From: rja@redwood26.cray.com (Russ Anderson)
Subject: George Will & the Bush campaign
Originator: rja@redwood26
Organization: The 1991 World Champion Minnesota Twins!
Date: 1 Sep 92 10:57:51 CDT


Minneapolis Star Tribune, Wed, Aug 26, 1992, p24a:

	BUSH CAMPAIGN AWASH WITH LIES
	By George Will (the Washington Post)

	When George Bush's campaign slithered through Georgia,
	Rep. Newt Gingrich rose to the challenge of lowering still
	further the tone of it.  Gingrich, whose high rank in the 
	Republican leadership is the only good reason for hoping 
	Democratic control of the House continues, told a Bush rally
	that Woody Allen is "a perfect model of Bill Clinton 
	Democratic values" and that "Woody Allen having nonincest
	with a nondaughter to whom he was a nonfather because they
	were a nonfamily fits the Democratic platform perfectly."

	That would cost Gingrich his reputation for seriousness if
	he still had one, and it illustrates how cynicism at the top
	of the Republican ticket pervades the entire party.  Gingrich
	did not, in any meaningful sense, mean what he said.  He was
	just emitting the sort of noise that characterizes what Bush
	calls his campaign about "trust".

	Gingrich's synthetic sincerity was further displayed as he 
	hyperventilated about Clinton's joking remark, months ago, 
	that maybe he should have inhaled that marijuana (thereby
	escaping the ridicule his "I didn't inhale" has evoked).
	Gingrich calls Clinton's remark "the single most destructive
	action by a politician in my lifetime."  Gingrich's lifetime
	began in 1943.  Make your own list of the evils Gingrich 
	considers less significant.

	After Gingrich regaled the crowd with his Woody Allen japes,
	a Bush aide said, "The president does not want to make Woody
	Allen an issue."  There they go again, dancing the Bush Two-
	Step.  The campaign always dissociates itself from the stream
	of dishonesty that is steady.

	Nothing new here.  In 1988, when Bush's Iowa campaign smeared
	Elizabeth Dole, Robert Dole asked Bush, on the Senate floor,
	if Bush had authorized it.  Said Bush: Maybe I did and maybe 
	I didn't.  That is how Bush's various campaigns have talked 
	to the nation: down.  Read my curled lip.

	On television last Sunday Robert Teeter, Bush campaign co-
	chair, was asked about the constant attacks on Hillary Clinton 
	at the Republican convention.  Teeter, two-stepping, said, "I
	personally don't think Hillary Clinton is much of - part of an
	issue of this campaign and I've said that a number of times."
	And no doubt will have occasions to say it, piously, an 
	additional number of times before November.

	Can't Bush's people be honest about anything?  Hillary Clinton
	is an issue and should be.  She is an experienced, outspoken
	advocate about various causes and she probably would influence 
	the tone and direction of a Clinton administration.

	The problem is not that the Bush campaign obviously thinks she
	is an issue, but that the campaign is so mendacious when
	portraying what she has written.  (A bulletin: She does not
	think a 12-year-old should be able to sue parents if asked to
	take out the garbage.)  Peter Hart, the Democratic consultant,
	says this is Republican strategy: Instead of running Bush-
	Quayle against Clinton-Gore, Republicans want to eclipse their
	least popular and the Democrats' most popular candidate, running
	George and Barbara against Bill and Hillary.

	Hillary Clinton is being "borked".  The verb "to bork" means to
	lie about the writings of a public figure.  There is rough
	justice in what she is undergoing.  Lots of her friends 
	participated in the borking of Robert Bork, and she no doubt
	enjoyed it.  Still, Bush campaigners are lying about her record.

	Soon Bill Clinton will have to say to Bush what Dole publicly
	said to Bush in 1988: "Stop lying about my record."  Bush says
	Clinton has raised taxes 128 times.  Bush says this even though
	columnist Michael Kinsley has demonstraited that the list of
	"tax increases" is a tissue of falsehoods.  (Some taxes are
	counted several times; components of a tax are counted as
	seperate taxes; minor fees, such as the $1 court cost imposed on
	convicted criminals, are counted as taxes.)  By the tendentious
	criteria used by the Bush campaign, Bush has raised taxes more
	often in four years than Clinton has in 12.

	So, what does Teeter say of the 128 number?  "We're not going to 
	quit saying it about Mr. Clinton."

	Bush operatives constantly whine about the media but Bush is
	benefiting from the mock sophistication of journalists who, 
	striking a world-weary stance, say of his campaign dishonesty,
	"It was ever thus in American politics."  Even if that were true,
	it would be no excuse, and it isn't true.  This is extraordinary.

	Today honerable conservatives feel the sort of fury felt by 
	honerable conservatives 40 years ago when Joe McCarthy was 
	giving anticommunism a bad name.  There is a strong case to be
	made against Clinton concerning school choice, term limits, 
	protectionism, automobile fuel efficiency standards, his ties 
	to trial lawyers, his running mate's environmental hysteria,
	and mush more.  But serious people flinch from being associated
	with the intellectual slum that the Bush campaign, with its
	riffraff of liars and aspiring ayatollahs.

	Bush calls his campaign "a crusade to bring back values."  His
	campaign is powerful evidence of the need for such a crusade.


-- 
Russ Anderson    |  Disclaimer: Any statements are my own and do not reflect
------------------              upon my employer or anyone else.  (c) 1992
EX-Twins' Jack Morris, 10 innings pitched, 0 runs (World Series MVP!)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc