Shortly thereafter, Texas GOP Senator John Tower sponsored a cutoff of US aid to
Sukarno, which passed, although Yarborough voted to maintain the aid. Bush made this
the occasion for a new onslaught. In a contorted argument, Bush pointed out that
Yarborough's vote for aid to Indonesia had come one day after Sukarno had extended
"the friendly hand of recognition to the communist government of North Viet Nam. This
country, Sukarno's friend, is waging a war in which scarcely a day before Yarborough's
vote, communist bullets slammed through the body of a young helicopter pilot from
Texas. Yarborough voted to give US aid to a country that is friends with a mob that is
killing young Americans and Texans...He votes to aid the friends of a mob that is killing
Texas boys." Yarborough rejected this "wild criticism," and said that the charges
illustrated Bush's lack of comprehension of the "delicate balance of power in foreign
affairs, and his lack of knowledge of the state of affairs in Southeast Asia." Yarborough's
point was that the important thing was to prevent any war between Indonesia and
Malaysia, and that this task must override any desire to humiliate Sukarno.
Bush's remarks in this campaign mesh perfectly with the US buildup for the 1965
military coup d'etat in Indonesia, in which more than 200,000 persons were killed,
primarily during the course of anti- communist massacres carried out by the army with
the encouragement of US advisors.
In economic policy, Bush's starting point was always "unbridled free enterprise," as he
stressed in a statement on unemployment on March 16: "Only unbridled free enterprise
can cure unemployment. But, I don't believe the federal government has given the private
sector of our economy a genuine opportunity to relieve this unemployment. For example,
the [Johnson war on poverty program] contains a new version of the CCC, a Domestic
Peace Corps, and various and sundry half-baked pies in the sky." Bush's printed
campaign literature stated under the heading of "federal economy" that "the free
enterprise system must be unfettered. A strong economy means jobs, opportunity, and
prosperity. A controlled economy means loss of freedom and bureaucratic bungling." On
April 21 Bush told the voters: "We must begin a phase of re- emphasizing the private
sector of our economy, instead of the public sector."
By April 15, Bush had been informed that there were some 33 million Americans living
in poverty, to which he replied: "I cannot see how draping a socialistic medi-care
program around the sagging neck of our social security program will be a blow to
poverty. And I can see only one answer to [the problem of poverty]: Let us turn our free
enterprise system loose from government control." Otherwise, Bush held it "the
responsibility of the local government first to assume the burden of relieving poverty
wherever its exists, and I know of many communities that are more than capable of
working with this problem."
Bush's approach to farm policy was along similar lines, combining the rhetoric of Adam
Smith with intransigent defense of the food cartels. his campaign brochure he opined that
"Agriculture...must be restored to a free market economy, subject to the basic laws of
supply and demand." On April 9 in Waco, Bush assailed the Wheat-Cotton subsidy bill
which had just received the approval of the House. "If I am elected to the Senate," said