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Late last week, Bush pledged to get more specific and more aggressive. "I will be sharpening the differences between Ronald Reagan and myself," he said, and he called on the press, reasonably enough, to demand exactitude from Reagan too. Asked Bush: "What is the date Governor Reagan has in mind when the Federal Government is going to have a balanced budget?" But some members of his staff wondered if Bush could make that approach work. Said one: "He has no sense of the jugular, and there is no use trying to make him into something he is not.
He's a nice clean guy. He's the eagle." Asked another aide: "And the eagle has no talons?"
If Bush cannot recover, the logical candidate to stop Reagan would be Howard Baker. He has impressive credentials as a moderate conservative who speaks smoothly and sensibly, and has considerable experience in Washington (he has been a Senator since 1967). But he is suffering severely from a late start and showing little if any talent for campaign organizing. John Anderson's proud independence and stubborn insistence on advocating unpleasant proposals—he hammers away on the need for a 500-per-gal. gasoline tax to reduce energy consumption—have won much favorable media attention and a core of devoted followers. But the core remains small. John Connally's smooth wheeler-dealer conservatism has excited corporate executives but not the electorate; he has been reduced to staking everything on a strong showing in the primary in South Carolina, and even there he is running badly in the polls (8.8% in the latest one).
The real race, however, is just beginning. Some 60 of the eventual 1,994 delegates to the Detroit convention have so far been chosen; Reagan and Bush are tied with 22 each. During the next two weeks, Reagan has a chance to increase his lead and even possibly to knock one or two rivals out of contention—especially Connally, if he runs poorly in South Carolina, where he is staging a $1 million blitz. On the other hand, Bush has an opportunity to solidify his standing as Reagan's chief rival, and he would not have to win in the Southern primaries to do so but merely finish close to Reagan.
Reagan has one intangible asset in the South: he campaigns better there than in the Northeast. He gestures more freely, ipeaks more vigorously, even looks younger. One reason may be the weather. Like many another Southern Californian, Reagan is far more at ease when he can strip off his suit jacket, as he did two weeks ago on the sun-drenched campus of Palm Beach Junior College in Florida. Cried Reagan: "It is time to start a crash military buildup, to make us so strong that no one will ever again raise a hand against the U.S." The students cheered.