idea of a "Union of the English-Speaking Peoples." Bush was asked later in his campaign by a
reporter to elaborate on this. Bush stated at that time that "the British are the best friend Americahas in the world today. I believe we can benefit greatly from much close collaboration in the
economic, military, and political spheres. Sure I am an Anglophile. We should all be. Britain has
never done anything bad to the United States." [fn 14]
Jules Witcover and Jack Germond, two experienced observers of presidential campaigns, observedthat Bush's was the first campaign in history to have peaked before it ever started.
During the summer of 1979, Bush grappled with what has since been called "the Vision Thing."
What could he tell the voters when he was asked why he wanted to be president? During that
summer Bush invited experts on various areas of policy to come to Kennebunkportthe benefit of their views. Bush met with these experts from business, academia, and gove and give himrnment in (^)
seminars three days a week from 9 to 5 over a period of six weeks. Many were invited to the family
house at Walker's Point for lunch. In the evenings there were barbecues and cocktails on the ocean
front.
It is an indication of the extraordinary intellectual aridity of George Bush that these blab sessions
produced almost no identifiable policy ideas for Bush's 1980 campaign. Bush had wanted to avoid
the fate of Ted Kennedy had been widely ridiculed when he had proven unable to respond to the
question of why he wanted to be president. But Bush never developed an answer to this question
either.
Or, more precisely, it was the imperative to avoid any identifiable idea content that emerged as
Bush's strategy. For, just as much as Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, George Bush was one of the
pioneers of the hollow, demagogic, television-based campaign style that had become dominant
during the 1980's, greasing the skids to political atrophy and national decline.
Together with James Baker III, always the idea man of the Bush-Baker combo, the Bush campaign
studied Jimmy Carter's success story of 1980. They knew they were starting with a "George Who?",
virtually unknown to most voters. First of all, Bush would ape the Carter strategy of showing up in
Iowa and New Hampshire early and offer, attempting to ingratiate himself with the little people byassiduous cultivation. Bush spent 27 days in Iowa before the caucuses there, and 54 days in New
Hampshire.
During this period, Bush was overheard telling a New York Times reporter that he didn't want to
"resist the Carter analogy." Busdo it with no credentials, I can do it with fantastic credentials," Bush blurted out. He conceded thath readily admitted that he was "an elitist candidate." "If Carter could
the fact that nobody knew anything about his "fantastic credentials" was a little discouraging. "But
they will! They will!"
Thanks to Mosbacher's operation, the Bush campaign would advance on a cushion of mspent $1.3 million for the Illinois primary alone. The biggest item would be media buys- above alloney-- he (^)
television. This time Bush brought in Baltimore media expert Robert Goodman, who designed a
series of television shorts that were described as "fast-moving, newsfilmlike portraits of an
eneregtic, dyanimc Bush creating excitement and moving through crowds, with an upbeat musical
track behind him. Each of the advertisements used a slogan that attempted to capitalize on Bush'sexperience, while hitting Carter's wretched on-the-job performance and Ronald Reagan's
inexperience on the national scene: 'George Bush,' the announcer intoned, 'a President we won't
have to train.'" [fn 15] One of these shorts showed Bush talking about inflation to a group of
approving factory workers. In another, Bush climbed out of a private plane at a small airport,
surrounded by supporters with straw hats and placards and yelled "We're going all the way" to the