Word: bushed
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...week into the race, it's clear what kind of choice George W. Bush wants to offer America: Reagan vs. Bush. But this time Bush will play Reagan and Gore will play Bush. Get it? George W. hopes to sketch this contest (he's already thinking general election) as the sunny, straight-talkin', conservative cowboy from out West against the tense, aloof, out-of-touch elitist from back East. In other words, he's trying to assume the role perfected in 1980 by Ronald Reagan (but without all that pesky ideology) while casting Al Gore as the pencil-neck child...
...moment had been a political gift. House Republicans last week let him keep it. Gore can show his best outraged face at congressional inaction, but privately strategists in his camp are ecstatic. They hope that Gore-the-gun-control-crusader will bore into the lead of front runner Bush, whom they view as vulnerable because he opposes mandatory child-safety locks on guns and supports the right of Texans to carry a concealed weapon. Polls show that the massacre at Columbine High School has increased the size of the majority of Americans who favor gun control. Republican women in particular...
Even more delicious, Gore allies point out, was that Bush gave the Vice President a new opening. At almost the same time as Friday's failed House effort, the Governor signed into law a bill that requires a locality to get approval from the state legislature or attorney general before suing a gun manufacturer. Opponents of the law call it the National Rifle Association Protection Act. Bush supporters argue that the act does not interfere with legitimate gun lawsuits but rather curbs trivial legal action. "If Vice President Gore wants to take the side of frivolous lawsuits, we'll take...
Gore never mentioned Bush's name but mocked the politics of "eloquent words" and "pretty rhetoric." To play up the contrast, he left behind everywhere a blizzard of policy proposals--delving into the fine print of the tax code to propose new breaks for research, and advocating expansion of the family-leave law to cover parent-teacher conferences. But all the frolicking with Tipper and the five-point plans could not match the week's unscripted windfall from the House floor. This week Republicans handed Gore a break, but for his campaign to succeed, he may have to figure...
...idea. But young Bush (no stranger to great schools) has a way to go before he assumes Reagan's mantle. He looks the part, but he hasn't displayed anything like Reagan's ability to deflect attacks or deliver warm words and one-liners to a camera. (He may need those gifts because his grasp of world issues seems at times Reaganesque.) Nor does Bush have Reagan's base of true believers, since he hasn't been espousing a consistent ideology for 20 years. Or even 10. "Reagan had earned his spurs by 1980," says his former campaign manager, John...