Takeover (15 page)

I will leave it to someone else to write a more detailed history of the 1988 campaign. Much more could be said about the personal rivalries, backstage intrigue, and political blunders that led to the strange circumstance of establishment Republican George H. W. Bush being anointed to continue the conservative revolution that he ran against in 1980, and that his acolytes in the Reagan–Bush administration had argued and fought against at every opportunity during the eight years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

George H. W. Bush’s 1988 primary victories provided the model for Mitt Romney’s 2012 primary campaign because in many cases the people surrounding Mitt Romney—such as former New Hampshire governor and Bush White House chief of staff John Sununu and establishment Republican super-lobbyist and Massachusetts GOP
national committeeman Ron Kaufman—were the same establishment Republicans, or at least the understudies of the establishment Republicans, who had guided Bush to victory in 1988.

Once the 1988 Republican primary season was over, and Bush’s nomination was assured, it appeared that for all intents and purposes, conservatives were rudderless and leaderless.

There was a good bit of talk and complaining about Bush, the failures of the conservative candidates in the primaries, and general kvetching—but there was no plan as to what conservatives should do at the Republican National Convention.

Unlike the Ron Paul supporters in 2012, the supporters of Jack Kemp and Pat Robertson—the conservatives who lost out in the 1988 primaries—had no plans to go to the Republican National Convention in New Orleans and make the case for their candidate and his ideas.

Even worse, until just before the convention opened, there was no real push for Bush to select a conservative running mate. Reagan had been pushed to select a moderate, such as former president Ford or Bush himself, to unite the party and ensure that the Republican establishment would support him, but conservatives had no similar effort under way after the 1988 Republican primaries ended.

In the days before the Republican National Convention, conservatives finally began an intense lobbying effort to ensure that a conservative would be nominated for vice president. The media picked up the story of conservative disgruntlement with Bush, and with Bush down in the polls, his advisors knew something had to be done.

Conservatives were persistently and loudly pushing for a conservative to get the nod. But who would Bush choose?

The names of practically every Republican elected official above sanitation commissioner were floated and analyzed by the media. California governor George Deukmejian said he didn’t want the job. Republican governors and senators from other key Electoral College states were weighed, with the list eventually being pared down to Senators Bob Dole of Kansas, Pete Domenici of New Mexico,
Dan Quayle of Indiana, and Alan Simpson of Wyoming, Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, and Elizabeth Hanford Dole, wife of Senator Bob Dole and a former transportation secretary.

Domenici and Simpson were both respected members of the Capitol Hill establishment, and Simpson in particular was a familiar face on television, but neither of them were conservatives, and neither came from states that added anything significant to Bush’s Electoral College prospects.

The conventional wisdom said Bush should choose Senator Bob Dole or Congressman Jack Kemp, both of whom were perceived to have a national following because they had run in the Republican primaries.

Bush and Dole just plain didn’t like each other, so Dole was never really in the running despite public protestations to the contrary from the Bush camp. Mrs. Dole was there solely as window dressing for feminists, so that Republican national politics wouldn’t appear to be strictly a male sport.

Clearly, Jack Kemp was the choice of many, if not most conservative leaders, but he certainly wasn’t the conservative who was most congenial to George H. W. Bush and his inner circle.

Kemp had been brash enough to try to hold Reagan’s feet to the fire on taxes, and as the convention opened, he continued to go on television to talk about his signature issues. This contradicted Bush’s idea of a vice president as a loyal helpmate, as he saw his role with Reagan.

Bush had no intention of having Jack Kemp hold
his
feet to the fire on conservative principles from inside the White House, and the more Bush saw Kemp’s face on TV, the lower Kemp’s prospects fell.

This, by process of elimination, left Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana.

In 1981 Elaine and I hosted an evening party for a hundred or so at our McLean, Virginia, home to celebrate and welcome about twenty newly elected conservative members of Congress. Dan Quayle was one of the stars that night as a young and promising conservative Senator.

