Why did Bush hold back? He kept his cool even after Sen. John McCain, who is emerging as his one credible challenger, jumped at the chance to denounce Buchanan for being soft on Nazism. Bush, it turns out, was paying attention to simple mathematics, say his aides. If Buchanan runs as a third-party candidate in 2000, he could siphon off 5 percent or so of the vote from the Republican nominee. Better to try to keep him inside the party. But the real root of Bush’s hesitation may have less to do with cold political calculation–Buchanan, after all, will probably jump ship anyway–than it does with the Bush family’s long and complicated relationship with the right wing.
When Bush finally did vent some anger last week, the outburst was telling. Buchanan has been quietly encouraged to seek the nomination of the Reform Party by Texas billionaire Ross Perot, who created the third party as a platform for his own 1996 presidential bid. In response to a reporter’s question at a press conference in California, Bush suggested that Buchanan and Perot were in league to wage a “personal vendetta” against the Bush family. With evident bitterness in his voice, he accused Buchanan and Perot of inflicting a “death of a thousand cuts” on his father in the 1992 campaign.
To accommodate the right wing of the Republican Party–or denounce it? That question has long bedeviled the Bushes. In 1964 George Bush Sr. was drubbed in his first election campaign, for the U.S. Senate from Texas. Bush blamed the extremism within the GOP ranks for the Democratic landslide. After the election he wrote former vice president Richard Nixon, griping that in Texas, Barry Goldwater’s campaign “got taken over by a bunch of ’nuts’.” Bush declared that the first job of the GOP in Texas was “to get rid of some of the people… who through their overly dedicated conservatism are going always to keep the Party small.”
As a congressman in the late ’60s, Bush was a moderate, promoting reproductive rights with such conviction that his colleagues nicknamed him “Rubbers.” But when Ronald Reagan chose him as his running mate in 1980, Bush flip-flopped on abortion. Eying the presidency in 1988, Bush reached out to the right. Columnist George Will wrote acidly, “The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny ‘Arf’–the sound of a lapdog.”
The divide between Bush and the right was as much social as political. To the conservative populists in the South and West, he represented the country-club wing of the party. In 1992 Buchanan ran a guerrilla campaign against President Bush in the New Hampshire primary, calling him “King George.” In the general election, Perot played to the same class and regional resentments against Bush. Although Perot probably drew equally from Republican and Democratic voters, the Bush family always blamed Perot for costing President Bush the White House.
George W. inherited his parents’ animus toward Perot, especially when the Texas tycoon endorsed Bush’s opponent, Ann Richards, in the last week of the 1994 governor’s race in Texas. W has done better than his father at anesthetizing the right. Last week his speech to the Christian Coalition managed to win plaudits without pandering on hot-button issues like abortion or school prayer. More Texas than Yale, W is in some ways more comfortable with grass-roots conservatives than his father was. But with his big silver belt buckle and cowboy boots, he is also quicker to shoot from the hip. Last week the GOP front runner let a hint of macho edge aside his scripted caution. He wanted Buchanan to stay in the GOP, he told reporters, so he could “beat him bad” in the primaries. The grudge match goes on.
