What Got Bush Here Now Lies in His Way

Vice President George Bush has used the prestige and the staff of his office with stuning effectiveness to win the Republican nomination. Now he must deal with the handicaps that are an inescapable part of that same office. It is relatively easy for a sitting vice president to win his party’s nomination; the historical record is that it is almost impossible for him to win the general election.

Not since Martin Van Buren in 1836 has a sitting vice president won election as President. Three were nominated and then lost: John C. Breckinridge in 1860, Richard Nixon in 1960 and Humbert Humphrey in 1968. Two lost in the general election: Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 and Walter Mondale in 1984.

Five since Van Buren have won presidential elections, but in four cases (T.R., Calvin Coolidge, Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson) they were already the incumbent due to the death of the President. The fifth, Nixon, did not win until he had been out of office for eight years.

In sum, no sitting vice president has won the Presidency in 152 years. And there are good reasons for this apparent oddity.

The vice president who wins a nomination is put in the impossible position of having to support the President, no matter what, while simultaneously insisting that he is his own man who will provide innovative leadership.

For Nixon, the problem in 1960 was that Dwight D. Eisenhower enjoyed tremendous popularity but his policies did not. Although everybody liked Ike, the general feeling was that he was stodgy, stuck in the mud, too conservative and too cautious. John F. Kennedy’s call to get the country moving again caught this spirit perfectly.

Nixon, too, wanted to get the country moving. Like Kennedy, he had no fear of a deficit and thought that much more could be spent on defense than Ike was willing to spend. Like Kennedy, Nixon wanted a more aggressive foreign policy. Nixon privately all but begged Eisenhower to invade Cuba and destroy Castro before the election. But in public he had to defend Eisenhower’s stand-still defense budget, and when Kennedy called for support for the anti-Castro Cuban refugees, Nixon felt compelled to condemn him for his reckless disregard of the principle of non-interference in Latin America.

In 1968 Humphrey was stuck with having to defend L.B.J., whose policies had split the Democratic Party down the middle. To reach out to the young, the idealists, the liberals and the intellectuals--core groups in the party--Humphrey had to promise peace in Vietnam. But that meant repudiating the President. And the President retained control of other core groups in the party--the minorities, the poor, the professional politicians, many of the Southerners, the bureaucracy, the welfare workers. Without them, Humphrey had no chance.

Late in the campaign Humphrey hinted that he was a secret dove. Johnson was furious, but with Dick Nixon the alternative, he kept quiet. Then, a week before the election, Johnson announced a pause in the bombing. That was almost enough, but Humphrey never fully overcame the inherent problem of running on the basis of another man’s policies, any more than Nixon could in 1960.

Bush faces similar problems. Reagan, like Eisenhower, enjoys tremendous personal popularity. Yet the polls indicate a steady and serious weakening of support for his policy in Central America. Nearly everyone liked his tax cuts, but an increasingly large majority is worried sick about the deficits in the federal budget and in trade. His attempts to paint Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III as a fine public servant and Lt. Col. Oliver North as a hero are failing.

Back in 1960, one of Nixon’s major campaign thrusts was to claim that he had experience at the highest level, while Kennedy had none. Bush has been making similar claims in 1988. But Bush had best be careful, as that one can backfire on him as it did on Nixon.

At a press conference, a reporter asked Eisenhower for an example of an idea of Nixon’s that he had adopted.

“If you give me a week,” Ike replied, “I might think of one. I don’t remember.”

Oh, how the Democrats loved that one!

Last September, in an interview with USA Today, Reagan said that Bush has been “actively engaged” in the big decisions of his Administration. “I don’t know that there has ever been a vice president who has been more completely involved in all that goes on than this vice president.”

Asked to provide an example or two, Reagan said, “I can’t answer in that context.”

You can bet that the Democrats will use that one against Bush. Just as they will pound on that “completely involved” business concerning the Iran-Contra affair.

Whatever Bush’s answer, he looks bad. Just as he does when he tries to square the “voodoo economics” phrase of 1980 with his support of the Reagan tax cuts in 1981.

Is George Bush his own man? Or is he Ronnie’s little boy? The nature of his job makes it almost impossible for him to answer, and means that his election in November is much less certain than his nomination in August.