Images of Bush
Gold, Vic
............................................................................................................................................................................ Vic Gold IMAGES OF...
...This was the who that led, or rather misled, Bush's opponents, along with political experts, to underestimate his resilience during the presidential primary campaign of 1980...
...Just as four years later, when the Democratic primary process shaped up as a Mondale runaway, Gary Hart, another candidate of "new ideas," captured the imagination of the political press on the strength of a pitiable second-place showing in Iowa...
...Armstrong, Rumsfeld, Haig, Laxalt, DuPont...
...In the beginning, when his opponent was cast by the media for the role of Madonna of Queens, Ronald Reagan's running mate was automatically slotted for the heavy's role in the campaign...
...others to Baker...
...A second misidentification holds that he is not "populist" enough, but rather: Bush the Eastern Establishmentarian...
...and indeed was created, when Bush faltered, in the media-puffed who of John Anderson, the candidate with "new ideas...
...All this changed in 1984, roughly about the time the presidential election race of that year began to shape up as a rout...
...and a nuclear-mad hawk...
...Class will come to order...
...Again, consider the case of Jimmy Carter, a candidate who pieced together a marketable persona to win election in 1976, but whose lack of a fixed identity, after four years as President, proved politically terminal...
...Last session, you'll recall, we spent the hour discussing the myriad problems facing a modern dark horse candidate.-Our conclusion was that, on the Republican side, Pierre DuPont has made a shrewd move calling himself Pete (though it may cost him the Cajun precincts...
...Ronald Reagan, on the other hand,the press saying those awful things about him...
...That's where the art of political imagery enters the picture or, as it were, the television screen...
...Somewhere, sometime—Michigan, Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida?—there will be a candidate of "new ideas" to challenge him, perhaps some dark horse even now waiting for the media lightning that might pull him out of the "All Others" column...
...Catalog...
...Iowa and New Hampshire, but failed to establish an identity: when voters got a close look, they found—as Gertrude Stein would say if she were a network analyst—there was no who there...
...He had, as they perceived it, committed the unforgivable political sin of switching images, from left to right...
...If the straggler in the double-breasted Italian cut will be good enough to close the door behind him, we'll proceed with our second lesson in Political Imagery 401, an advanced course for Madison Avenue account executives gearing up for the 1988 presidential campaign...
...That upbeat appraisal of Bush was of a kind with most coverage of his 1980 campaign...
...again, in 1968, with Nixon at the head of the Republican ticket and threatening to rout Hubert Humphrey, invidious media comparisons were drawn by the big-feet, between Humphrey's vice presidential choice, Edmund Muskie, and Nixon's "hatchetman," Spiro Agnew...
...All of which leads to the last, but perhaps most determinative reason that George Bush has incurred the wrath of the big-feet, to a degree reminiscent of the media treatment given Ronald Reagan in 1980...
...The lesson here is that in succeeded in projecting a marketable identity to the electorate not because of, but despite, the media...
...It has been said before, but it can't be repeated too often: the six-figure salaries of today's political media superstars depend on creating white hat-black hat drama, reportage that thrives on personality, conflict, and controversy...
...Clearly, with Mondale trailing badly in the 1984 polls, George Bush was due, even under ordinary circumstances, to undergo a radical imagectomy at the hands of the political press...
...a foreign i language on your own...
...Now there's a name to conjure with...
...Geraldine Ferraro's nomination merely compounded his problem...
...I Car (203) 453-9794, or fill out I and send this ad to-Audio-Forum Room 123, On-the-Green Guilford, CT 06437 ^ Name Address Apt...
...He had been a craven bully, and worse: a "blusterer," an "opportunist," a "tub-thumper," and of all things for a Vice President, a "ceaseless cheerleader" for the President...
...some to Kemp...
...as has the convenient compartmentalization of Republicans into eastern liberals (Al D'Amato...
...Flying Grumman torpedo bombers in the Pacific, he went down twice, was rescued (in a manner no less dramatic than "preppy" JFK's) and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross before his discharge...
