accompaniment of applause and music Goodman hoped would sound "presidential." The inevitable
footage of Bush getting fished out of the drink off Chichi Jima shootdown was also aired.
Network camera crews were offered repeated chances to film Bush while he was jogging. This was
an oblique way of pointing out that Reagan would be 70 years old by the begining of the primary
season. "I'm up for the 1980's," was a favorite Bush quote for interviews. There were no attacks on
Reagan; indeed Bush was seeking to come across as a moderate conservative, in order first to fendoff the challenge of Sen. Howard Baker, who was also running, and to gain on Reagan.
In a rather slavish imitation of the Carter victory scenario, Bush also chose to imitate what had been
called Carter's "fuzziness," or unwillingness to say anything of substance about issues. Bush was the
unabashed demagogue, telling Diane Sawyer of CBS"if they can show me how it will get me more votes someplace, I'll be glad to do it." when he would finally talk about the issues:
Bush talked vaguely about tax cuts to spur business and investment; he was unhappy about the
"decline in America's stature overseas" due to Carter; he was against excessive government
regulation. Military aggression overseas has never been far below the surface of Bush's psyche; in1979 he talked about the need to overcome the post-Vietnam guilt syndrome. He was, he
proclaimed, "sick and tired of hearing people apologize for America." Bush was striving to appear
as similar to Reagan, but more moderate in packaging, younger and more dynamic, and above all, a
Winner.
But in the midst of Bush's summer, 1979 preparations for his presidential bid, there was one very
serious moment of preparation that addressed the some real issues, albeit in a way virtually invisible
from the campaign trail. This was a conference Bush attended at the Jonathan Institute in Jerusalem
on July 2-5. Instead of mugging for the television cameras while eating hotdogs on the Fourth of
July at a picnic in Iowa or New Hampshire, Bush journeyed to Israel for what was billed as theJerusalem Conference on International Terrorism.
The Jonathan Institute had been founded earlier the same year by Benjamin Netanyahu, a young
crazy of the Likud block, in memory of his brother Jonathan, who had been killed during the Israeli
raid on Entebbe in 1976. Tonly be defined as a branch of the Israeli government. The committee sponsoring this conference onhe Jonathan Institute was a semi-covert propaganda operation and could (^)
terrorism was headed up by Prime Minister Menachem Begin, followed by Moshe Dayan and many
other prominent Israeli politicians and generals.
The US delegation to the conference was divided according to partisan lines, but was generallyunited by sympathy for the ideas and outlook of the Bush-Cherne Team B. The Democratic
delegation was led by the late Senator Henry Jackson of Washington. This group included civil
rights leader Bayard Rustin, plus Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter of Commentary Magazine,
two of the most militant and influential Zionist neoconservatives. Ben Wattenberg of the American
Enterprise Institute was also on hand. Although the group tsupposedly Democrats, most of them would support Reagan-Bush in the November, 1980 ehat arrived with Scoop Jackson werelection.
Then there was the GOP delegation, which was led by George Bush. Here were Bush activist Ray
Cline, Major General George Keegan, a stalwart supporter of Team B, and Professor Richard Pipes
of Harvard, the leader of Team B. Here were Senator John Danforth of Missouri and Brian Crozier,a "terrorism expert." Pseudo-intellectual columnist George Will ("Will the Shill") was also on hand, (^)
as was Rome-based journalist Claire Sterling, who had been active in covering up the role of Henry
Kissinger in the 1978 assassination of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, and who would later be
blind to indications of an Anglo-American role in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.