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Colleagues at the Republican National Committee remember that Chairman Bush usually made decisions only after carefully totting up the pluses and minuses. His view of the vice presidency is comparably cautious. In an Administration whose President is guided to an almost unprecedented degree by staff consensus, Bush -- its most experienced member -- has pulled back from the vital give-and-take of policy preparation. His chief mechanism for influencing policy is a private relationship with Reagan. At the White House, associates remember the Vice President's clear discomfort with proposals aimed at rolling back civil rights legislation. After numerous meetings in the Oval Office, a few aides cornered Bush and urged him to confront Reagan. The Vice President was reluctant. Reagan, he said, had already made up his mind. In their sessions alone, Bush takes pains not to make Reagan uncomfortable. The President grumbles about overzealous advisers but never about Bush. The Vice President does not push.
The explanation for Bush's approach is simple. He aches to be President, and to win that prize must endure certain deferential, hand-dirtying things. Thus he had to neutralize conservatives, who for years have scorned him. His courtship of Religious Leader Jerry Falwell last year reeked of ambition. Bush addressed Falwell's followers and heaped extravagant praise on the preacher. A month earlier he accepted an invitation to speak at a dinner honoring New Hampshire's right-wing publisher, the late William Loeb. For years Loeb had abused Bush in print, labeling him an incompetent hypocrite and, even worse, a wimp. So ingratiating were the Vice President's remarks about Loeb that some of Bush's family members argued with one another about his showing up.
Bush has long been a dangerously awkward speaker. He often sets off in one direction at the beginning of a sentence and wanders off in another before it ends. Metaphors do not track. Phrases with a tinny ring -- "I really went ape" or "I was in deep doo-doo" -- pour out of him involuntarily. Excitable on his feet, a man who lunges for political bait, the Vice President is a high risk in debates.
Late last year, as he carefully navigated through the Iran uproar, the Vice President showed an uncharacteristic little blip of daring. His four-week silence after the scandal surfaced had drawn considerable sneering. Even Nancy Reagan privately began running him down. She told friends that Bush's lack of public support for her husband was inexcusable, a remarkable reaction considering the Vice President's long compliant service. Bush and his wife have tirelessly courted the Reagans, routinely dispatching approving notes after public appearances by the President or his wife. Reagan himself held no such dark feelings about Bush and told him so.
Frustrated by Reagan's immobility, the Vice President finally delivered a speech declaring bluntly what the battered President would not: the Administration had made serious mistakes. Afterward, congratulations poured in from Bush supporters around the country. At Hobe Sound, Fla., the Vice President's mother and sister had watched in approval. This time, they agreed, George did not sound like a cheerleader.