1988 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION : Bush Advised to Again Speak ‘From the Heart’

George Bush now needs to throw away the canned speeches he has used as vice president “and go back and speak from the heart,” as he did while running against Ronald Reagan in 1980, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said Wednesday.

Specter also said he has doubts about how much Bush should lean on President Reagan’s campaigning skills to carry him in November: “He’s an enormously popular President and he has great areas of tremendous draw, but I have an instinct, a gut feeling that George Bush is going to have to win it by himself.

“My sense is, on a tough call, that if ‘the Gipper’ goes to the sidelines and lets the new quarterback in to run the whole show, that George Bush has his best chance.”

Selected by Computer

Specter was one of several delegates to the Republican National Convention invited by The Times to pretend that they were advising Bush on how to beat Democrat Michael S. Dukakis. The delegates were selected by a Times Poll computer in an attempt to assemble a representative group of convention delegates.

One, Ohio delegate, lawyer and former legislator Waldo Bennett Rose, seemed to criticize some of the slashing, anti-Dukakis speeches that have been delivered from the convention rostrum. “We’re not going to win this election on slogans,” Rose said.

“We can’t claim that somebody is a card-carrying ACLU member and win an election. We’re going to have to demonstrate that we care about the issues they (voters) care about and have some practical solutions,” Rose said.

California Gov. George Deukmejian, for one, denounced Dukakis in a Tuesday night convention speech as “a card-carrying member” of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The main message these delegates had for Bush was to “be his own man” and move out from under the long, protective shadow of Reagan. Specter, a Republican moderate, even thought Bush should ignore the party’s newly adopted, conservative-oriented platform.

Like Independence

“The American people like independence and they like a person to be his own man--or her own woman--and I think what George Bush has to do is revert to the days of 1980 when he was George the candidate and not to 1987, when he was George Bush the vice president,” Specter said.

“George Bush in 1980 was for ERA (equal rights amendment). George Bush in 1980 was a very moderate candidate. And if he articulates those views and emerges as his own man, he’ll win. . . . One piece of advice for George Bush: Throw away the text that he’s used as vice president and go back and speak from the heart as he did as a candidate in 1980.”

Rep. Bill Goodling of Pennsylvania seconded the notion: “I’d say, ‘George, you are George Bush. Don’t try to be anybody else and don’t let anybody else try to make you be somebody else. And throw away those damn speeches that some of those people are writing for you and just speak out from your heart.’ ”

Bush carried Specter’s and Goodling’s state of Pennsylvania by a big margin in 1980, but lost out to Reagan for the GOP presidential nomination.

The Republican state chairman in Kansas, Fred J. Logan Jr., disagreed with Specter’s suggestion that Reagan should sit on the sidelines while Bush competes. “I think Bush utilizes President Reagan every campaign day he can get out of him,” Logan said. “There’s an enormous core of personal popularity for Ronald Reagan out there.”

‘Broaden Our Base’

Ohio’s Rose said that “the time has come to broaden our base” and stop trying to placate right-wing evangelicals. “They have the platform. They probably have the vice president,” Rose said. “And now we move on to other Americans. We can’t go around this country talking about right to life and opposing the equal rights amendment and win this election.

“I think it would be a terrible, terrible mistake if we go around this nation trying to win seven times over the votes we’ve already got among conservative fundamentalists.”

Goodling also said Bush should look to the future more and de-emphasize the past, presumably including the Reagan record.

“We had a pep rally with the Pennsylvania delegation the other day. It was a disgusting pep rally,” Goodling said. “All we did was talk about the past. Well, that isn’t going to win us an election. So I told (Bush), ‘You’ve got to show what your vision is for this great country and how you’re going to lead us in that direction. I think he’ll do it.”

The congressman also said the party standard-bearer should be positive--not negative--in his campaigning, starting with tonight’s nomination acceptance speech.

‘Has to Be Presidential’

“Bush has to be presidential in my estimation to win this election,” he said. “Let everybody else do all the shooting.”

Beyond that, he said, Bush “is a very warm, very personable, very caring individual” and these personal qualities come through to voters when he campaigns at relatively small events, such as “town meetings.”