Brutal Campaign: How the 1988 Election Set the Stage for Twenty-First-Century American Politics by Robert L. Fleegler

Author:Robert L. Fleegler
Format: epub

George H. W. Bush delivers his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in New Orleans. (George H. W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum)

Like Dukakis, Bush had risen to the occasion and met the moment in his acceptance speech. “That’s a good speech,” commented Jennings, and Brinkley agreed, observing, “It was good. It’s a George Bush I haven’t seen before.” Hume said the address introduced the delegates and the country to the George Bush his friends always talked about.¹⁵⁸ While sharply criticizing the Quayle pick, longtime New York Times reporter James Reston asserted, “The Vice President made the best speech of his long and distinguished career.” “Never before had he [Bush] looked or sounded so Presidential,” the journalist added.¹⁵⁹

Bush was pleased as well, writing the following in his diary: “The press was building it [the acceptance speech] up and up and up—had to do this, had to do that—and it was the biggest moment of my life, which it was; and almost setting expectations so high, that they couldn’t be matched and, yet, they were.” He also admitted, “Immediately after the speech, I knew it was good. . . . At conventions you can’t tell because of the mandatory ‘spontaneous’ demonstration; but there was something different, and there was something special about it all, and I felt that it had worked.”¹⁶⁰

Though he was happy with his speech and stood behind Quayle publicly, Bush might have had second thoughts regarding his choice. According to historian Herbert Parmet, he wrote in his diary on August 21, “It was my decision, and I blew it, but I’m not about to say that I blew it.”¹⁶¹ When Parmet’s book was released in 1997, a Bush spokesman suggested the entry had been taken out of context.¹⁶² Interpreting his old friend’s words, Baker said, “The way it was done, we did blow it. We did blow it. And I bet that’s what President Bush meant. I think that’s what he meant.”¹⁶³ In parts of a diary entry from the same day that he included in a volume published in 1999, Bush wrote, “Of course, we’re plagued by the Quayle/National Guard Service and they’ve been pounding the poor guy. . . . I think the press understands that there has been a feeding frenzy over Quayle, but they haven’t proved he did anything wrong. A few demonstrators are cropping up yelling about Quayle being a draft dodger, but there is going to be an awful lot of people out there that understand that the Guard is honorable; that he played by the rules; and that’s the point.”¹⁶⁴

Regardless, it wasn’t immediately clear whether the controversy hurt Quayle and the ticket in the minds of the voters. Indeed, “three-fourths of voters interviewed Thursday night [the last night of the convention] (74%) said they did not have a less favorable opinion of Quayle ‘because he chose to serve in the National Guard during the Vietnam War,’ ” according to George and Alec Gallup. Only 13 percent of respondents had a less favorable opinion of the Indiana senator.

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