DAVID NYHAN

Bush Serious About . . . Getting Serious

By David Nyhan, Globe Staff, June 13, 1999

Famous brand name. Fawning press coverage. Huge polling lead. Lots of heavy hitters in the party signed up early and hoping to ride him right into the White House.

George W. Bush has it all. Just like Teddy Kennedy 20 years ago getting ready to fight for the second presidency of his family. Being a scion is great work if you can get it, till the ack-ack starts to fly.

Kennedy took on an incumbent president of his own party, and was eventually scuppered by a couple of gents, one he knew, and the other he'd barely heard of. While Jimmy Carter's tough guys were roughing Kennedy up in the South and West, and the media powers phobic about Kennedy-ism were doing their Chappaquiddick number, Teddy ran into Roger Mudd and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

The latter embraced "Senator Theodore" as the American preferable to the Great Satan, the originial Blue-eyed Devil, the aforesaid Mr. Carter of the Plains, Ga., Baptist Church Sunday School Carters. And Mudd had the nerve to ask Teddy why he wanted to be president.

The Ayatollah's embrace, and the newsman's impertinence, combined with the massive weight of the White House political machinery, put paid to the last Kennedy-for-president drive we can expect to see. Now it's the turn of the Bush dynasty to see what it can deliver for "George Dubayah," as the Texas governor trundles into New Hampshire tomorrow.

George W.'s potential as savior of the GOP has been officially endorsed by 117 House members and 10 GOP senators -- not to mention a thundering herd of press-carded bus-riding laptop-toting cell-phone chomping reporters, a lemming-like journalistic-jackal-pack that will turn on the front-runner at the earliest opportunity.

It ain't easy being a rich man's son; you think everyone's your friend, till something goes wrong, and then you learn just how many people dislike you, not for who you are, but what you are. George W. is still a rookie in national politics. He had one medium-to-tough fight to be elected governor in Texas, and a walkover second election. He's been governor in an era when it was a cinch to be governor, with good economic times.

His father was rejected by New Hampshire because times were tough; the son returns to the Granite State for the first time since his father was running there seven years ago, and the unemployment rate is 2.4 percent, real estate values are rocketing upward, and the economy has never been better.

The Bush limo is easing out of the garage onto the highway that begins in Iowa and aims straight for New Hampshire. But bad things can happen to those shiny new bandwagons when they get to rolling. They can scratched, dented, derailed, ditch-bound, and sometimes they even get wrecked. Ask Teddy.

There are 10 other Republicans eager to stick a pin into George W.'s balloon as soon as they can maneuver themselves within stabbing distance. I ran against his daddy, "King George," and I'll run against his son, "the Prince of Wales," jibes sharpshooter Patrick Buchanan, the Beltway Basher.

George W. will have his hands full with the 10 arrayed against him. But if he reacts too sharply to the brickbats, if he becomes the Prince of Wails, then all bets are off. The media wisenheimers are an unforgiving bunch when a front-runner stumbles.

There has been a seismic change in the media corps since the last presidential election. Impeachment became a Monica-monologue for much of the media. That's the rationale given for the plunge in audience share watching the networks' nightly news shows -- we used to call them "programs," but now it's "shows."

Some of the newspapers as well as our broadcast brethren have given ground more or less steadily from the traditional role of delivering basic information, and turned instead to the higher-octane fuel of delivering opinion, propaganda, or "spin," that process which if left uninterrupted leaves both the donor and the donee dizzy.

As a result, the people who are known as "consumers" of news, "customers" of advertisers, and "voters" of democracy have less faith in the news media, the politicians, and the whole process of selecting presidents. Cynicism and apathy run hand-in-hand, the harnessed horsemen of mass-produced despair.

Whether Bush gets a reasonable opening to hawk his brand of "compassionate conservatism" depends almost wholly upon his ability to avoid embarassing gaffes in his early weeks on the campaign. Bush only this week came out for impeachment of President Clinton. That's a six-month lag time on the biggest issue of the winter.

On the war in Kosovo, Bush was initially tentative, tremulous, and evasive. For or against the NATO air war, Guv? he was asked in March. "My question is, 'Is it good for America?' And that'll be the question I'll ask should I end up being the president." Twaddle like that will get him nowhere.

He's got to know he can't get away with those fuzzy throwaway lines now. He's under a great deal of pressure to improve his learning curve. Being governor of a secure and prosperous state, with a solicitous press corps, and a docile, not to say servile, business community, has given Bush an easy ride as governor. But he's not playing patty-cake in Austin any more.

He stares into his shaving mirror this week and has to be thinking to himself along these lines: "I am 52, I've been in only two elections my whole life, there's a ton of issues about which I honestly have no clue, and everyone's waiting to see if I fall on my keister. Lord, just help me through this day."

He's already stumbled into Tax Cut Swamp, vowing by letter to veto, as president, any kind of tax increase on personal income or business income. Why in the world he would reinforce everyone's memories of his father's infamous "Read my lips" vow, the biggest broken promise of the previous regime, is beyond me. Did he need to do that for any sensible reason? Nope. But that's the kind of things rookie candidates do.

If he has half Clinton's ability to wriggle off hooks, survive ambushes, inch away from sawed-off tree-limbs, or otherwise talk his way out of hot water, Bush could be unbeatable. Selling something labelled "compassionate conservatism" should not be any more difficult than successfully peddling "lukewarm liberalism," which was Clinton's 1992 meal ticket.

Bush's personal mettle, his character, his family, his father's record, his "vision thing," his business record, his ability to roll with the punches on the stump, and his ability to prevail over fatigue and confusion and conflicting advice all will be tested by the most arduous ordeal in American politics, a front-running presidential campaign.

The rules have changed post-Clinton. And not for the better. There will be days when it will not be pretty. But Bush has to undergo those trials in order to get from here to there.