Get a Grip--Voters Are Waiting

The unscripted remarks of GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush are plagued by malapropism, mixed metaphor and grammatical butchery. But most people’s offhand speech is sloppy, so despite the efforts of critics and foes to make much of these Bushisms, they seem to roll off the voters. When he said, “We ought to make the pie higher” (Feb. 15, South Carolina Republican debate) or, two days later, of then-opponent John McCain, “He can’t take the high horse and then claim the low road,” they still got the gist of it.

Of course, Al Gore has had his own slips to live down, including his claim that there was “no controlling legal authority” prohibiting his fund-raising phone calls from the White House.

Now the campaign is getting to the serious part, with candidates expected to have a grasp of their--and their opponents’--proposals. Bush, trying Monday to explain his tax cut plan to a Peoria, Ill., audience and later to reporters, appeared to have no grip at all on the figures. To reporters: “I’ve got to do a better job of making it clear that starting with a baseline of about $1.9 trillion in the next 10 years, the budgets will increase by about $3.3 trillion. And yet we’ve still got another $2.3 trillion of surplus.” Add that one up.

The occasional wrong word is no crime, but having no clue about one’s own tax program is a tougher story. A single memorable blunder can nail an already wobbly reputation: Remember Dan Quayle’s “potatoe” or Democratic hopeful Joe Biden’s plagiarism of a British politician’s speech? Or in 1967, Michigan governor and presidential aspirant George Romney’s statement that the Pentagon brass “brainwashed” him into supporting the Vietnam War? With Bush and Gore about to enter televised debates, speaking coherently without a script will suddenly be important.