George Is Coming On Strong

With charm and zeal, Bush gains the GOP's front four

No one was ever really against him, but few people were really for George Bush when he started his campaign for the Republican nomination. Now, after doing better than expected in trial runs in Maine and Florida, he is attracting increasing attention. TIME National Political Correspondent John Stacks traveled to Iowa with the long shot. His report:

The candidate's small, chartered airplane taxis to the tiny terminal building in Spencer, Iowa, (pop. 12,000). George Bush, former CIA director, former envoy to Peking, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, former Ambassador to the U.N. and former Congressman from Houston, unfolds himself from his seat and steps down onto the tarmac. No cheering throngs greet him. Unperturbed, he shakes hands with his few supporters. Then Bush climbs into a large black Cadillac owned by Lee Holt, Spencer's premier car dealer. Holt and Bush cruise off into the failing light, down arrow-straight roads, past cornfields dusted with the season's first snow.

This is the loneliness of the long-shot candidacy. George Bush, 55, has lived this life for nearly two years, pursuing the presidency of the United States. He has traveled nearly half a million miles in 38 states, an effort that has brought him no higher than fourth in nationwide public opinion polls among Republicans. But in the past few weeks George Herbert Walker Bush has managed to shorten the odds considerably. The Republican field of ten candidates has plainly divided into the big four and the minor six. Bush is firmly part of that top rank, along with Ronald Reagan, still the front runner, John Connally and Howard Baker.

Bush has emerged as the main challenger to Reagan in what will be the first serious clash of the long preconvention struggle: on Jan. 21 Iowa will hold caucuses in 2,531 precincts, the initial step in the process by which the states' Republicans will choose their delegates. Bush has even managed to beat Reagan in some straw votes. Says Connally Iowa Chairman David Readinger: "I think Bush has a chance to win it here."

Beginning early this year, Bush began to put together an Iowa organization that now includes ten full-time employees and will spend nearly $300,000. He already has a coordinator in place in 68 of the 99 counties. To mobilize his organization, Bush has crisscrossed Iowa eleven times this year, spending 17 days in the state. Reagan, on the other hand, has spent about ten hours there.

In his speeches, Bush takes standard conservative positions. He wants to limit federal spending and to reduce regulations, while cutting taxes in ways to increase investment. He favors decontrol of energy prices and wants a windfall profits tax on the oil companies with a "plow-back" provision to encourage research and exploration. In foreign affairs, Bush says he would take strong stands against what he calls the Soviet Union's "very aggressive quest for hegemony."

On his latest foray into Iowa, Bush's strengths and weaknesses were on display. In the town of Spencer, Bush, the graduate of Andover and Yale, moves easily among several score Republicans assembled at a modest country club fund raiser. The tall, poised figure in the Brooks Brothers suit sips beer out of a pilsner glass and chats easily. In a short speech he asserts his optimism about the results in the coming caucuses. But the New England aristocrat (his father was a wealthy businessman and U.S. Senator from Connecticut) turned Texas oilman seemed patronizing when discussing that heritage. Said Bush: "They say I'm a patrician. I don't even know what the word means. I'll have to look it up." He also looks down on Jimmy Carter: "It's a shame for the presidency to have that little guy in there. He's got no class. And I don't mean in a social sense."

Early the next morning an overflow crowd jams a $125-a-plate breakfast in Omaha, the staging point for a swing through western Iowa. It is only 8:30, but Bush, once a dud on the stump, is wound up. The veins on his neck are standing out and his eyes are flashing as he condemns the quality of Jimmy Carter's aides.

Campaign Manager David Keene is understandably pleased by Bush's new vigor as a speaker. Explains he: "At the beginning he was not in stride. Now he's saying what he thinks. It used to be that two out of ten of his speeches were good. Now it's seven out of ten."

Bush has employed his year of grassroots campaigning to take supporters in Iowa from the camps of Reagan and Connally. He actually seems to enjoy the grind, maintaining a good humor, bantering easily with aides and joking about some of the absurdities in politics. Describing his carefully balanced position on abortion (he is against a constitutional amendment to prohibit it but also opposes spending federal money on it), he mockingly calls the stance "heroic."

At times Bush seems surprised at the support he has been getting. When he finished third to Reagan and Connally at an unofficial Florida "convention" (see following story), Bush did not believe an aide reporting the results. In his confusion, the candidate could not find his glasses so that he could read the tallies himself. "Count 'em again," he said. "Count 'em again."

However he does in Iowa, Bush still must prove he is more popular in his party than the other Reagan challengers and then must prove himself able to take on Reagan himself. Manager Keene is right in saying: "He is well positioned within the party to take advantage of anyone's slipups. His cultural background makes him acceptable to the moderates and the Establishment and his politics are basically conservative." The candidate himself is looking ahead. Says Bush:

"After doing well in Iowa, we're going to blow some of those bigger shots out of the water."

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