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Soon he had some statistics to support that argument, at least for the moment. Polls as recent as last month showed him behind or at best even with possible Democratic opponents. Furthermore, Dole then appeared more electable than Bush in such pairings. Last week the publicity whoosh of victory propelled Bush to the top of surveys matching him against leading Democrats. In a TIME poll conducted by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman last Thursday, Bush ran slightly ahead of Democratic Front Runner Michael Dukakis (42% to 37%), while Dole was behind (38% to 44%).
Yet even as he bathed in a gusher of success sweeter than any he enjoyed 30 years ago in the oil business, George Herbert Walker Bush showed some of the symptoms of doubt and caution that festoon his political record. On primary night and the morning after, he avoided the ritual TV interviews. No sense in risking a gaffe, his advisers reasoned. In the privacy of his Houstonian Hotel suite, Bush impressed one aide, Peter Teeley, as oddly subdued. Bush seemed burdened with the realization that the nomination was at hand, that a new and even more critical phase was imminent. Now he must address a broader audience with a script about his plans for the future, rather than recite his resume and his fealty to a President already receding into history.
Over many months Bush and his aides displayed a high order of organizational skill and a talent for damage limitation in the face of adversity. Whether seared by Iran-contra or jarred by defeats in Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota, Bush maintained his strategy. He never let the Reagan mantle slip from his trim frame, never strayed far from the base camp of Reagan policy and Reagan philosophy. When he did utter some minor heresy, it was a denial rather than an assertion. "I want to add here," he said almost parenthetically in one major speech, "that I do not hate government. I'm proud of my long experience in government." That was supposed to be a sign that he was inching toward the future rather than wallowing in the past. But the line disappeared from subsequent speeches. Instead, over and over, Bush hailed the Chief. Occasionally some restless adviser, not to mention platoons of outside critics, urged Bush to stake out territory of his own.
This he resisted, except in token ways, as when he asserted his desire to be the "education President," a nice phrase that remains a flesh-free bone in his skeletal rhetoric. To go much further would be to flaunt the reality that, unlike Reagan, Bush at heart is a pragmatist rather than an ideologue, a manager rather than an innovator. In retrospect, Bush's caution was just right for the orthodox Republican primary electorate in most states, and particularly in the South, where Reagan's popularity rating in the party remains above 80%. But presidential campaigns are about change and the future, themes that Bush has yet to discover.