Quayle had an impeccable conservative pedigree as the grandson of conservative newspaper magnate Eugene C. Pulliam, who, by the way, received an award for service to the conservative cause at the great Young Americans for Freedom rally at Madison Square Garden in March 1962.

Senator Quayle was also seen as something of a political giant killer, having won a tough GOP primary to take on and defeat onetime Democratic presidential contender Senator Birch Bayh in 1980.

During his time on Capitol Hill, Quayle established himself as a strong anti-Soviet national defense conservative and a reliable vote for Reagan’s defense build-up. He also subscribed to Kemp-style “optimistic conservatism” and the signature legislative achievement of his Senate career was probably a job-training bill he sponsored with liberal icon Ted Kennedy.

Quayle had another set of assets not obvious to outsiders at the time; he shared a number of Washington’s big-name political consultants with Bush, and they spoke highly of Quayle’s abilities as a grassroots campaigner.

Dan Quayle’s boyish good looks, handsome young family, and gregarious personality made him appear as if he had been plucked straight out of central casting for the part of the youthful face of the Republican Party to complement Bush’s grayed-at-the-temples experience.

What’s more, Bush liked Quayle, who had made a point of stopping by his office on the Senate side of the Capitol to talk national security with the former CIA director and US ambassador to China.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Bush saw in Quayle a loyal subordinate, and many of Bush’s staff and senior advisors saw someone who might be personally more conservative than they were, but who would not be a threat because he would not bring a cadre of movement conservatives with him to upset their plans to roll back the Reagan Revolution in favor of a “kinder, gentler nation.”

Without pressure from conservatives to choose one of their national leaders—and indeed without an obvious conservative
national leader to get behind—George H. W. Bush and his people had the freedom to make much the same calculation about Dan Quayle that Nixon had made about Agnew: he wouldn’t get in the way once the election was won.

And they were right.

After a lackluster performance on the campaign trail, made worse by constant leaking and sniping from inside the Bush campaign, Quayle was largely isolated in the administration and settled into his office in the West Wing to handle the ceremonial duties of the office and to come out to try to calm waters whenever Bush riled conservatives.

T
he 1988 presidential campaign may have pitted two of America’s least appealing politicians against each other. However, it showed that when Republicans nationalize the election and Americans are presented with a clear alternative between a conservative vision of America and a liberal version of America, voters usually choose the conservative candidate.

While George H. W. Bush was one of the most experienced men ever to run for president, having served as a member of Congress, CIA director, ambassador to China, and chairman of the Republican National Committee, he was not well liked by most of political Washington.

All his political life George Bush had been “selected” on the basis of his old Republican establishment connections (his father had been a Republican senator from Connecticut) and money. The media regarded him as thin-skinned and gaffe-prone, and they also bought, and readily promoted, the idea that, despite his heroism in World War II, Bush was a “wimp.”

While he inspired intense loyalty among his close friends and aides, conservatives on and off Capitol Hill didn’t trust Bush to actually produce on promises to follow through on Reagan’s agenda.

But Bush had one thing going for him: he had trained a lifetime to be president, and after twenty-plus years in public life, he had an unmatched Rolodex of establishment Republican Party leaders, donors, and contacts who owed him favors large and small.

Democratic Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis was a flinty “process liberal”—a Harvard grad that came across as both holier-than-thou and smarter-than-thou.

Dukakis was an unlikely standard-bearer for Democrats in a year when Congressman Richard Gephardt, Big Labor’s best friend in Congress, was on the ballot, as was Rev. Jesse Jackson, favorite of the hard Left and African-American voters.

But Dukakis was a tough campaigner, and his campaign team was master of the negative ad and the behind-the-scenes smear—which eventually took out two of his principal rivals, Gephardt and Senator Joe Biden.

Dukakis was almost matched measure for measure as a negative campaigner by Sen. Al Gore, who first brought the infamous Willie Horton to prominence in an ad against him in the Democratic primaries.

