George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

While all this was going on, Bush was prating about his "momentum" with campaign
statements that focussed exclusively on technicalities rather than offering reasons why
anybody should support Bush. Right after the Iowa victory, here was Bush: "Clearly,
we're going to come out of here with momentum...We appear to have beaten both
Connally and Baker very, very badly. The numbers look substantial. And they are going
to have to get some momentum going, and I'm coming out of here with momentum." A
few weeks later, Bush was still repeating the same gibberish. Bush told Bob Schieffer of
CBS about his advantage for New Hampshire:
What we'll have, you see, is momentum. We will have forward "Big Mo" on our side, as they say
in athletics.
Big Mo?
Yeah, Bush said. "Mo," momentum.
While campaigning, Bush was asked once again about the money he received from
Nixon's 1970 Townhouse slush fund. Bush's stock reply was that his friend Jaworski had
cleared him: "The answer came back, clean, clean, clean," said Bush.
By now the Reagan camp had caught on that something important was happening,
something which could benefit Reagan enormously. First Reagan's crony Edwin Meese
piped up in oblique reference to the Trilateral membership of some candidates, including
Bush: "all these people come out of an international economic industrial organization
with a pattern of thinking on world affairs" that led to a "softening on defense." That
played well, and Reagan decided he would pick up the theme. On February 7, 1980
Reagan observed in a speech that 19 key members of the Carter Administration,
including Carter, were members of the Trilateral Commission. According to Reagan, this
influence had indeed led to a "softening on defense" because of the Trilateraloids' belief
that business "should transcend, perhaps, the national defense." [fn 21] This made sense:
Bush would later help enact NAFTA and GATT. Voters whose fathers remembered the
complaint of a beaten Bonesman, Robert Taft, in 1952-- that every GOP presidential
candidate since 1936 had been chosen by Chase bank and the Rockefellers-- found this
touched a responsive chord.
Bush realized that he was faced with an ugly problem. He summarily resigned from both
the Traileral Commission and from the New York Council on Foreign Relations. But his
situation in New Hampshire was desperate. His cover had been largely blown. He
stopped talking about the "Big Mo" and began babbling that he was "the issues
candidate." This was an error in demagogy, also because Bush had nothing to say. When
he tried to grapple with issues, he immediately came under fire from the press.
Newsweek now found his solutions "vague." The Washington Post reported that Bush
"has been ill-prepared to respond to simple questions about basic issues as they arise.
When he was asked about President Carter's new budget this week, his replies were
vague and contradictory." The Wall Street Journal agreed that Bush's positions were
"short on detail. In economics his spending and tax priorities remain fuzzy. In foreign