Bentsen Adopts Down-Home Style

With cowboy togs and Texas talk, vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen turned to his home state Friday, hoping to stay in the running for an electoral prize the Republicans have already claimed as their own.

First Bentsen changed from his senatorial suit to jeans and a Western shirt. He rode a hay wagon into a West Texas ranch and decried the “rolly coaster” of oil prices under Republican leadership. Then, before a crowd feasting on barbecue, he heaped on a little more Texas flavor to the Democrats’ new national message.

Still seeking to counter Republican “false claims and hypocrisy” aimed at Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis, Bentsen offered up down-home testimonials, saying repeatedly that he wouldn’t “share the ticket” with a Democrat who was weak on defense or wanted to confiscate hunters’ guns.

And Bentsen offered a litany of local examples of Republican “distortions” of Dukakis’ record, citing in particular newspaper stories published in Texas this week that concluded that a prison furlough program under a Republican administration in Texas was far more lenient than the Massachusetts program under Dukakis that has been the target of extensive Republican criticism.

“It turns out that our own state has furloughed 5,000 prisoners, including 500 convicted killers” in the last two years, Bentsen said. “The Massachusetts furlough is tougher than in Texas. Now that’s the facts.”

In Texas, Bentsen said: “The Republicans are finding out that sometimes the truth comes back to bite you.”

The message is a slice of the counterpunch that Democrats began to voice earlier this week. The local focus--and the fact that Bentsen had returned to his home state for another campaign swing--made clear that the Dukakis-Bentsen campaign has not yet given up on Texas and its 29 electoral votes, despite Republican boasts that the race in the state is all but over.

Meanwhile, Bentsen was asked during a round-table discussion with black reporters in Houston Friday what role the Rev. Jesse Jackson would play in the Dukakis Adminstration’s effort to combat the drug problem. He said in response: “I don’t know what role any member of the Cabinet is going to play. We would be delighted to have his participation and his commitment and his help.”

Bentsen said it would be the “height of arrogance” to talk before the election about appointments to a Dukakis Cabinet. But when asked whether he had “slipped” in possibly suggesting that Jackson would be a likely Cabinet member, Bentsen said: “No, whether he’s Cabinet or whatever, you know, whatever position, no slips. . . . We’re not picking people at this stage.”

Dukakis and Bentsen are scheduled to appear jointly this morning at a labor event in Beaumont.

Bentsen told reporters Friday he was “feeling better” about the race in Texas and the rest of the country after seeing internal campaign polls showing a Democratic rebound.

In his Texas appeal here, Bentsen said he took as “a personal insult” Republican assertions that Dukakis wanted to weaken America’s defense. He dismissed claims that Dukakis would shut down Texas military bases, saying that belied a history in which most Texas base closings have occurred under Republican administrations.

Metaphors Started Tuesday

His casual appearance was the latest in a series of bids by Bentsen to inject some folksiness into his sometimes-stiff speeches.

He began Tuesday in Los Angeles by saying that Republicans had “said things about Michael Dukakis that they wouldn’t say about a rattlesnake on a lawn at a church picnic.”

By Wednesday morning at Stanford University, there was a new metaphor: “Down in Texas we’d say they had painted him lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.”