Combative Campaign Image Defies Early Critics : Bush Combines Fighter’s Identity, Caring

Only weeks ago, it seems, the fashionable political statement was that George Bush needed to punch up his message. Now that America has witnessed the vice president with the speed bag and medicine ball, it is all the rage to wonder, ouch , does he really have to be this punchy?

As the presidential election swings toward autumn, Bush is being characterized as bombastic, caustic, simplistic, exaggerated, exasperating, contradictory, to name some.

Judging from his smile, this is fine with him.

Through the steady, repetitious drumbeat of a standardized 20-minute stump speech, Bush has confounded doubters and established for himself a fighter’s identity. Some people are sputtering and fuming, others are standing and cheering. What matters most to him is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to put George Bush out of your mind.

All with a dog-eared, old political speech, you say?

As the campaign speeds toward November, the backdrops change by the hour, controversies come and rage and vanish; the news catches shifts in nuance, stumbles, embellishments, or perhaps reaction of the crowd. But through it all, two or three or four times a day, six days a week, is this basic 1,500-word speech of a fighter whose progress is carried by practiced rhetorical footwork.

Tough, Kind-Hearted

Listen carefully and Bush presents himself not only as tough but also as kind-hearted. Yes, he is aggressively negative and downbeat, but be mindful he is ebulliently positive and optimistic too. He stirs in audiences not only their deepest fears of calamity and pollution but their brightest hopes of prosperity and peace.

Take his pummeling of opponent Michael S. Dukakis, for instance.

As Bush tells it, Dukakis “thinks a naval exercise is something you find in Jane Fonda’s workout book,” that Dukakis “gives the impression he’s opposed to every new weapons system since the slingshot,” that he has a “blind, negative ideology against weapons,” that Dukakis sponsored prison furlough programs in which murderers are released to “rape and murder again,” that he represents “a retreat from past responsibility and a hope that no one will ask what the future may hold,” that Dukakis would make the world “a more dangerous place.”

Bush insists he is merely Sgt. Friday, doing his job. “Just the facts,” he says. But in truth, he can indulge in exaggerations and stylizations so extreme that Dukakis’ true positions and beliefs are unrecognizable.

Still, partisan crowds seem to love the attack, and Bush has been heard to egg listeners on, prefacing his assaults with teeth bared and the pronouncement, “We’re going to have some fun!”

“They call it negative campaigning,” Bush says. And, of course, they do.

“Well, it’s not. I just want to bring out the differences,” he insists.

Under Reagan’s Shadow

Barbara O’Connor, of the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at Cal State Sacramento, believes the shadow of Ronald Reagan hangs heavy over this man who was once ridiculed as a wimp, and who now has brought himself to the verge of being branded a bully.

“He had to carve out an identity very different than Reagan. He just couldn’t compete with the fatherly, great-persuader, kindly image of Reagan. So now what we see is the rhetorical creation of this hard, conclusionary, authoritative person,” she said.

But Bush is wary of coming across as too snarling and mean. So, seemingly without fear of contradiction, he winds up his standard speech by seeking to soften the impression he will leave:

“I want a kinder and gentler nation” . . . “It is the time for renewed optimism” . . . “I hope to stand for a new harmony, a greater tolerance.”

“It may come across as a non sequitur given the aggressive tone of the rest of the speech,” says adviser Charlie Black. “But this is a part of him that he wants people to know.”

Follows Broad Themes

The Bush stump speech is built on a pair of broad themes.

“Peace and economic growth--those are the two great issues of any presidential campaign,” he says.

Bush frequently begins with an artful verbal sidestep around one of contemporary politics’ most enduring arguments: guns or butter.

In the 1960s, Democrats tried to convince the country it could have both, and the party ended up tearing itself apart. Republican Reagan has also opted for both, and ended up with a huge budget deficit.

Bush holds there is nothing to choose: Guns are butter. The defense industry not only keeps freedom strong in Bush’s stumping, but it provides crucial jobs, sets the pace for U.S. competitive know-how, fuels national pride and patriotism and even helps educate a generation of workers in the demands of high technology.

On the economy, Bush’s speech is straight from the Reagan Administration balance sheet: the number of jobs created, the amount of taxes reduced, the decline in the rate of inflation, and, most recently, the improvement in the monthly U.S. trade deficit.

He also will occasionally toss into his stump speech a couple of well-tested rabbit punches on what he says are matters of values--the old reliable for conservatives, the death penalty, and this newer issue of his own, the Pledge of Allegiance.

Dukakis is against capital punishment and more than a decade ago, as governor, vetoed a bill requiring teachers in Massachusetts to lead the pledge, citing dubious constitutionality.

Reaction Disproportionate

Maybe because such issues have so little to do with being President (Bush even acknowledges that the flag pledge is not for the federal government to dictate) but are so heavy with emotional symbolism--life, death, patriotism--they have stirred a stink way out of proportion to their place and emphasis in the stump speech. Democrats call it pandering.

Bush fans the controversy by first acknowledging his critics, and then pledging to defy them. “I’m going to keep on raising it!” Bush says of the flag pledge.

Some experts and observers believe this is the kind of hype that it takes to reach a public that has grown weary of this epic campaign.

“All the polls indicate that people don’t care right now,” says Cal State Sacramento’s O’Connor. “So, we’re seeing a lot of manufactured controversy.”