Bentsen Regrets He Didn’t Press for Attacks Sooner

Democratic vice presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen suggested Friday that his biggest regret in this year’s campaign is that he did not persuade running mate Michael S. Dukakis soon enough of the need to respond swiftly and vigorously to the charges that Republicans leveled against him.

Asked what one thing he would do over if he could, Bentsen said: “I’d argue even stronger with Mike that those negative attacks against him had to be answered immediately.”

Bentsen added: “Down in my part of the country, politics is a contact sport.”

Starting from the GOP convention in August, the Republicans lashed out at Dukakis on a series of emotion-laden issues, suggesting, for example, that he was unpatriotic and soft on crime.

Seen as Not Important

At first, the Dukakis campaign offered only lame responses to the charges, arguing that they were not important to voters and that a vigorous defense would only draw more attention to them.

Most political analysts agree that Dukakis seriously underestimated the effects that those GOP assaults would have, particularly considering how little known Dukakis was to many voters. As a result, a huge Dukakis lead--17 points in one national poll--shortly after July’s Democratic convention evaporated, and by September the polls showed Dukakis well behind Bush.

Bentsen has generally brushed aside questions aimed at getting him to analyze next Tuesday’s election as if it were already over. Even Friday, in a session with reporters in Lake Charles, La., he insisted that poll numbers were “moving our way.”

So he did not respond directly when asked whether, if the Democrats lose, he will blame Dukakis’ failure to respond to GOP attacks as the biggest contributor to defeat. “Well, that’s the one I guess that hurts the most, sticks in the craw the most,” Bentsen said.

Critical of Negative Tone

“This country deserves better than that,” he added, referring to the negative tone that has characterized this year’s race. “If the campaign is won with that kind of a deal, that intensifies it. You’ll see more of it happening, and that discourages good people from running.”

If the Democrats lose, Bentsen will almost certainly return to one of the most powerful jobs in the Senate, that of chairman of the Finance Committee. There he will be in the position to deny Bush’s campaign pledge to cut the tax rate on capital gains.

Bentsen recalled that the Reagan Administration’s Treasury Department had estimated in 1986 that raising the capital gains rate would add hundreds of millions to the federal Treasury. Now, he noted, Bush is arguing that cutting the rate would do the same.

“He’s not going to get it,” Bentsen said emphatically. “They can’t have it both ways.”

Bentsen campaigned in Houston and Las Cruces, N.M., before arriving in Los Angeles on Friday night. At a rally at Burbank Airport, he noted that a CBS poll showed the Republican lead shrinking from 12 points to only 7 in the last few days.

“The Republicans are dropping like a rock in those polls,” he said.

Bentsen said of California: “This is the big prize, 47 electoral votes. We win this one, we win them all. Let’s go!”

In Houston, he visited schoolchildren who were touring Challenger Center, an educational facility established by the families of the crew members killed in the January, 1986, space shuttle disaster. Bentsen and the children took a test in which sensors placed on their skin were used to measure stress levels.

When the senator registered less than one-third the normal level, he laughed and said: “That means I’m cool.”

Bentsen, who Dukakis has said would oversee space exploration during his Administration, also erred when he told the children that the Atlantis shuttle “is not going to have any people on it.” The Atlantis, expected to be launched on a secret military mission later this month, will have a crew of five.

On the final weekend before the election, the campaign hopes to make the most of the high approval rating that polls are registering for Bentsen.

He will appear on two network news shows on Sunday, will give the weekly Democratic address on national radio and will be featured in a new television advertisement.

The campaign estimates that 60 million to 80 million television viewers will see at least one of his appearances.