Who Can Read Bush’s Lips? : He Doesn’t Abandon Symbols Enough to Show Who He Is

Thomas Jefferson once expressed the conviction that if all relevant information were provided to the American people, they would inevitably reach wise decisions. I look back with some amusement on the younger version of myself cradling that opinion as a central element of democratic faith.

I often wonder these days about what Jefferson would make of the George Bush campaign. How would he react to the fact that a man who has been our constant video companion for 10 months as he applies for the biggest job that we have to offer is still a mystery to us? After all, when a fellow tries for a big job it is customary for the search committee to get answers to such questions as: Who is he? What has he done? Where has he been? What can he do?

I know that there are a lot of folks who take the “big issue” approach to campaigns.They want to know what the applicant would do about the debt, the deficits and the economy. They want to know whether he would treat the new situations in Eastern Europe as threats or as opportunities. And they would want to know whether he would treat homelessness, AIDS, the growing disparity between rich and poor, increasing racial polarization and skyrocketing medical costs as urgent national problems. They would surely demand to know whether he saw the disgraceful state of many of our public school systems as a threat to our national security.

Well, it would surely be nice to know those things, but the applicant has chosen to tell us about other things. He supports capital punishment and opposes abortion. He is for a gentler America, and he opposed the Civil Rights Restoration Act. He loves the symbols of America--the Pledge of Allegiance, for instance--and thinks that his “mainstream” views should drown outall opposing voices. He is a long-time champion of equal rights, and he has useda black murderer and rapist as a central symbol of his campaign. He is for family values, and when he debated a woman candidate he told some workingmen the next day that he had “kicked a little ass.” He yearns to cut the capital-gains tax and abhors it when Michael S. Dukakis is “divisive” when, for example, the Democrat talks about how the poor and the Rust Belt have suffered under Reaganomics. He is a crime fighter, and he has presided for the last few years over the Administration’s “war” on drugs.

We haven’t really gotten to the big issues, you see. We need some other tools to help us arrive at some credible hunches about how he would behave when he’s down in the arena. So we’re thrown back at the old, hard questions: Where has he been? What has he done? What can he do? Who is he?

His campaign doesn’t help much with those questions. He has been maneuvered through a seamless series of scenes framed with defining symbols both visual and oral. One day he is displaying his Texas boots, and then he will show up at a flag factory. Willie Horton, the black murderer and rapist, is hauled before the cameras whose next images will be those of Bush with his grandchildren. He appears one day with a large group of police officers as a backdrop, and next the officers are replaced by a missile in production.

Then there is the oral symbol, almost as powerful as Willie Horton. “Read my lips,” the applicant says. “I will not raise taxes!” That is wonderful symbolism; we can have both “peace through strength” and “a kinder and gentler” America at no extra cost. It’s not voodoo economics really--just having your cake and eating it, too.

Still, none of that answers the questions about what he has done and where he has been that would be so helpful in telling us what he can do and who he is. He doesn’t come out from behind the symbols long enough to tell us just what his views are or what he did during the days of Ollie North and Iran-Contra--except, of course, that he supported the President, who doesn’t remember all that much, either. David A. Stockman was in the White House six years ago warning about the prospect of catastrophic budget deficits, but if Bush expressed a view in those debates, he is not telling us about it in this season.

He does remind us of his military service, but we haven’t heard him mention what his judgment was when the Reagan Administration placed those 241 Marines in exposed positions in Lebanon, or what his counsel was about that before they were killed. There is evidence that he has been around and about, though. For instance, there is a photograph that shows him meeting with Gen. Manual A. Noriega. The vice president, formerly chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, says that he didn’t know that the Panamanian who lent a helping hand in the Contra supply operations was a world-class drug dealer.

Finally, in the Reagan-Bush years the CIA reentered the covert-action field with such a fervor that on one occasion even Barry Goldwater complained. What our candidate had to say about that also is lost in the mists.

Maybe, on second thought, we do possess all the facts that Jefferson would want us to have. Maybe the central oral image of the campaign should be this:

“Read my lips. I was out of the loop!”

After that, he picked Dan Quayle.