Getting Bushwhacked

Bush to Michigan: DROP DEAD, read the headline over the lead editorial in the Detroit News. Scoffed Connecticut's Republican Senator Lowell Weicker: "This sounded more like the concerns of a Congressman from Houston than the Vice President of the U.S."

The critical comments about George Bush last week were triggered by his clumsy jitterbug over whether plummeting oil prices were endangering America's national security and financial health. The furor followed him throughout his ten-day visit to Saudi Arabia and three other Arab nations. Although his Administration supporters tried to quiet the political uproar, Bush's potential rivals for the 1988 nomination helped keep him on the hot seat. "I certainly think it's a mistake to go to the Saudis for help to firm up the price of oil," New York Congressman Jack Kemp told the Buffalo News. Asked for his comments on Bush's predicament, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole declared, "I don't believe in throwing an anchor to a drowning man."

Actually the problem was not so much what Bush was trying to say (a case can be made that wild drops in oil prices are not an unalloyed good) as the way he bumbled into the issue. It only reinforced the image, devastating to front runners, that he seems prone to political gaffes. At a Washington press conference before leaving on his trip, Bush was asked whether he intended to urge Arab leaders to cut back production to check falling oil prices. "Our answer is market, market, let the market forces work," Bush replied. "We're not going there on a price-setting mission." So far, so good. But when asked virtually the same question again, Bush answered, "I will be saying that stability in the market is a very important thing. And I will be selling very hard in terms of our own domestic interest and thus the interest of our national security. It's essential that we talk about stability and that we not just have a continued free fall."

Pressed on his comments later, Bush did not retreat. He felt "very, very strongly that a strong domestic oil industry is in the vital national-security interest of the U.S.," he reiterated in Bahrain. "Whether it proves to be a detriment politically, I simply couldn't care less."

In its editorial the Detroit News argued that Michigan needed higher oil prices "like a hole in the head," and charged that Bush had emerged as a "traditional Republican Daddy Oilbucks." The flap made Bush look almost like a shill for oil producers (he is a former Texas oilman). Said David Keene, who helped run Bush's 1980 campaign and is now a consultant to Dole's political-action committee: "This is the most serious error he's made since becoming Vice President." At his press conference President Reagan tried to aid his Veep, insisting, "We're saying the same thing." Perhaps. But if so, the brouhaha only underscores how much more adept Ronald Reagan is than George Bush in communicating the same thing.