CAMPAIGN ’88 : Bentsen Offers Dukakis ‘Different Viewpoint’

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, acknowledged Sunday that he continues to have policy differences with the presidential nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, but said the party’s standard-bearer “is not afraid to listen to a different viewpoint.”

“Michael Dukakis was not looking for a clone of himself. He was reaching out for the center,” Bentsen said after he was reminded that he had differed from Dukakis in supporting school prayer, the death penalty in some instances, off-shore oil drilling and in his opposition to gun control.

“It shows something of the integrity of this man, that he is not afraid to listen to a different viewpoint,” Bentsen said. He added that the Democratic running mates were in agreement on other matters, notably in their combined opposition to the Reagan Administration’s “borrow and spend philosophy.”

Bentsen clearly strove during the interview on NBC’s televised “Meet the Press” to keep the focus on issues rather than on the controversy over the 1969 National Guard enlistment of his Republican opponent, Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle. The Texas senator suggested that a judgment on Quayle’s performance should be left to the nation.

Reminded that his son, Lloyd Bentsen III, had also enlisted in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, Bentsen responded: “My son makes his own decisions and my son is not running for vice president of the United States.” That matter, he said, “does not concern me at all.”