Stresses Traditional Values in Sweep of Illinois Towns : Bush Gets to Heart of Farmers’ Concerns

Elmer Grusy was discussing the presidential campaign and the problems of farmers here in the heartland of the Midwest--and not getting too excited about either--when the subject turned to George Bush’s promise to never embargo the export of grain.

Now there was something Grusy, who farms 100 acres (“but I sell cars on the side so I can afford to farm”), felt strongly about.

“It’s the right thinking with me,” he declared, definitively.

Farm Country

And it was a theme Republican presidential candidate Bush emphasized throughout the day, as he traveled by bus up U.S. 51, the two-lane spine of central Illinois, from Bloomington to El Paso, El Paso to Minonk (pronounced “Mih-nunk”) and on past the golden stubble of shorn cornfields to the annual Illinois Farm Progress show (800 acres of farm gear and crop displays) in West Brooklyn (pop. 200).

The day offered a rare break from the normal campaign pace, usually three rallies hundreds or thousands of miles apart in a wholesale search not so much for votes as for blanket television and news coverage.

Rather, Wednesday was a day of what is becoming known as retail politics: rare, hand-to-hand contact with voters in small-town America.

Bush spent a full day on and off a luxury bus--used during the primary election campaign by one of his defeated rivals, the Rev. Pat Robertson--trailed by a Secret Service follow-up car, two armored limousines, and seven other buses carrying a Secret Service command post, reporters, staff members and supporters.

His goal: to whip up enough enthusiasm and support on Election Day to overcome the normally heavy vote for Democratic candidates in Cook County, which encompasses Chicago and its nearby northern suburbs, and the downstate area near St. Louis, and gain Illinois’ 25 electoral votes.

His method: hourly criticisms, town by town, of “the liberal governor of Massachusetts,” coupled with efforts by the GOP candidate to link his support for prayer in schools and the Pledge of Allegiance to the personal values of the Midwest. And Bush also offered a new attack not just on taxes, but on the tax collector, too.

And so it went, from Main Street along the nearly abandoned tracks of the Toledo, Peoria & Western Railroad, now owned by the Santa Fe, to Hamilton’s Family Restaurant-Union 76 Truck Stop outside Ottawa, to the Del Monte canning plant in Mendota.

In Ottawa, a town of 18,000 where Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas staged the first of their famous debates on Aug. 21, 1858, in their race for the U.S. Senate, Bush criticized the pledge by Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee, to step up enforcement of tax laws as part of his program to reduce the federal budget deficit.

“I have confidence in the honesty of the American people. I do not want to create an auditor army. I’m not for a program that’s going to increase IRS seizures and give the IRS more power. The IRS works for you and not the other way around,” he declared.

One School Building

In Wenona, population 1,100, with five churches and one red-brick school building for all grades, kindergarten through grade 12, Bush told the townspeople from the school steps:

“I know it’s controversial but I don’t think it’s wrong for kids to have a voluntary prayer, a minute of silent prayer, in our schools. I think that it’s right. I think that it’s good for the moral fiber of our country.”

This was not a day for detailed discussion of issues or answering questions from reporters--Bush has not held a press conference in nearly two weeks. Rather, it was one for quick hits: five minutes of country music, 10 minutes of speeches, and then on to the next stop, all providing scenes of Bush in the surroundings of Middle America as he delivered a short, punchy message: “Agriculture is on the move if we just don’t let the government screw it up.

“No more grain embargoes,” he said, delivering much the same message as Dukakis, in the same area of Illinois, on Tuesday.

Like any well-planned traveling road show, Bush brought along his own warm-up act. On board his bus were Loretta Lynn, Crystal Gayle and Peggy Sue, the country and Western singers.

Before squealing teen-agers in a high school gymnasium and before more sedate grown-ups in a town square, they belted out a five-minute medley of gospel and country songs.

Occasionally, Lynn tried her hand at public speaking:

“George Bush will straighten the farmers out. You watch it. He’s country and I love him. George Bush. Phew!”

Picture on T-Shirt

Gayle emerged from the bus at one stop in black tights, yellow spiked heels and a white T-shirt bearing a picture of Bush, her ground-length hair held off the yard of the Del Monte canning plant in her fist.