After 44 Years, She’s Still on a Roll

The first time Dorothy Bush called the roll at a Democratic National Convention in 1944, Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for his fourth term.

Since then, she has tallied the votes for and against Harry S. Truman, Adlai E. Stevenson (twice), John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert H. Humphrey, George S. McGovern, Jimmy Carter (twice) and Walter F. Mondale. This week, she’ll do it for Michael S. Dukakis too.

Bush is that nice lady with the soft Southern accent who becomes a media star every four years when she sings out “Alabama--65 votes” and runs through the list, past Wyoming to Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and Americans abroad.

It’s her most visible job as secretary of the Democratic Party. Now 71, she was the first woman ever elected an officer of either the Democratic or Republican party and has been reelected with little or no opposition at the reorganization meetings that follow the national conventions. She expects that there will not be any problem Friday either.

The amount of television time devoted to Bush is tied directly to the problems that arise. The more problems, the more roll calls, the more Bush.

“The smoother it goes, the better I like it,” she says.