POLITICS 88 : CAMPAIGN ’88 : Bush Campaigns Hard

Despite his big lead, Bush campaigned in Illinois Sunday like an underdog trying to make up lost time.

The vice president began his day with a visit to St. Hyacinth Church in Chicago, one of the largest Polish Roman Catholic churches in the nation, where 3,000 parishioners applauded his brief speech, which followed a Polish-language mass.

Bush recounted one of his favorite campaign anecdotes, the story of his visit last fall to Poland, where he embraced Lech Walesa, leader of the outlawed Solidarity labor movement.

Bush ended his speech with the Solidarity symbol, two fingers raised in a peace sign. Outside later, as snow swirled around him, Bush laid a wreath at a memorial to Polish priest Jerzy Popieluszko, slain in 1984 by the Polish secret police.

Bush hopped around the suburbs of Chicago all day Sunday, stopping at a pancake breakfast in Schaumburg, a restaurant in St. Charles and a shopping mall in Bolingbrook, where hundreds of people stood in the snow for two hours to hear him speak.