POLITICAL CIRCUIT / BRIAN C. MOONEY

Bush Takes All That Buzz And Roars Through His Debut

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff, June 16, 1999

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Maybe there will be some great freefall, a hellacious media downdraft that drives Texas Governor George Dubyah Bush back to the pack of Republican presidential candidates, now fading to flyspecks below. More likely, though, it's "Bush or Bust" for Republicans anxious to recapture the White House in 2000.

Especially if this week's debut is an indicator. Dubyah's campaign for the GOP nomination blew out of the prairie and hit southern New Hampshire like a taut Texas twister before touching down yesterday in Massachusetts.

Of course, there is, as Bush notes, "a long way to go before votin' time" next winter. His Republican rivals won't let him run this flag-waving, buzzword-thick, general election-theme campaign for long. Worried Democrats, already dogging him on the trail, are furiously scratching to peel away compassionate from Bush's oxymoronic "compassionate conservatism" label. (Bush, by the way, pronounces it "con-serv-a-tiv-ism." Maybe the extra syllable accounts for the difference.)

The crackling crossfire has begun.

Above it all, Dubyah remains, for most voters, a blank slate. For many -- emphasis on many -- establishment Republicans, he's a great Rorschach inkblot. They see in him what they hope to see. Mostly, they see the White House. Or think they do.

For an opening performance, New Hampshire was a boffo show. Technically, his is a presidential-caliber operation. The candidate was loose. He kept to the carefully crafted script, deflecting the hard questions he will hear again and again. He was buoyant as he plowed, like a rock star, through all-white, mostly wrinkled crowds, with an army of cameras and reporters in tow. It looked and felt like the final days of a surging campaign, not the first days of a front-running one.

He has some distinct assets lacking in his father, the former president. For one, Dubyah speaks in complete sentences, not jiggy fragments that slam into each other at every punctuation mark. There's an aw-shucks informality to his style. And when he takes a stab at irony or humor, Dubyah introduces his punch line with a shoulder shimmy and head wag that looks like something out of an amateur's standup comedy routine.

The New Hampshire audience was primed for it. At an early seaside event at quaint New Castle, Executive Councilor Ruth Griffin of nearby Portsmouth sported chic Texas A&M cowboy boots, embossed with "Aggies," the A&M nickname.

"I got 'em out of my basement," she said, something she never did for Dubyah's dad. "Now's the time to wear 'em."

Marvin Bush, the candidate's venture capitalist brother from Virginia, came along for the show. "I'm happy to break my apolitical streak for him," Marvin said of his brother's big moment. "There's a pretty good buzz here, isn't there?"

There certainly was.

Senator Judd Gregg, heading Bush's Granite State operation, rolled out a list of 273 local and county coordinators. It was spotty or thin in a few areas -- Laconia and the Lakes Region, rural Coos County up north, and Strafford County's Dover-Somersworth-Rochester area. But Bush appears to be heavily armed in the big southern counties of Hillsborough (Manchester-Nashua), Rockingham (Seacoast to Salem), and Merrimack (Concord), home to 60 percent of the state's population.

Most of these operatives have never met Bush. Probably don't know much about his political philosophy, either. He's certainly more conservative than his dad, whose beliefs zigzagged over the years. Indeed, for all his talk about "compassionate conservatism," Dubyah generally hews to well right-of-center Republican orthodoxy -- tough on crime and taxes; favoring free trade, defense buildup, school choice and tort reform; opposing abortion, gay rights, affirmative action, and gun control.

Bush talks about "ushering in the era of personal responsibility," yet stoutly refuses to talk about his own "young and irresponsible" days, the subject of much gossip and speculation. Admitting he beat a drinking problem 13 years ago isn't enough. That barricade won't hold. No member of Bush's generation can run for president without answering a question about drug use and any followups that answer suggests.

If the honest answer's "no," why stall? If it's "yes," voters have a right to know and make up their own minds.

So we can expect turbulence ahead for the candidacy of the Texas tornado with the famous father. But it may take major blunders and catastrophic disclosures to deter the Republican Party from its "Bush or Bust" path in 2000.