSIOOO of savings each year. “George Bush’s no solution campaign outdid it-

self today,” the Dukakis campaign manager, Susan Estrich, said in a statement. “His answer to working families who want to buy a home, start a business or send their kids to college is a SUS2O annual tax break —40 c a week.” Mr Bush also pressed his effort to depict Mr dukakis as an extreme liberal, out of step with mainstream America.

“He said during the primaries ‘I am a strong, progressive liberal’ and now he calls it dirty politics if I use the Big L word,” Mr Bush said in Oxford, Ohio. “I’m going to keep on using it, because that is what he said he is.” Mr Dukakis countered by telling reporters that Mr Bush was ignoring the country’s problems.

“I’m talking about the real issues that face this country ... that’s what the average American wants to hear,” he said. The Massachusetts Governor planned to engage in a little symbolism today by inviting television cameras to record the start of his meeting in New York City with the Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze.

The session, described by a Dukakis adviser, Jim Steinberg, as a chance “to discuss interests of mutual concern” is designed to burnish the Democrats foreign-policy credentials and match last Friday’s Bush-Shevardnadze meeting. Mr Dukakis is scheduled to meet the French President Francois Mitterrand on Friday (New Zealand time).