Bush Moves to Link Clinton With Carter

President Bush on Saturday sought to hang the legacy of the last Democratic President around the neck of the party’s current nominee, contending that the election of Bill Clinton would lead to the type of economic problems that marked Jimmy Carter’s Administration.

In comments at a news conference at his vacation home here, Bush said, “‘We don’t want to return to what (Carter’s) program of tax-and-spend would get us into.”

Bush first broached the comparison with Carter in a recent interview with U.S. News and World Report that will be published in the magazine this week, and he was asked about his remarks at the news conference.

In the magazine interview, Bush said a Clinton Administration would provide “a repeat of the Jimmy Carter years.”

Clinton, Bush said, has “made so many promises to so many different people, he’s changed his position on so many things, that I think we’d have a repeat of the ‘misery index’ going right through the roof and into outer space. That’s exactly what happened” during Carter’s Administration.

The misery index is an economic measurement that adds unemployment and inflation figures together.

Carter was defeated for reelection in 1980 by the GOP ticket of Ronald Reagan and Bush.

Responding to Bush’s effort to link Clinton and Carter, Clinton campaign communications director George Stephanopoulos said Saturday that the President “can’t lead us into the future by running against the past. George Bush has no credibility to criticize the economic performance of any President.”

Bush at his news conference also defended his campaign’s controversial political director, Mary Matalin, as “a very good bulldog” who will keep hammering at Clinton.

Although Bush said Matalin ventured into “the sleaze area” with a press release last week that sought to raise questions about Clinton’s character, the President made it clear that he generally approves of the way she is doing her job.

“She’s not off the reservation,” Bush said. “That matter (the press release), as far as I’m concerned, has been laid to rest.”

Bush also said, “We’re going to have a hard-hitting campaign. We’re going to hit them hard, legitimately, on issue differences and on their record. We’ve got a very good bulldog doing that in Mary Matalin.”