...an indolent simpleton...
...State Dept...
...For the known candidate, however, the game is called identity...
...This moves us, class, to the next false stereotype of the Vice President, which is: Bush the "Moderate" Republican...
...What happened to Carter was that the media created an image that served him for the short haul, but after a while the candidate's who confounded the electorate...
...a craven opportunist intent on capturing the Republican nomination in 1988, and the presidency, at any cost...
...In 1952 and 1956, unable to scratch the surface of the original Teflon candidate, Dwight Eisenhower, the press focused with a vengeance on his running mate, Richard Nixon...
...To understand this is to understand not only the dynamicsof political imagery in a Supermedia age, but also what George Bush must overcome to win his party's nomination and the election two years from now...
...But the "preppy" label is only one of the pejorative, off-themark images Bush must slip past to win nomination and election in 1988...
...Some elitist...
...Indeed, to the extent that the big-feet are reluctant to admit human error, Ferraro's shortcomings as a candidate were somehow blamed on her opponent...
...DuPont...
...Beyond ideology, the Supermedia of the 1980s view every presidential election in terms of their own commercial needs, thechiefest of which is the need for a con-test...
...while on the Democratic side, all Richard Gephardt has to do to win the 1988 nomination is drop one syllable in his last name, the only question being which syllable...
...III IS=11^^I^^MEME Ilk auDIa•Faaum® offers the best in self-instructional • foreign language courses using audio cassettes — featuring ^ those used to train U.S...
...After his upset victory in Iowa in 1980, he was viewed by the anti-Reagan media as the Republican alternative to the nuclear-mad hawk...
...Here the detractors would slot the Vice President as the product of Wall Street Republicanism, a candidate on the order of Thomas Dewey and Nelson Rockefeller...
...For years, as he went along building his formidable resume—congressman...
...As you see, given the complexities of modern media manipulation, political image-making in the 1980s isn't the simple game it was in a day when presidential nominations were decided in smoke-filled hotel rooms rather than smoke-filled press rooms...
...Again, there is a basis in fact, but only by attainder...
...Republican party chairman...
...Having been originally cast as the heavy in the 1984 vice presidential scenario, Bush would re-main the heavy...
...Call him Pete or call him Pierre, if he does nothing else he's guaranteed to take the elitist load off George's back...
...Nor will Bush be the candidate of the board-room in 1988...
...So it was that when Bush, as Vice President, began espousing Reagan Administration policies as if he meant it, the national political press felt betrayed...
...Aside from the question of whether the man was ever competent to be President, people never quite fathomed whether he was a peanut engineer or a nuclear farmer...
...Overlooking Bush's conservative record as a Texas congressman, his support of Goldwater at the 1964 convention, and his fundamental agreement with Reagan on all but a few issues, the big-feet osmotically felt Bush to be a kindred ideological spirit...
...The special irony here is that, again like Reagan, Bush didn't enjoy the favor of the corporate boardroom fatcats in 1980...
...From the beginning of his political career, he has been depicted by the press as, variously, a programmed ex-movie star...
...He quickly earned name recognition after Vic Gold, the national correspondent of Washingtonian magazine, served as senior advisor and speechwriter to George Bush during the presidential campaigns of 1980 and 1984...
...But more: Before Yale, Amiable George went to a prep school, Phillips Andover, which he left on the day of his graduation in January, 1942, to enlist as the Navy's youngest fighter pilot...
...By current entrailreading, they're divided in their sympathies, some going to Dole...
...Later, when Ferraro's image became tarnished, Bush's problem with the press, instead of improving, deteriorated...
...What had happened to change the media's perception of the man in four short years...
...Stop gaping, I told you this was an advanced course...
...and western conservatives (Bob Pack-wood...
...Consider the case of Gary Hart in 1984...
...If there had been no George Bush to challenge Ronald Reagan in 1980, one would have been created...
...others to Bush...
