For Bush, Visit Was a Chance to Reach Major Voting Bloc

Another day, another high school, another souvenir jacket, another audience of fresh young faces, another paean to education--another lights-flashing, band-a-playing stop for George Bush in his steady march toward the presidency.

Only this time, the familiar scene was played out on unfamiliar territory, that of East Los Angeles and the celebrated Garfield High of movie fame.

The day was Cinco de Mayo and the audience was overwhelmingly Latino. The theme was hope and excellence--and the kind of politics sure to generate good news photographs.

Garfield High, which has come to symbolize some of the best of inner-city education, attracted the man who says he wants to be the education President for a full morning’s worth of activities, his only public appearance during an 18-hour campaign stop in Los Angeles.

Attends Calculus Class

Bush attended a calculus class taught by Jaime Escalante, the teacher whose classroom theatrics and relentless determination to push his students to do their best inspired the motion picture “Stand and Deliver.” Then, he addressed an overwhelmingly friendly student body.

“I hope you are proud that the entire country now knows of this place,” Bush told the students. “A number of us were talking in the office the other day about Garfield and someone said: ‘It’s more than a school where they are getting good grades. It’s a place where the American dream is happening.’ ”

He noted that the school once had a reputation as a problem spot for drugs, but no longer.

“People who take drugs help the dealers and drug-runners who poison our culture. People who take drugs are giving aid and comfort to the enemy. That’s what treason is. And they are traitors to mankind,” the vice president said.

Dodges Ticklish Question

But in a round-table interview with regional newspaper reporters, Bush dodged a ticklish question about the drug trade and his campaign proposal to restore the death penalty in the case of drug kingpins. Bush was asked if this should apply to someone like Panama strongman Manuel A. Noriega, under U.S. indictment on charges of assisting in drug-trafficking.

“I can see clearly where this is going. . . . You’re seeking a sensational headline,” Bush said.

The vice president insisted he did not have enough detailed information about the U.S. indictment of Noriega to determine if someone like the Panamanian general should be tried for capital crimes.

But he added: “I’m saying I want to change the law. And when the law is changed, anybody that breaks the law should pay the price.”

A Justice Department statement last February said the indictment “detailed for the first time the central role played by Noriega in the international drug trade.”

The political slant to Thursday’s Garfield visit was to reach out to Latino voters, a bloc that each election is courted by Republicans with only mixed success.