who come up here." "He didn't want us to debate. He can't provide leadership for the Republican
Party with that attitude," Dole kept repeating.
Film footage of Reagan grabbing the microphone while Bush stewed in his temper tantrum was all
over local and network television for the next 48 hours. It was the epiphany of a scoundrel.
Now the Bush damage control apparatus went into that mode it finds so congenial: lying. A radiocommercial was prepared under orders from James Baker for New Hampshire stations: here an
announcer, not Bush, intoned that "at no time did George Bush object to a full candidate forum.
This accusation by the other candidates is without foundation whatsoever."
Walter Cronkiprogram: "I wanted to do what I agreed to do," said the whine. "I wanted to debate with Ronaldte heard a whining voice from Houston Texas as he interviewed Bush on his new (^)
Reagan."
Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post caught something of the moment: "It was Bush's own
personal response to the controversy that destroyed him. The self-portrait of George Bush drawnthese last few days before the balloting was singularly unattractive. Bush came over as a petulant (^)
politician, lacking grace and dignity, and complaining peevishly about being 'sandbagged' and
'ambushed' by all the other nasty politicians. He resembled nothing more than a spoiled child whose
toy has been taken away." That was the talk of New Hampshire through the primary.
Bush's handlers were resigned; some of them knew it was all over. "What can I say? He choked up,"
said one. "George does not have a sense of theater," noted another.
The New Hampshire primary was a debacle for Bush. Reagan won 50% of the votes to George's
23%, with 13% for Baker and 10% for Anderson. Big Mo had proven to be fickle. [fn 23]
As for the old curmudgeon William Loeb, he was dead with two years.
Bush played out the string through the primaries, but he won only four states (Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Michigan) plus Puerto Rico. Reagan took 29. Ewhere the Bushmen outspent Reagan by a colossal margin, Reagan managed to garner moreven in Pennsylvania,
delegates even though Bush got more votes.
Sometime during the spring of 1980, Bush began attacking Reagan for his "supply-side" economic
policies. Bush may have thought he still had a chance to win the nomination, but in any case hecoined the phrase "voodoo economics." Bush later claimed that the idea had come from his British-
born press secretary, Peter Teeley. Later, when the time came to ingratiate himself with Reagan's
following, Bush claimed that he had never used the offending term. But, in a speech made at
Carnegie-Mellon University on April 10, 1980, he attacked Reagan for "a voodoo economic
policy." He compared Reagan's approach to something which former Governor Jerry BrowCalifornia, "Governor Moonbeam," might have concocted. n of
Bush was able to keep going after New Hampshire because Mosbacher's machinations had given
him a post-New Hampshire war chest of $3 million. The Reagan camp had spent two thirds of their
legal total expenditure of $18 mit meant that in more than a dozen primaries, Reagan could afford no tillion before the primaries had begun. This had proven effective, butelevision purchases at all.
This allowed Bush to move in and smother Reagan under a cascade of greenbacks in a few states,
even though Reagan was on his way to the nomination. That was the story in Pennsylvania and
Michigan. The important thing for Bush now was to outlast the other candidates and to build his
credentials for the vice presidency, since that was what he was now running for.