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If the Democrats were getting feisty, the Republican air war in Georgia was going nuclear. Pat Buchanan wounded George Bush in New Hampshire with ads charging the President with deception on the tax issue. Now, in his next opportunity to take on Bush directly, the right-wing columnist charged Bush with tolerating sexual perversion and anti-Christian values. One Buchanan spot shows gay men cavorting in skin-tight leather, a scene from a film produced with federal assistance from the National Endowment for the Arts. "Even after good people protested," intones the narrator, "Bush continued to fund this kind of art." "Nobody wants a trade war," Buchanan says in another ad, "but we can't be trade wimps."
The Bush campaign launched its first attack ad squarely at Buchanan. In it General P.X. Kelley, retired commandant of the Marine Corps, denounces Buchanan's opposition to the Persian Gulf war. "The last thing we need in the White House is an isolationist like Pat Buchanan," says Kelley. A second ad designed to boost Bush's leadership credentials shows the President sitting awkwardly on the edge of his desk reviewing papers while an announcer recites his agenda.
But Bush's campaign was clearly not generating the excitement that carried him triumphantly through the primaries four years ago. Last week in South Dakota, where Buchanan was not even on the ballot, nearly 1 out of 3 Republican voters spurned the President in favor of an uncommitted slate of delegates. In view of those results and the mediocre grades Bush's spots have been getting, it is not surprising that some White House advisers are talking about the need for a different approach. The pugnacious brilliance of media adviser Roger Ailes and the late Lee Atwater, the authors of Bush's jugular- oriented 1988 ads, is missed by the President. Ironically, their spirit seems to have migrated to Buchanan's campaign and may be influencing some of the Democrats as well.