Dukakis also had the distinction of being a governor, which gave him a gravitas that a mere House member could never hope to match, and he could run on the so-called Massachusetts Miracle.

The “Miracle,” which was as much, if not more, attributable to the economic and national defense policies of Ronald Reagan than it was to Dukakis, allowed him to present himself to traditional Democratic Rust Belt voters and hard-pressed populist farmers as the guy who was going to make things fair and revitalize their faltering economic bases.

When Dukakis was not trashing his Democratic rivals, he didn’t campaign against George H. W. Bush and the Republicans in general; he campaigned against Ronald Reagan.

And it seemed to be working.

Running as a technocrat, on a platform that was little more than a claim of “competence,” Dukakis won thirty states and over
40 percent of the Democratic primary vote in a crowded field. Coming out of the Democratic National Convention, some polls had Dukakis ahead of Bush by as much as seventeen points.

If coming out of the Democratic Convention the 1988 race seemed to favor Dukakis, coming out of the Republican National Convention the tide quickly turned in Bush’s favor when he gave one of the best speeches of his life, vowing to continue Reagan’s policies and embracing the Reagan legacy by saying:

For seven and a half years I have helped the president conduct the most difficult job on earth. Ronald Reagan asked for, and received, my candor. He never asked for, but he did receive, my loyalty. Those of you who saw the president’s speech this week, and listened to the simple truth of his words, will understand my loyalty all these years. … I am here tonight—and I am your candidate—because the most important work of my life is to complete the mission that we started in 1980.
¹

Bush went on to list the bill of particulars that would be used against Dukakis for the rest of the campaign in terms every Reagan voter would understand.

Competence is the creed of the technocrat who makes sure the gears mesh but doesn’t for a second understand the magic of the machine … The truth is, this election is about the beliefs we share, the values that we honor, and the principles we hold dear.

They call it a Swiss cheese economy. Well, that’s the way it may look to the three blind mice. But … but … when they … when they were in charge, it was all holes and no cheese.

Should public school teachers be required to lead our children in the pledge of allegiance? My opponent says no—and I say yes.

Should society be allowed to impose the death penalty on those who commit crimes of extraordinary cruelty and violence? My opponent says no—but I say yes.

And should our children have the right to say a voluntary prayer, or even observe a moment of silence in the schools? My opponent says no—but I say yes.

And should … should free men and women have the right to own a gun to protect their home? My opponent says no—but I say yes.

And is it right to believe in the sanctity of life and protect the lives of innocent children? My opponent says no—but I say yes.
²

From the Second Amendment to American exceptionalism to the right to life that Bush had once opposed by backing
Roe v. Wade
and abortion on demand, George H. W. Bush hit all the notes conservatives were hoping to hear from the Republican presidential candidate and emphasized the social issues establishment Republicans always do their best to avoid.

Absent the acceptance speeches of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, I doubt there was ever a more conservative acceptance speech delivered at a Republican National Convention. Many of the voters who voted for Bush based on his acceptance speech didn’t realize it, but they were voting for speechwriter (now
Wall Street Journal
columnist) Peggy Noonan, not George H. W. Bush.

And the fiscal conservatives and small-government-types were particularly cheered when their newly nominated Republican candidate for president, George H. W. Bush, said:

And I’m the one who will not raise taxes. My opponent … my opponent now says … my opponent now says he’ll raise them as a last resort, or a third resort. But when a politician talks like that, you know that’s one resort he’ll be checking into. My opponent won’t rule out raising taxes. But I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again, and I’ll say, to them, “Read my lips: no new taxes.”
³

In an address full of big ideas and eloquent lines, delivered by the famously ineloquent Bush, the most forceful and memorable paragraph was Bush’s embrace of conservative orthodoxy on not raising taxes—and of making Congress, not just Dukakis and the Democrats, the tax-raising boogeyman.