The crowd was puzzled; some of them were perhaps driven to try the socialism of Bernie
Sanders over this. The mental disintegration of George Bush went on apace.
Bush's second stop of the day was in Manchester, New Hampshire. Here he was greeted
by his old friend, the Manchester Union Leader, with a front page cartoon of the granite-
faced man in the mountain saying "Read His Lips, Mr. President. Go Home and Take
Your Taxes with You." Here there was no attack on Bush's economics; the candidate he
was supposed to be helping, Rep. Robert C. Smith, had obviously concluded that any film
footage showing him in the same picture with Bush would pose the threat of disaster, so
he had simply stayed in Washington. The congressman's wife was there to tell the
audience that her husband had stayed in Washington for House votes he could not miss;
an apoplectic Bush ferociously chewed on an apple before he rose for perfunctory
remarks.
Bush's third stop was in Waterbury, Connecticut, where the beneficiary of his presence
was Gary Franks, a black Republican whom Bush needed as a fig leaf for his veto of the
civil rights bill. Franks solved the Typhoid Mary problem by barring the news media
from the campaign event, so no sound bites associating him with Bush could be used
against him by his opponent. Later there was a brief photo opportunity with Bush and
Franks together.
Surely Bush had cut a ridiculous figure. But how many Iraqis would die in January,
February and beyond to assuage Bush's humiliations of this day?
Bush's last pre-election campaign trip would eliminate stops in Oregon, Nebraska,
Illinois, and North Carolina, where Republicans teetered on the edge of defeat. Bush was
trying to cut his losses, and he was not alone. During the months before the election,
Bush had spent hours sweating under television lights to tape endorsement commercials
for over 80 GOP candidates. One Congressman, Rep. Alfred A. McCandless of
California, used pieces of Bush's tape in a commercial designed to highlight his
differences with Bush. Many of the other tapes were never used; many of those endorsed
pleaded as an excuse that their fundraising had been ruined by Bush's tax policy, so they
never had the money to put them on the air.
Bush attempted to regroup by seeking new demagogic themes. For those struggling with
economic depression he offered...term limits for members of Congress, in the hands of
the GOP a transparent attempt to flush out Democratic incumbents. Term limitation, said
Bush, was "an idea whose time has come." "America doesn't need a liberal House of
Lords," said Bush in Oklahoma City. "America needs a Republican Congress." The
Democrats "truly believe they deserve to be elected from now until kingdom come," said
Bush in Los Angeles. The response was less than overwhelming. Then Bush tried to
blame the depression on the Democrats. The venue chosen was a $1000 a plate fundraiser
for Sen. Pete Wilson, who wanted to be governor of California. The "strong medicine" of
the defecit package, Bush claimed, "is required because the Democratically controlled
Congress has been on an uncontrolled spending binge for years." In Oklahoma City, he
averred that the Democrats had "choked the economy" and brought the country to the