Politics 88 : Foe Held Weak on Foreign Policy : Bush Assails Dukakis on Lack of Experience

Targeting his criticism at his likely Democratic rival as he gained a firm hand on the Republican presidential nomination, Vice President George Bush on Tuesday needled Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis about his lack of foreign policy experience.

“He doesn’t know much about foreign affairs,” Bush told interviewers here in the sharpest remarks he has leveled at any Democrat.

Later, he said of both current Democratic hopefuls, Dukakis and his challenger, the Rev. Jesse Jackson:

“The Democrats are a little short on foreign policy, either Jackson or Dukakis. . . . They don’t know how to begin talking about foreign policy.”

Contra Issue Expected

Bush’s remarks came when he was asked whether he expects the Democratic nominee to make Bush’s involvement in the Iran-Contra affair an issue in November’s general election.

Bush said he believes that the matter will be raised but he also served notice in the tone of his remarks that he intends to exploit what many consider to be Dukakis’ most glaring area of inexperience, foreign affairs.

At a brief press conference in Evansville, Ind., Bush confirmed that he will make foreign policy a major issue in the fall campaign, no matter which Democrat wins the nomination.

In a Cincinnati speech, he also chided the Democrats for proposing “dangerous cuts” in the military budget that he called “simplistic, naive and in my view very shortsighted.” He did not specify which cuts he referred to or which candidate had advocated them.

Nomination Assured

Bush’s remarks came as the vice president passed a milestone in his unimpeded march to the Republican presidential nomination, winning the Pennsylvania primary and thus the remaining delegates necessary to ensure him a first-ballot nomination at the August convention in New Orleans.

The Bush campaign and several news agencies tabulating delegates said Bush now has the 1,139 delegates necessary for first-ballot nomination.

Hours before the polls closed in Philadelphia, Bush declared that he expects to be facing Dukakis as the general election race unfolds.

“It would appear, barring some dramatic turn of events, Michael Dukakis, Gov. Dukakis, will be his party’s nominee,” Bush told the Ohio Assn. of Broadcasters in Cincinnati.

“The philosophical choice for the American people is going to be as clear, clearly defined, as the choice in 1980 or as the choice in 1984,” he said.

Although he offered a few punchy remarks about the Democrats, Bush spent most of Tuesday in a way that has characterized his campaign--with a highly structured effort devoid of spontaneity but meant to place Bush in photogenic surroundings.

Fills Toothpaste Tubes

Bush filled toothpaste tubes and talked about product packaging at a Cincinnati Procter & Gamble plant.

The vice president looked over displays of toothpaste, disposable diapers and antacid products that had been lined up for television cameras. At one point, handed a picture of human gums infected with periodontal disease--a Procter & Gamble product fights such an affliction--Bush blurted out: “Gross.”

Later, clad in a white coat in a packaging lab, he used a forced-air jet to blow a hole in a toothpaste tube. “There you go,” a worker said when Bush successfully exploded the tube.

But in Ohio and elsewhere in the nation’s “rust belt,” Bush was also forced by economic realities to acknowledge gaps in the fiscal recovery about which he routinely boasts.

In an early morning appearance before hundreds of enthusiastic supporters in Lima, Ohio, Bush asked that they vote Republican in November to “express optimism . . . for those who have not benefited” from Administration policies.

‘Demonstrate the Compassion’

“For those who have not benefited, those that’ve been bypassed, whether it’s the homeless problem or whatever, (we will) demonstrate the compassion we as Republicans feel--but don’t break the federal government and put all the power back in Washington, D.C.,” Bush said.

“Let’s keep the recovery going the Republican way . . . neighbor helping neighbor, volunteerism, privatization--these are the themes of the future, not of the past.”