European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - July 15, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 10 the stars and stripes Friday july 15, 1988 columns James Reston Bentsen solid selection for a difficult Campaign i cant very Well pretend to be objective about gov. Dukakis Choice of sen. Lloyd Bentsen As his running mate since the gentleman from Texas is my neighbor in Washington. But i can testify that he is a gentlemen and a Good neigh Bor which is More than can be said about some vice presidents i be known. Bentsen has other useful qualities that Are in Short Supply in these parts. He thinks before he Speaks. He has the wis Dom of a practical and successful Man of business and what is More important he has the gift of fighting political Battles while retaining the respect of his opponents. Also in his successful campaigns for the House and Senate he built and has retained the Best political organization in Texas since that of Lyndon b. Johnson. It will be difficult to convince the Fann ers and Bankers of that state that he is a doctrinaire Liberal or doctrinaire any thing else. By choosing this austere and Judici cons Man however Dukakis and the democrats Are just at the beginning of a very hard Campaign and face formidable Russell Baker problems. They have lost four of the last five presidential elections. If they lose this time chances Are they will have to run against the sitting president in 1992 no Happy Prospect. That s not All the bad news. They have won usually in years of economic recession or depression and this year the Economy fuelled by debt is humming along on the eve of their nominating convention unemployment is Down to 5.2 percent the lowest in Over 14 years. Still Dukakis is ahead of vice presi Dent George Bush in the polls probably because the administration has been battered by scandals and accidents. The Iran Contra disgrace followed by the procurement scandal in the Penta gon together with the worst Trade and budget deficits in the nation s history along with the tragedy in the persian Gulf and the Bank failures and the crisis on the farms All this and de Meese too have confronted Bush with difficulty from the Middle West to the mid dle East which he has handled with a mirth less smile. Also he is not Likely to forget that Bentsen beat him once in their race for the Senate. To demonstrate that he has ideas of his own Bush has even differed with president Reagan s most successful for eign policy initiative the cautious movement toward a verifiable nuclear arms Compromise with the soviet Union. Bush is not saying the president was wrong in trying to end the cold War but he is clearly More sceptical about it than Reagan. The nation he says must be prepared for a protracted conflict with the soviet Union he wants to move ahead with the my and midget Man mis Siles and the Star wars Experiment and he wants to give priority to the control of conventional weapons rather than the control of strategic nuclear weapons. Bush s wary scepticism May be right and Reagan s Lazy optimism May be wrong but right or wrong Bush must not discourage Reagan from campaigning enthusiastically for the gop ticket. This election however is Likely to be won or lost on the issues and not on the personalities of the candidates. Reagan won twice with an optimistic riot of contradictory beliefs that he assumed were right without offering much evidence in their support. Dukakis and Bush will to have to offer something a bit More substantial and Dukakis has made a Good Start in his Choice of Bentsen. The country needs to know not How to borrow its Way to Prosperity but How to work its Way out of debt one of Bent sen s subjects not merely How Many peo ple Are employed but who is going to take care of the kids after school not merely who s going to be president and vice president but How to recruit experienced intelligent and honest people to run the government. Dukakis will have the first Chance to set the tone of the democratic Campaign next week and he and Bentsen will have a month after that of campaigning be fore the republicans have their big Shin dig in new Orleans. This gives Dukakis and Bentsen an advantage and they la need All the advantages they can get. For if the democrats lose again this time they won t have an experienced party left at the end of the Century. The new York times to win Bush must be himself and nobody else George Bush ought to be As electable As the next Man in this year of the indifferent electorate but it does him no Good to pretend he in t George Bush. Whenever he tries it he looks silly and embarrasses people who want to see him look Good. To get elected he must be who he is because when he pretends to be somebody else his efforts Are so contrived so amateurish that you see right through him and it makes you wince with embarrassment for him and feel uneasy about him and wonder Why in t he at peace with himself who is he really he is George Bush Yankee son of Rich and elegant investment banker Prescott Bush who became a senator from Connecticut. He is George Bush of Andover and Yale. He is George Bush who knows what a Debutante Ball is and does t know that Iowa Farmers Don t. He is top drawer upper crust one of the nobs. He Summers in Maine and knows about sailing. He says Golly and gee and gosh and maybe even darn and Heck and says them Natu rally because he was brought up to believe that gentlemen Don t use vile language. The notion has evidently got into his head that these High class markings will harm him with the voters for he seems intent on becoming the Lon Chaney of poli tics the Man of a thousand faces. He is constantly trying to pass himself off As battling Bush or As old shoe George or As Archie Bunker s soul mate Archie Bush. These appearances in false face Are hard to explain for he must know that wealth and the High born style have always been Catnip to american voters. Hence the political triumphs of the Roose belts of Oyster Bay the Roosevelt of Hyde Park the Kennedy of Hyannis port the Rockefeller of fifth Avenue and poc Antico Hills. His All time phonies moment to Date occurred in the 1984 Campaign the morning after his to debate with Geraldine Ferraro when he appeared wearing a hard hat in a gang of Urban construction workers. On the television news that evening the nation was treated to film of Archie Bush telling a Bunch of Blue Collar Guys he had kicked a Little ass last  the construction men did not look embarrassed but Only because their instinctive gentleman s code for bade scowling at a vice president while the cameras were working. You knew they must have been flabbergasted though. Anybody with any sense of the Blue Collar code of etiquette would have known that no civilized working Man says kicked a Little ass when referring to a woman. I doubt that anybody in the Bush family does either including the vice president. So what in the world did he have in mind when he went among the hard hats i la  about Bens running wit experience determination pretty clearly not to act like George Bush. It s hard to avoid the conclusion that George Bush suspects the real George Bush can t get elected so must t be let out for the country to see. In Texas he made a speech attacking Michael Dukakis for going to Harvard. Harvard he said was to blame for what he called a boutique foreign policy which he ascribed to Dukakis. Was he serious attacking your opponent for being Well educated is an old Rube Campaign tactic aimed at fetching the know nothing vote but to work Success fully it has to come from a candidate who majored in Corn at the state University. Coming from a Yale Man it is absurd. Or was he trying to pretend he was t one of those snobby Egghead Ivy league types who shop at boutiques instead of the feed and Grain store that he was just a country boy who loved feeling the mud Between his toes next Day he tried explaining the Silli Riess away by saying Yale was different from Harvard Yale did t convey the connotation of liberalism and elitism that Harvard did. What a muddle. Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy league schools rarely make Fine distinctions Between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both Are full of Rich fancy stuck up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit Down to supper in their undershirts no matter How hot the weather gets. In refusing to be George Bush Bush is like Richard Nixon in the old old Days when a new Nixon was constantly appearing on the political stump accompanied by press reports that the old Nixon had finally been subdued. The image builder who designed one of those new Nixon was Roger Ailes who is now working on the Bush Campaign. Maybe this latest Bush disguise is part of an Ailes attempt to create a new Bush George Bush Barefoot boy from Yale. New York times news service