Bush Explains His Priorities to GOP Platform Panel

George Bush descended on New Orleans Monday and personally began the buildup for the Republican National Convention--a time when “the eyes of America will be upon us,” a time when the stakes go up, a time when excuses for a lagging campaign go straight out the window.

“And I’m proud to say that we welcome the attention,” the vice president said.

To set the tone for his convention, Bush made an unusual appearance and speech before the GOP platform committee. He said that the Republicans have a twofold task:

--To convince Americans that Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis is trying to mask his true beliefs--a “stealth candidate” underwritten by the “glittering generalities” of the Democratic platform.

--And to give voters contrasting reasons to want a Republican in the White House for four more years, offering a platform rich in specifics and a candidate steeped in experience.

“We’ve got to get these differences in focus,” he urged.

Seeks ‘Moment in Sun’

For Bush, this week of preconvention activity and next week’s convention are the vehicles that he hopes will enable him, finally, to escape the storm clouds of unfavorable polls and enjoy his “moment in the sun.”

The GOP nominee-in-waiting has explained for weeks that his underdog status was attributable to the attention given to the Democratic National Convention in July. Before that, Bush said, the Democrats were hogging the news because their primary election campaign lasted longer.

But, by his own reckoning, the days for these excuses are over.

His visit to New Orleans lasted only a few hours. But he managed to squeeze in a brief tour of the Superdome, site of the convention itself, and gazed up as if in awe at the huge facility now being decorated and readied for him. He ate a lunch-pail meal with construction workers, who thanked him for coming. “It should be thank you,” Bush replied. “This is my life, man.”

In his platform speech, Bush recounted the several specific programs and priorities he proposed over the months--a reduction in the capital gains tax in hopes of spurring investment in business, a tax credit for child care, an emphasis on education programs, more attention to acid rain, a promise to toughen up on illegal drugs, among others.

Cites Fundamental Beliefs

“All of these proposals spring from a fundamental set of beliefs about what can make this country great,” Bush said.

The vice president even embraced as his own one of Dukakis’ slogans, saying that “good jobs at good wages” was a legacy of the incumbent Republican Administration.

Bush went on to try to burden his opponent with some of the presumably unpopular baggage from the Democratic Party’s past. He noted that, when Massachusetts recently faced a budget deficit, “the governor signed a tax increase of $180 million. In a time of crisis, the governor once again turned to raising taxes as a first resort.

“Vague rhetoric to the contrary, taxes are the addiction of the Democratic Party,” Bush said.

In Boston, Dukakis replied that Bush is being strangled by the hands of his own strategy.

“George Bush has some of the highest negatives ever recorded in the history of American politics, and I think one of the reasons for it is people have seen his campaign as an essentially negative campaign,” Dukakis said at a press conference.

“I think the way I’m going to win the presidency is not by responding every day to what some speech writer has put in front of Mr. Bush,” Dukakis said. “It’s going to be by defining myself, my party, my values, this country, its future, and the kind of society I think all Americans want.”

Dukakis Camp Responds

But the Dukakis campaign responded to Bush’s belittling of the Democratic nominee’s lack of experience in foreign affairs.

Bush had told the platform committee that Dukakis’ nomination acceptance speech last month in Atlanta “failed to mention the most important issue of our time: how to make the world a safer place in the 1990s.” And Bush said his opponent was “silent at best, and unsteady at worst,” on issues of arms control, missile reductions, defense spending and support for the controversial space-based Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars.”

Such weak-on-defense charges are nothing new for Bush, replied the Dukakis campaign. The governor’s aides distributed copies of a 1980 Boston Globe story in which Bush was quoted as attacking a different candidate’s foreign policy experience.

“We cannot take a chance on another President who has absolutely no experience in foreign affairs,” Bush said in the 1980 account. His target? Ronald Reagan, who was running for President after two terms as governor of California.

Topic at Dinner Table

Earlier, en route to New Orleans aboard Air Force Two from a vacation weekend at his family compound in Maine, Bush said that vice presidential politics has reached even his family’s dinner table. On Sunday night, when surrounded by his wife, mother, five children and 10 grandchildren, Bush said, the conversation turned to the selection of a running mate.

Around the table, one after another, the Bush family “popped off” with their recommendations and “argued with each other.”

But not Bush. He has said he will keep his choice from everyone, even his wife, until just before he is ready to make the announcement, probably not until the middle or end of the convention. So, on Sunday, he gave up nothing even to his own relatives. “I sat there like a Sphinx,” Bush said.