Bush: The Men for the Man Who

The primary phase of the ’88 race is over and the presidential nominees are set. George Bush for the Republicans is a lock, and Michael S. Dukakis for the Demos is a sure thing whose lead will only widen as the field narrows. In a little while, interest will focus on vice-presidential picks (relevant), platform (irrelevant) and the fall campaign (speculative at best). Before events overtake us, let’s look at something both candidates share besides a Norfolk County, Mass., birthplace: exceptional campaign organizations, the “best of show” in their contests. It’s no surprise that these are the two guys who survive out of the baker’s dozen who tried--it was planned that way a while ago.

Bush is and is not a lot of things, but among his virtues are being a good judge of people and a tenacity to see things through. Years ago he assembled a team, not a collection of stars, to put together and run his campaign. He chose carefully and deliberately, but in time to plan the ground rules as well as the campaign.

To lead his effort, he chose a “kid” from South Carolina named Lee Atwater who, still in his 30s, had more than a decade of hard-fought successes under his belt--in the field and in campaign headquarters. Atwater is a protege of Harry Dent, a wise South Carolina political operative who served at the White House in the Nixon years and is now in the ministry. Atwater first came to the vice president’s attention when Bush was chairman of the Republican National Committee and Atwater was national chairman of the College Republicans. The young man was carrying a dogeared copy of Machiavelli’s “The Prince”; then his experience in the ’80 and ’84 campaigns served him well.

Added to the mix were seasoned veterans of national campaigns: Roger Ailes of New York has been turning out terrific Republican media for a generation; Robert Teeter of Detroit’s Market Opinion Research has been doing accurate polling for years; Bush chief of staff Craig Fuller; 1980 Bush field director and mastermind of that year’s Iowa win, Richard Bond, and campaign spokesman Pete Teeley. They make up the day-to-day team, the best out there this year.

Yes, a big part of any campaign is money-raising; Bush has some of the best among his old friends, Robert A. Mosbacher Sr. of Houston and former New Jersey Sen. Nicholas Brady, more recently of Wall Street. Having such friends in such places can only help.

Flexibility was a key in this campaign. When the “moderate” Southern Democrats decided to create “Super Tuesday,” Bush’s team was ready to capitalize on the new game rules and set up a firebreak to insure that nobody would do better than the vice president. Atwater’s masterstroke was setting up his native South Carolina’s primary for the Saturday before Super Tuesday; the early win assured Bush of Sunday and Monday media coverage throughout the rest of the South. The organization, like the slogan of an Atlanta newspaper, “covered Dixie like the dew.”

For the last few years, the vice president and his team worked particularly hard to get three Republican governors on board: John H. Sununu of New Hampshire (the first primary), Carroll A. Campbell Jr. of South Carolina (the first Southern primary) and James R. Thompson of Illinois (the first primary after Super Tuesday). The courting paid off--Bush won all three of those primaries.

The fall campaign will pit two first-class organizations against each other. It will be a rough-and-ready contest, probably more like ice hockey than baseball. Dukakis, like Bush, is a competitor. So are the Atwater and John Sasso teams. Remember Sasso? He was in “disgrace” last fall over the Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. plagiarism flap (Sasso told the truth, then was blamed for political impropriety instead of being praised for political candor). But Sasso will return to Dukakis for the best of reasons--he is needed. If one year in the wilderness is enough for Jimmy Swaggart, nine months banishment is more than enough for a pro like Sasso. Hang on for a good fight--the Democrats are hungry and the Republicans like being in.