Bush Says Rival Appeals to Fear; Dukakis: We’re Just Working Hard

George Bush accused a hard-charging Michael S. Dukakis today of basing his campaign comeback bid on an appeal to “division, fear and envy.” Dukakis responded, “We’re just working hard and we’re going to win.”

Bush, possessor of a solid lead in the polls, said in Ohio that Dukakis was an advocate for economic policies “far outside the mainstream” and resembling European socialism more than American free enterprise.

Dukakis was campaigning on the ground in California and on television through a five-minute paid network commercial and a 90-minute appearance tonight on ABC’s “Nightline.”

The new five-minute paid ad will show on NBC late tonight. In it, Dukakis accuses Bush of running a campaign of “fear and of smear” and pledges to fight for Main Street Americans.

GOP Ahead in Polls

The most recent nationwide public opinion polls point to a big Republican lead with the election two weeks distant, and Dukakis awoke to headlines that he trails by 11 points in California, the nation’s largest state.

But aides to Dukakis were busy spreading the word that his recent populist-style rhetoric and allegations of Republican campaign lies were scoring points with voters.

One aide said the Democratic campaign’s own polls showed the national gap narrowing, and spokesman Dayton Duncan added, “Our polling shows by an overwhelming margin people are blaming Bush for this negative campaign.”

Bush dispatched surrogates to rebut charges of unfair campaign tactics.

Quayle Attacks ‘Sludge’

Among them was vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle, who said desperate Democrats were dishing out “political sludge” with Dukakis’ active encouragement. He branded the entire operation “despicable” and said Bush was a man of “unshakable integrity and fairness.”

Bush sought personally to deflect Democratic charges that he stood for the wealthy at the expense of the less well off, a theme Dukakis hammered on Monday.

“We will move forward not by succumbing to the base temptations of division, fear and envy, but by following, as Abraham Lincoln said, those better angels of our nature,” he told a breakfast in Columbus.

‘No Place for Division’

Bush said that Dukakis had been making “increasing appeals to class conflict,” and that in his own view there was “no place in American life for philosophies that divide Americans one from another along class lines and that excite conflict among them.”

The vice president charged that his rival was “far outside the mainstream of economic thinking and he’s broken with the American tradition of entrepreneurship and free enterprise.”

The GOP nominee said Dukakis favors an industrial policy of control that has been tried and rejected as unsuccessful in Europe. “Around the world, governments are abandoning socialism, moving away from socialistic, high control experience . . . and embracing the American model of low taxation, entrepreneurship and individual initiative.”

Craig Fuller, Bush’s chief of staff, when asked if the vice president was calling Dukakis a socialist, said, “That would be going too far.”