Dukakis Attacks Rival on Drug Flow to U.S. : For Bush, the Slogans Spell Out His Message

His thoughts explode and rain down on his audiences like confetti from a cannon as George Bush plunges into the final days of the long 1988 campaign.

Economy. Education. Environment. Arms Control. Crime. Judges. Values. Experience.

These carefully drawn political themes have carried the vice president to his place today as front-runner in the marathon race for the presidency. Increasingly, in his closing arguments to the electorate, Bush extracts from his political vocabulary small snippets, slogans and distillations--and fires away in his own, scatter-gun idiom.

Here, for instance, is how Bush raised the subject of world peace at a high school gym rally Wednesday:

“There are a lot of cynics out there who talk about the length of the campaign. I wish some of you could have been with me in Jefferson City, Mo.--seen the little kids there. And I want to leave those kids a safer world. And I believe I’ve had the experience. Because I do believe peace through strength works.”

The words fill the air, their power amplified by huge public address systems. Bands play. Cheers and screams and air horns add to the shriek. Hand-painted red-white-and-blue signs decorate the scene. Pompon girls prance and shake. Balloons rise in the sky. Four busloads of campaign reporters record the scene.

This is a Bush-for-President rally, here in the Midwest where the vice president seeks to dash the upset hopes of Democratic presidential nominee Michael S. Dukakis.

Traveling with the vice president through Illinois and Michigan Wednesday was Republican National Committee Chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., who beamed with optimism despite the campaign’s strict policy against overconfidence.

“If things continue, we’re going to have an overwhelming victory,” Fahrenkopf said.

Former President Gerald R. Ford also appeared at Bush’s side in Michigan. He professed himself as “shocked” that Dukakis claimed to have views akin to those of Democratic Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy. Ford said that Dukakis was more in the mold of less popular Democrats, namely former President Jimmy Carter, Walter F. Mondale and George S. McGovern.

In these final days of the campaign, Bush is confident of the foundation he has built for the vote next Tuesday.

“If I win this election, it will be a mainstream mandate. That’s what this election is about,” he said Wednesday at an outdoor rally of 1,000 in the chill of an autumn afternoon in Grand Rapids.

In practical terms, this means that Bush has all but abandoned weighty speech making and policy pronouncements and TelePrompTers.

Speaking His Mind

Now it’s just the candidate, his 3x5 note cards, his by-invitation-only audiences of loyalists and the press. It is a Bush, as he told the Washington Post recently, who is speaking his mind, “inarticulate though I may be.” It is a Bush who grabs the intercom aboard Air Force Two and proposes a drawing where “third prize is to get to hear my speech again.”

Here is this Bush telling Illinois students about the economy and crime:

“Manufacturing jobs are up and agricultural markets are expanding. Please don’t let us go back to those tired days of negativism and high taxes. There’s an awful lot to do. I’ve walked the streets in Trenton, N.J., California--Los Angeles and Ripon. I’ve heard the voices of America, the farms of Illinois, the factories of Ohio, the barrios of this country. I’ve talked to families about crime. And crime is down in this Administration. But never enough. And I want to keep it going. And I will!”

Shards of thought, one reporter calls them. Another described them as ideas unconnected by cartilage. One joke has it that the tax Bush is hardest on is syntax.

But never mind. The vice president seems to be touching his audiences in these closing days, even if the crowds are small and tightly screened. And when broken into sentences or just phrases, Bush’s summary rally speeches seem to provide adequate grist, or bites, for newswriters.

Keeping Them Listening

And the foremost purpose, as Bush operatives frequently explain, is to keep the public listening to tunes it already knows by heart. Between Bush and his supporters and any number of millions of voters, these operative say, is a basic, you-know-what-I-mean communication.

So the vice president’s supporters at an Illinois high school know of his commitment to better education even when he delivers it this way:

“I will not tolerate mediocrity. I pledge to keep America competitive. And I will do it by helping local control make sure that America’s schools are the best.”

The same with the environment: “I pledge to be a good President for cleaning up our parks.”