More than half the Americans interviewed in a new poll said they are at least “fairly likely” to vote for Vice President George Bush if he becomes the Republican candidate for president.
—Associated Press, October 10, 1987
The national wire is full of strange items on most days, and it takes a real news junkie to make sense of them—which is usually impossible and usually for obvious reasons.
This “Big Win Seen for Bush” poll, for instance, had no attribution at all. At least not in the Denver Post, where it turned up as a two-inch filler on page eight of the Final Edition on Sunday.
Nobody knew where it came from. Probably from Bush, I figured, and it looked like an interesting bet—at least to those of us in the business.
The numbers were impressive, and the answers seemed to come from the heart. “Asked how likely they would be to vote for Bush for president if he were nominated” (presumably in 1988, although the year was never mentioned) “14 percent of the total sample answered ‘extremely likely,’ 16 percent said ‘very likely’ and 24 percent ‘fairly likely.’”
There was another 44 percent who said “not too likely” or “not likely at all,” but the Post headline writer dismissed these negative figures as gibberish, compared with what looked like a 54 percent majority—and put a headline on the item that said, “Half in Poll Give Bush Likely Vote.”
Well, I thought . . . maybe so. Maybe George is already locked in for ’88, and now he is just rolling up numbers. Another poll, on TV, showed him running almost 15 points ahead of Bob Dole and at least 2-1 over current Demo front-runner Jesse Jackson.
Who is making these numbers? I wondered, and how do I get in touch with them? It had the look of a sporting proposition, and I wanted to get a piece of it. There is no better bet in American politics, these days, than getting down at two or three to one against George Bush, or even 3-2. . . . Tell those people to get in touch with me; I can spread that money around.
• • •
The real odds on Bush in ’88 are about 4-1 and rising, never mind what these “new polls” say. The word on Bush comes from The Man himself, Richard Nixon, who is one of the better handicappers.
In a June ’87 memo, titled “The 1988 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION,” Nixon scanned the whole field of candidates and had this to say about George:
“Bush continues to have a substantial lead in the polls. His major assets are that he has the broadest experience of any of the candidates, by far the best organization, the most money, and most important— can campaign as the Vice President.”
Nixon understands these advantages. He had all of them when he ran back in 1960, and he got his head handed to him by a gang of young upstarts who worked for Jack Kennedy—and that name has given him nightmares ever since. He knows what it feels like to be the rich boy at the wedding in “The Graduate.”
As for Bush, he continues, “He is a loyal Vice President and does not come through as a strong independent candidate in his own right. His popularity will be directly tied to Reagan’s. If Reagan’s goes up, his will go up. If Reagan’s goes down, his will go down.”
This was written, incidentally, before the vaunted Bush organization got trounced in both Michigan and Iowa by the Preacher Robertson’s crowd—and also before Ronald Reagan decided to put the whole weight of the White House behind the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court.
It was a horrible mistake—one of those great leaps of hubris into what Gen. MacArthur used to call “The Pitfalls of Unrealism.” Bork came and went like a pit bull, snapping and snarling on national TV in his own unique style—which disturbed even elderly GOP senators and left a whole generation of teenagers to feel queasy for the rest of their lives every time they hear the word “judge.”
The White House was stunned, and the president’s “popularity” went down like a stone in a peat bog.
A few weeks earlier, Judge Bork had come into the hearings with chips on both shoulders, a cheap-looking beard and the beady eyes of a zealot with friends in high places . . . and he had his own reputation to protect: He was, after all, a famous political hit man, like “The dirty little coward who shot Mister Howard.”
But that is another story, and we don’t have time for it now. All we need to know about Judge Bork is that the smart money in Washington had him no less than 7-7 coming out of the 14-member Senate Judiciary Committee—headed by the now disgraced Democratic presidential candidate, the late Joe Biden from Delaware—and when the vote finally happened last week, it went 9-5 against Bork.
It was one of those rare little wars in politics that neither side could afford to lose. A Bork confirmation would have “broken the back” of the Democratic opposition. It would have been one of those things, like e.e. cummings said, that you can’t eat.
It was “Joe Biden’s revenge,” some said, or maybe “the law of karma” . . . but Richard Nixon knew what it really was. He has been elected to almost every office in America except sheriff, and he understands politics as well as almost anybody. He is a mechanic, a true leverage junkie—and what he saw at the end of those Bork hearings was a gray-haired gent named Kennedy, who was sitting to Biden’s left and adding up the votes.
The torch had been passed, once again. And it was Joe Biden’s revenge: Not all Democrats are speed freaks, lechers and fools. . . . Nature abhors a vacuum, and it is the nature of American politics in these times to have a Kennedy haunting the White House.
A recent survey on the “new realities” of the nation’s politics, by the George Gallup organization and the Times-Mirror Co. of Los Angeles— “designed to create an extensive political profile of the American electorate”—came up with the “finding” that more people have “favorable feelings” about Dan Rather (87 percent) than they do about Billy Graham, who was next with 66 percent. . . .
Two notches below Graham was Ronald Reagan, at 62 percent. And one notch above Reagan was Sen. Ted Kennedy, with 64 percent . . . There was no mention of George Bush or Judge Bork.
The gambling community took notice, along with Richard Nixon, who was likewise excluded from the top ranks. . . . Indeed, Chappaquiddick was a long time ago. Enough is enough. The time has come.
October 12, 1987