Where do we go from here?

National Review, Sept 14, 1992 by William McGurn

THE WEEK before the 2,210 Republican delegates gathered here in Houston to renominate George Bush for the Presidency of the United States, the platform subcommittee dealing with economic policy faced the broken tax pledge head-on. Representative Vin Weber (R., Minn.) offered a resolution saying that Republicans thought the budget deal a mistake and urged its immediate repeal. The Bush campaign's Charlie Black looked at the resolution and was horrified at the likelihood that it would appear in newsprint as "GOP Repudiates President." He asked Weber to delete "mistake" (though not "repeal").

There was no little confusion here, because Bush had already said on the record that it was a mistake (and would use precisely the same word a week later in his acceptance speech). Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform suggested the wording: "The Republicans agree with President Bush" that the budget deal was a mistake. But the campaign team, fix-ated on the word "mistake," again balked. So in the end it was changed from "a mistake" to "recessionary"--actually an improvement, because it officially reclassified the budget deal from political miscalculation to empirical disaster.

Nonetheless, the argument preceding the final change was classic Bush Administration: fiddling over the choice of fire hose while everyone else is trying to stop Rome from burning down. Indeed, Monday evening called unflatteringly to mind Shaw's Saint Joan. Even while Joan was making a stunning case that the Dauphin Charles was the rightful ruler of France and that the fate of both nation and Christendom hinged on his restoration to the throne, the Dauphin himself was bankrupting the Treasury, cutting deals behind Joan's back, and caving in to a host of leeches who served as his advisors. Here in Houston, while Buchanan and the Gipper were thundering to a packed Convention, I had visions of George Bush in his hotel room playing, like Shaw's Charlie, with a child's ball-and-cup game.

That's a tad unfair, but if the Convention demonstrated anything it was the disconnection between a Republican Party fired up to go into battle on the President's behalf and the President himself. Far from castigating their candidate for the many things he has done to lose their support, they gave him a round of deafening applause when he admitted he had made a mistake with the budget deal. And in the 1992 platform, the drafting committee gave him a secure foundation on which to build a credible campaign. "The platform we have written gives people all across America a hundred good reasons to vote for George Bush," says one of the drafters, Sandy McDade. "I'll leave it up to them to decide which of these will be the reason for their vote." Not Taking Advantage U NFORTUNATELY, these hundred good reasons aren't entirely clear to the Bush team itself, which always seems to want to have its principles and eat them too. Take the abortion issue. All the exit polls in the last three presidential elections demonstrate without question that, among single-issue voters, the pro-life position is a net five- or six-point gain. The real gain is probably even larger, inasmuch as the Democrats' pro-choice position reminds voters of the Democrats' position on everything from condoms in the schools and gay rights to marriage and the family.

In crass political terms, moreover, pro-lifers are the heart and soul of the Republican Party. Because they believe abortion is the killing of a human being, they have the most reason to be here. The difference between the parties was graphically illustrated by the difference between the kind of people who showed up in New York and the kind who showed up in Houston: while Democrats talked of "family values," Republicans showed up with actual families.

Inexplicably, however, Barbara Bush chose this moment to express her displeasure with the platform position on national TV. Mrs. Bush's comment demonstrated the Achilles' heel of the Bush campaign: it implied that in his heart the President didn't really believe in the party's position. And it implied great divisions in the party at a moment when the GOP needed unity. The net result was to shake the base while gaining nothing from the other side.

Nowhere, however, was the disconnection more apparent than in the President's address to the Convention, particularly on the issue of taxes. Rumors had been flying for days about the shape of the speech, though almost everyone took it for granted that he would have to deal with his broken tax pledge somewhere. Instead of confidently placing it at the top of his speech and getting it out of the way (as Pat Buchanan wisely did with his endorsement of Bush in his own speech), the President drew out suspense by withholding it until near the end. When he finally did admit that it was a bad call," the words were fine. But they should have come earlier.

In fact, they would have been more convincing had they come well before the Convention. Why the Bush campaign appears determined to have the President make key moves at the precise moment they will appear the most opportunistic is beyond me. The first time he admitted that the budget deal was probably not such a hot idea was on the day of the Georgia primary, two weeks after Pat Buchanan's stunning showing in New Hampshire. And he waited until this Convention-when he finds himself further down than he ever expected against Bill Clinton--to say forthrightly that it was his own fault.