Bentsen Counterattacks in South on Defense Issues

Vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen opened a Southern front in the Democratic counterattack on defense issues Wednesday, surrounding himself with trappings of military might and assuring the region’s right-leaning voters that Republican criticism of Michael S. Dukakis is no more than a “manufactured myth.”

Flanked by a pair of massive missile launchers and backed by a huge American flag at a rally outside a defense plant here, Bentsen laid out a long list of weapons systems backed by the Democratic ticket, seeking to counter Republican “wild charges” about what Democrats oppose.

“Let’s recognize those charges for what they are,” Bentsen said, “campaign hot air, a hit-and-run attack staged for the evening news networks.”

The conservative Texan, playing his role as envoy to the South, sought to reassure those made uneasy about his running mate’s record, saying: “If I believed there were a thread of truth in that tapestry of partisan blame, I would not be campaigning with Mike Dukakis.”

Noting that the party’s “leading thinkers on national defense” also were campaigning for Dukakis, Bentsen said, “We know the difference between campaign rhetoric and concrete reality, the difference between manufactured myth and the true measure of a man.”

But Bentsen ran into trouble with the defense workers at the LTV Corp., many of whom booed as he sought to explain Dukakis’ wariness about the Strategic Defense Initiative.

The boos, and repeated interjections by a smattering of hecklers--demanding, “What about SDI?”--so unnerved Bentsen that he flubbed a line a moment later when he praised modern weapons made “right here in Grand Rapids.”

Bentsen scrambled to recover, as the crowd roared with laughter, and explained that he had just ridden in an LTV vehicle produced partly in Grand Rapids, Mich., and partly in Grand Prairie.

On the opening day of a Southern swing that aides have dubbed “defense week,” Bentsen spent nearly every moment in close proximity to things colored khaki.

In the morning, he donned a bomber jacket and climbed spryly into the cockpit of a BT-13 trainer in Harlingen, Tex., then started the engine and posed as the propeller blew his hair awry. During the tour of the LTV Corp. plant near Dallas, he hefted admiringly a scale model of a tank-piercing missile, then climbed in the back of a jeep-like Hummer military vehicle for a drive to the rally site.

In Harlingen, Bentsen declared that the Democratic ticket advocated “no cuts in defense--none.” And in both speeches Bentsen repeated the word “support” time and again, noting that the Democrats backed “a strong nuclear deterrent and the strategic triad . . . the cruise missile program . . . the stealth bomber and deployment of the B-1 . . . the submarine-launched D-5 missiles . . . and further research and development, ultimately, on strategic defenses . . . .”