From: coyote@leland.Stanford.EDU (The White Blackbird)
Subject: GEORGE WILL: Bush should leave
Organization: Nevermore, Inc.
Date: Fri, 31 Jul 92 08:12:13 GMT



Someone out there asked for this, so here you go.
-=dav

---------------------

"Quit now, George,
go fishing"
George Will
July 30, 1992 
San Jose Mercury News


A startling number of significant Republicans privately  say they wish
George  Bush   would withdraw from   the race.  If  he  runs he almost
certainly will lose,  perhaps in a  landslide that  does  considerable
damage to  his  party.  If he  wins, his second term  almost certainly
will be worse than most second terms, worse even than his first.

His approval rating is bobbing below 30 percent;  more than 75 percent
of the public belives  the nation is "on the  wrong track"; he  trails
Bill Clinton by more than 25 points.  Any of these three numbers would
be an  ominous augury less than 100  days  before the election.    And
there is  no precedent for anyone winning  re-election in the teeth of
three such numbers.

Sunday morning, William  Bennet, a   veteran of  the Reagan  and  Bush
administrations, tip-toed  to  the  verge of voicing  on television  a
thought that  other  Republicans sometimes voice,  passionately, among
themselves: A  Bush   candidacy  is,  strictly   speaking,  pointless.
Bennett, who  refused to become  co-chairman  of Bush's campaign  ( he
apparently   belives  the    campaign's  incompetence    reflects  the
administration's vacuousness),  said Bush  should "have a conversation
with himself," beginning with  this question: "Do I  really want to do
this?"

There is a bitter joke making the  rounds  among Republicans.  What is
the difference between John Gotti and George  Bush?  Answer: Gotti has
at  least  one  conviction.  Actually, Bush  has one.  It   is that he
should be president.  He is by now a figure of genuine  pathos because
he is bewildered by the  fact that more  is  expected of him than what
has hitherto sufficed.

The Bush campaign, like Bush himself, uses words not to convey meaning
but  as audible confetti.  For example,  when Ross Perot was a threat,
Bush's  people   eviscerated   him  as    emotionally  unstable,  anti
-constitutional, a potential tyrant and actual ingnoramus.  When Perot
withdrew,  Bush's  people  promptly  praised    him as  "wise"     and
"couragous."

To them,  words mean   nothing   because  nothing  meanse  anything --
nothing, that is, except  power or,  more  precisely, office.  They do
not  have even the  gravity that comes  from  craving  power to effect
change.

Bush's meandering  rhetoric  stopped being amusing long   ago.  It  is
futile for him now  to reassert even  his  sound proposals  --  for  a
line-item veto, for term limits, for school choice.  Everyone knows he
is "for" these   things,   in    his  fashion, which  is   to      say
inconsequentially.  His most recent reaffirmation of his shcool choice
proposal revealed his unfamiliarity with it.  As  Teddy Roosevelt said
of Willam Howard Taft: He means well feebly.

Suppose  Bush said  the   heck with it,   I've got fish  to  catch and
grandchildren to   catch  them with.   Two things  would  happen.  The
intellectual  claustrophobia  of  this city   and the Republican Party
would be dissipated.  And the Clinton-Gore bandwagon would be eclipsed
until after the Republican convention ends Aug. 20.

That convention would  be  transformed  from  a  meaningless ratifying
instrument -- a prop in a campaign commercial few will watch -- into a
deliberative, deciding   body.  Argument, perhaps  even thought, would
break out.

Today the  political  "market"  is  working well.  Clinton  is soaring
because the Republican Party,  as imperfectly  exemplified by the Bush
administration  and  campaign,  is tired  and  arrogant.    The  vapid
administration  and the name-calling  campaign  are  indistinguishable
when spokesman Marlin Fitzwater is trotted out to  denounce Al Gore as
"Mr. Sell-Out America."

Republicans  running  for  office are  increasingly  preoccupied  with
escaping   the   undertow  of the  sinking    Bush  presidency.  Other
Republicans  talk  openly of  their  plans  for constructive  lives in
opposition.  Dan Quayle says that if  he thought  the party's fortunes
would be better with him off the ticket,  he  would  withdraw.  But do
not expect such an avowal from the top of the ticket.



Newsgroups: alt.politics.bush,alt.fan.dan-quayle