...The description relates to style, and like the charge that Reagan is merely an ex-movie star, has its basis in fact...
...For an unknown presidential hopeful today, the name-of-the-game is name how to become recognized, so that when Gallup and Harris take their samplings, the candidate doesn't end up in the "All Others" column...
...To be sure, as students of vice presidential imagery know, this wasn't The question, class, is who precisely the first time that the number two spot on a national ticket had drawn the attention of what are known on the trail as the big-feet political reporters and columnists...
...envoy to Peking...
...Who is George Bush...
...In this case, the motive of those denigrating the Bush image has to do with what he is rather than what he isn't, namely: Bush the Front-runner...
...It was obviously Bush's fault...
...Only an unprincipled tub-thumper could do such a thing...
...is George Bush and why, suddenly, is 16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1986 I the heat of a campaign, the media have neither the time nor the inclination to shift imagery...
...1 more...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1986 17...
...The political reality is that the old geographical division of Republican politics into Eastern Establishment and western "populist" camps has dissolved...
...Understand, who in this context refers to the candidate's identity in the metaphysical sense...
...Like Ronald Reagan, he has been stigmatized over the years with a number of one-dimensional, media-imposed identities, beginning with: George the Amiable Preppy...
...which is to say, while people may recognize the name and face, they don't necessarily know who the candidate is...
...director of the CIA—Bush enjoyed a generally favorable press and a positive image...
...Vic Gold IMAGES OF BUSH The price of fame and front-running in a Supermedia age...
...personnel in Spanish, ^ French, German, Portuguese, , Japanese, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Learn i Italian, and ^ City State/Zip 1 I am particularly interested in (check choice): ^ ^ Spanish ^ French ^ German ^ Polish ^ Greek ^ Russian ^ Vietnamese ^ Bulgarian ^ Turkish Hausa `^ Other , Bush as a preppy, in the sense that he attended an Ivy League school (Yale)—as did Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard), Robert Taft (Harvard), John F. Kennedy (Harvard), and Chicago Bear defensive back Gary Fencik (Yale...
...Four years before, during Bush's unsuccessful race for the Republican presidential nomination, Newsweek magazine (author of the tub-thumping, cheerleading charge) had found the candidate's sole shortcoming to be that "he has to show that his fundamental decency is accompanied by enough toughness to be President...
...Their candidate that year was John Connally (who was, incidentally, also the candidate of one of Bush's most vociferous "populist" critics, Richard Viguerie...
...ambassador...
...The ability of Reagan to slip the stigma of these media-imposed identities—except among Tip O'Neill fans, Phil Donahue audiences, and readers of Mother Jones—bears directly on the 1988 campaign and the image problem facing his Vice President, the presumptive front-runner for the Republican nomination for President, George Bush...
...Be assured, class, even if George Bush, like Ronald Reagan, is able to slip the false identities the media would impose on him—preppy, "moderate," Eastern Establishmentarian—he'll have his share of image problems heading into 1987 and beyond...
...So who will it be...
...Did Gerry perform below expectations during the vice presidential debate in Philadelphia...
...This, despite the pointed assessment made by John Anderson during the primaries, that George Bush was simply "Ronald Reagan in a Brooks Brothers suit...
...Senator for Connecticut in the 1950s, was indeed a member of a Wall Street brokerage house, but son George, at age 24, rejected life on the stock-and-bond fast track to strike out on his own in West Texas...
...Bush is a preppy, in the sense that he attended an Ivy League school (Yale)—as did Theodore Roosevelt (Harvard), Robert 'Daft (Harvard), John F. Kennedy (Harvard), and Chicago Bear defensive back Gary Fencik (Yale...
...As nature abhors a vacuum, the nature of the political media abhors a news vacuum...
...And it is precisely here, on this point of misidentification, that George Bush's problems with the press began...
...Bush's father, who served as U.S...
...and in the absence of a newsworthy contest at the presidential level, all eyes turned to the "race" for the vice presidency...
Vol. 19 • April 1986 • No. 4
