Speakers Fire Orchestrated Salvo at Bush

In a carefully orchestrated series of speeches intended to get a jump on the fall presidential campaign, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and other Democratic leaders Tuesday night portrayed GOP candidate George Bush as an absentee vice president who failed to speak up in opposition to the blunders of the Reagan Administration.

“Where was George Bush?” was a common refrain that delighted delegates and shook the rafters of the Democratic National Convention hall as speaker after speaker engaged in the latest election-year pastime of Democratic officeholders known as “Bush-bashing.”

The convention speeches were coordinated by the Democratic National Committee and reviewed by the staff of Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis. Although the rhetoric was unusually tough, sources said that some even harsher descriptions of Bush had been censored from the speeches by reviewers on the committee staff.

Kennedy, whose speech was intended to be one of the emotional high points of the convention’s well-scripted, prime-time television hours, set the tone for the evening by characterizing Bush as a vice president who claims he had no role in many of the most important, most controversial decisions of the Administration.

“George Bush is the man who never was there,” declared Kennedy. “And he won’t be there after the clock strikes noon on Jan. 20, 1989.”

‘Too Squeamish’

But the bitterest criticism of Bush came from House Assistant Majority Leader Tony Coelho (D-Merced), who snidely suggested that the vice president had taken Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III along on a recent fishing trip “in case George is too squeamish to bait his own hook.”

“This is not a contest between liberal and conservative, left and right,” Coelho said. “It’s a contest between vastly different profiles of leadership--between a man of action and a man of absence, between a man of noble purpose and a man with a noble pedigree, between a miracle from Massachusetts with a real Texas accent and a fellow who wears cowboy boots over argyle socks. We can’t help but win.”

Kennedy said that President Reagan deserves credit because he has consistently taken responsibility for his Administration’s mistakes. “But not George Bush, who on question after question keeps burying his head in his hands and hiding from the record of the Reagan-Bush mistakes,” he added.

Among the mistakes that Kennedy cited were the sale of arms to Iran, the Administration’s cooperation with Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega, proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare and the President’s veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act. After recalling each of these decisions, the senator--and the audience with him--asked: “Where was George?”

‘Preposterous Fantasy’

“In fact,” he added, “the vice president even seems afraid to stand up for his own President’s changed perception of the Soviet Union. Perhaps, he is bowing to the right-wing extremists who have fallen into the preposterous fantasy that Ronald Reagan has gone soft on the Soviets.”

“Maybe he wasn’t consulted or didn’t know or wasn’t there when the President was modifying his view of the ‘Evil Empire.’ In any case, when that was happening, I think it is fair--one last time--for all of us to ask, where was George?”

Not only did the crowd repeat the refrain, but signs saying “Where Was George?” sprouted up all over the hall as Kennedy spoke.

Likewise, Coelho--and the audience--asked, “Where was George Bush?” after each item in a similar list of Administration actions, including the sale of arms to Iran, cuts in education funds, a decision to pay reparations to Iran and the defense procurement scandal.

‘Perpetual Preppie’

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower also got into the spirit of the evening by describing Bush as a “perpetual preppie” and “a toothache of a man.”

“George Bush is a man who was born on third base and thinks he’s hit a triple,” he added. “He is threatening to lead this country from tweedle-dum to tweedle-dumber.”

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.) applied the “Where was George?” theme to the subject of war and peace. “I have one question for all of you: Who do you think will move us toward peace in November?” she asked. “A vice president who didn’t even know what was going on in the White House, or Mike Dukakis?”

And Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) added programs for children to the list of things that Bush failed to pay attention to as vice president. “Suddenly this year, George Bush the Republican has discovered America’s children,” he said. “. . . But he didn’t care in 1981 when the Republicans threw millions of children out of programs.”

Kennedy and the other speakers also recalled how Bush, as a candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 1980, described Reagan’s economic policy as “voodoo economics”--a remark that he later regretted. “I wonder who coined that phrase?” asked Kennedy.

Sees ‘Bushonomics’

Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Monterey) made it clear that Democrats intend to tar Bush with the same brush in November. “One of the major issues in this campaign will be the failure of Reaganomics,” he said. “And now we have the specter of Bushonomics.”

Democrats also took Bush to task for failing to question Reagan’s defense policy.

“Faithful George is hypnotized by Reagan’s dream of ‘Star Wars,’ ” said Rep. Les AuCoin (D-Ore.). “Bush’s ‘Star Wars’ will cost more than the total national debt . . . Bush’s ‘Star Wars’ won’t be ready for decades and probably won’t work then.”