Chapter –IX

Bush Challenges Yarborough for the Senate

Bush's unsuccessful attempt in 1964 to unseat Texas Democratic Senator Ralph
Yarborough is a matter of fundamental interest to anyone seeking to probe the
wellsprings of Bush's actual political thinking. In a society which knows nothing of its
own recent history, the events of a quarter century ago might be classed as remote and
irrelevant. But as we review the profile of the Bush Senate campaign of 1964, what we
see coming alive is the characteristic mentality that rules the Oval Office today. The main
traits are all there: the overriding obession with the race issue, exemplified in Bush's
bitter rejection of the civil rights bill before the Congress during those months; the
genocidal bluster in foreign affairs, with proposals for nuclear bombardment of Vietnam,
an invasion of Cuba, and a rejection of negotiations for the return of the Panama Canal;
the autonomic reflex for union-busting expressed in the rhetoric of "right to work"; the
paean to free enterprise at the expense of farmers and the disadvantaged, with all of this
packaged in a slick, demagogic television and advertising effort.

During this Senate race, Bush assumed the coloration of a Goldwater Republican. It
remains highly significant that Bush began his public political career in the ideological
guise of a southern Republican, specifically in Texas. The Republican Party in Texas had
been in total eclipse since the time of Reconstruction, with the state GOPers complaining
that they were living in a one-party state. During the 1950's, the personal popularity of
Eisenhower and the increasing visibility of ultra-left Wall Street investment bankers in
the circle of Adlai Stevenson's backers began to offer the Texas Republicans some
openings. In 1952 and 1956, Texas Democratic Governor Allan Shivers supported
Eisenhower, who carried Texas with a substantial majority both times. In 1960, Texas
had given its electoral votes to Kennedy, although the margin of Democratic victory was
so thin as to constitute an embarrassment to Kennedy's running mate, Texas Senator and
Democratic Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson. But Nixon had carried the city of
Houston and Harris County, which turned out to be the largest metropolitan area to go for
the Nixon-Lodge ticket that year. In 1960, Texas Republicans scored their greatest
success in a century by elected John Tower to the US Senate on a platform that was a
harbinger of the Goldwater movement. Tower was once asked if there was a single
domestic legislative program of John F. Kennedy that he could support, and his answer
was that he could not think of a single one. This is the same Tower who would join with
Edmund Muskie and Brent Scowcroft in early 1987 to concoct the absurd whitewash of
the Iran- contra affair that would exonerate Bush and attribute the central responsibility to
White House chief of Staff Don Regan, forcing his ouster. This was the same Tower