Bottoms Up, Geraldine

...He can hardly suggest in public that his captain is awash in ideological currents and has difficulty navigating between fact and agreeable supposition, or that the Chief Executive cannot, with ease, add or subtract, especially when the results do not promise to be heartening...

...Having long since adopted Texas as his home, Bush has moved his political home as well toward the muscular Right...

...Last fall he was positively manic in support of measures that he had mocked four years earlier, hoping, it was generally understood, to counter his reputation as an Ivy League wimp...

...The Vice President can only drift across the world like a shadow, telling the nation that Nicaragua is a fearsome threat, that the budget deficit is manageable without cuts in the military or a tax rise, and delivering condolences to the Politburo on the passing of another of its grand leaders...

...one must thank one's stars if one emerges from it with one's parts intact...

...Can Congress defy the lobbyists' missiles...

...The dismaying thing about Bush is how snugly the job fits him, how enthusiastically he utters whatever is required...

...David Stockman for President...

...And what are the prospects for tax reform...

...With the elections finished, Republicans are permitted to rediscover the Federal deficit...

...If only the President could find the will to do unto the Defense Department what he did to the farmers—or at least to audit its figures...

...He is so loyal that it must by now be difficult for him to remember what it was he believed about any issue before being pressed into the service of his party...

...He cannot, as critics are wont to put it, distance himself from the Administration...

...The man exists today in hopes of becoming President, or at least running for that honor in 1988...

...So Miss Ferraro may take some satisfaction from defeat...

...the lady might just as well have been a man...

...Now Bush has managed to sink from the embarrassments of the campaigner to the pathos of the officeholder...

...It must not be held against her if during the campaign she revealed few qualities to commend her for the highest office in the unlikely eventuality that Walter Mondale should win, or the unhappy one that he should not be able to serve...

...If the nation had to judge Robert Dole by his caustic performance in 1976, what hope would there be for that engaging and adroit gentleman in 1988...

...How many Vice Presidential candidates have displayed such a capacity...

...Is there any weapon, any alphabet, that Reagan can resist...

...We were looking for influential shapers and leaders who represented a choice," says Phil Duesenberry, in the lingo of executive creative directors...

...Others may propose policy and make reputations, others may build a sense of individuality if not character, offer occasional sensible observations, and generally invite the kind of recognition that will serve them in 1988...

...Shrewd observers have taught us that an American is never so innocently employed as when he or she is merely trying to make some money...

...His problem is that regardless of his performance, he will be facing politicians who are closer to the hearts of the hard Right, and since he has earned the mistrust of the center, his chances of getting the nomination do not command high odds...

...A striking aspect of the Diet Pepsi commercials is that the entertainers and athletes who have been induced to plug the stuff are bigger stars than the politician...

...At best, being Vice President for eight years is not designed to bolster one's image as a leader...

...Will President Reagan exert on behalf of this welcome idea the kind of effort he roused for the MX...

...Rah, Rah, George Contemplate, if you can bear it, George Bush...

...That gives her a footnote in the history books, along with the shortest and tallest candidates, which is more than most politicians can claim...

...He is the perfect representativeat the funeral of a Soviet boss, which for Americans has to be an exercise in hypocrisy...

...Consider what Johnson had to endure at the hands of the Kennedys, or what Nixon had to take from Eisenhower—and they were the fortunate ones...

...What image would I have found had Miss Ferraro won the office...

...they were men who were too big for their roles...

...A major achievement of the executive creative director of BBDO Advertising has been to pay Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Diahann Carroll, Joe Montana, and Dan Marino enough to lend themselves to the effort...

...Indeed so, andifthechoiceaf-fects soft-drinkers the way it affected voters, Coke should have a sensational year...

...But in contrast to such future competitors as Senator Dole of Kansas or former Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee, the Vice President has no room for maneuver...

...Here is your loyal Vice President...

...Still, nobody can take away from Miss Ferraro the distinction of being the first female maj or party Vice Presidential candidate...

...The Vice President's role has too much in common with that of a court eunuch...

...it liberated him to behave rationally once again...

...With all deference to Teddy Roosevelt, perhaps a constitutional amendment is in order that would forbid the Vice President from ever becoming President, thus freeing him from paralyzing ambition and freeing the nation from the prospect of having such a person in the White House...

...Whether they were fortunate for the nation is something else...

...Peace or war, prosperity or recession, arms agreement or avoidance, balanced budget or enlarged deficit, Bush must say what it is given to him to say...

...In this situation a show of principle may be a winning ticket in years to come...

...No scandal about ripoffs of the Federal Treasury by defense contractors can move this man who is outraged by welfare cheats...

...He is lucky to have lost...

...In 1988, he will have to do some acrobatic tacking, but he has demonstrated a prodigious talent for that...

...The Republicans in Congress, so courageous when it came to taking from the poor for the sake of trimming the budget, have no appetite for taking from the middle class, while the Democrats seem prepared to suck up t o any interest group that marches on Washington...

...Yum, Yum, Ronnie If things continue to go as they have in these first months of the second Reagan Administration, neither party will have much to brag about in 1988...

...Compared to his campaign performance, swallowing all those words he had uttered when he was running against Ronald Reagan for the 1980 Presidential nomination, Miss Ferraro was a fount of candor...

...Yes, there were Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and look what became of them...

...There is no voice there, just an echo...

...Miss Ferraro was wise to accept the Diet Pepsi offer, for the fizz is almost gone and next season she may have to settle for American Express commercials . Anyway, whatever small humiliation she may invite by her new career cannot compare to what she has already experienced—not only in the course of her mortifying efforts to conceal her husband's sharp business practices but by being selected to run for no better reason than her sex and then having that proveoflittlevalueinthe circumstances...

...Although the perquisites of the Vice Presidency are great, he who wishes to be his own man cannot find happiness there...

...The frustrations of Vice Presidents Johnson and Nixon as they went about their servile duties could inspire a certain regard...

...To be fair, what is a Vice President to do...

...The man in the White House, however, is like a dieter who is ready to forgo vegetables but can't pass up hot fudge sundaes...

...After all the high expectations and bold predictions, when the votes came in her presence on the ticket scarcely seemed to matter...

...In fact, the true suffering of a Vice Presidential candidate begins with victory...

...Loyal as they come...

...There is nothing to do between ceremonial visits and dinners and speeches, except grind one's teeth or pick the chicken out of them and pray while the benediction is being offered for tragedy to strike the leader of the free world...

...All right, that may not apply 100 per cent to the lady's husband, but for actors and politicians of a certain rank or need, the television commercial is a harmless outlet, less injurious to the public than, say, appearing in a docudrama or holding office...

...Geraldine Ferraro, more than anybody else, represented choice...

...In 1988 Bush will be the ghost of elections past, rattling the chains forged for him by the Reagan Administration...