George Bush

Now that the relatively conservative Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton is almost certain to be the Democratic presidential nominee, organized labor last week finally endorsed him, and labor leaders will find qualities in him that even his mother didn't know he had. If they know what's good for them, they will put everything they can behind the Democratic candidate-to-be.

MAY 15 DAWNED BRIGHT, SUNNY AND CRISP--THE RARE SPRING DAY that lets Washington residents temporarily forget that theirs is a city built on a swamp. In the White House, George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, rose 15 minutes before the sun, read the morning news summary prepared overnight by his aides, ate some fruit and then walked the 40 yards from his residential quarters to the Oval Office.

At the core of his plan . . . ECONOMIC POLICY: Bush says the key to economic prosperity is limiting the size and scope of government, although federal spending, government regulation and the deficit have all increased during his Administration. "America is the most prosperous nation in history because it is also the freest," he says. "And that same commitment to limited government . . . must shape the reforms that we urgently need to undertake."

So George Bush, on the edge of an election year, may deflect charges that he let Saddam Hussein off the hook, poor Iraqis--with whom the President once said he had no quarrel--face plague and starvation. The Bush-inspired embargo is denying them such basic necessities as disinfectant, gauze, penicillin and food. The Bush people aren't stupid. They know that pictures of starving Iraqi babies are bad PR.

If there is one overriding lesson to be learned from the 1992 contests in California, it is that Gov. Pete Wilson is finished. Washed up. History. Outta here. Political toast. While the network news shows are still abuzz with what Republicans have to do to become competitive again on the national scene, the California GOP has a more immediate problem: 1994. Debacle '92 proves one thing: Pete Wilson cannot win reelection.

"In Midland, Texas, where I grew up, the town motto was 'The sky is the limit' . . . and we believed it. There was a restless energy, a basic conviction that, with hard work, anybody could succeed, and everybody deserved a chance. . . ." --From Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush's acceptance speech * Folks here are outwardly friendly toward strangers. They tip their hats, open doors and say, "Hello. How ya dewin?"

George Bush has a character problem: He finds it hard to tell the truth. "Iraqgate," as some Democrats have dubbed the Bush Administration's deceptive and dubious pre-war policy toward Iraq, may emerge as one of the most serious moral violations of the nation's trust. The question is not whether the Reagan and Bush administrations "tilted toward Iraq" during the 1980s; that much was known.

Slouched in the back of a limousine sweeping down Pennsylvania Avenue, the same boulevard which today will treat him to a triumphant inaugural journey as vice president, Dan Quayle was feeling an ever-so-sweet vindication. "I mean when we went down to New Orleans, first of all a lot of people didn't think that George Bush was going to get elected President," Quayle offered as the marble monuments of Washington slid by.

The British are having an election today, but given the way American journalists and pundits covered the campaign, it might as well have been an American election they were talking about. All we heard was how much the British, in their political style, are just like us. Prime Minister John Major was routinely compared to George Bush on the eve of his repudiation by the American electorate in 1992.

Each weekday morning just before 9--an hour later if he was sleeping in after the occasional late night out--President Reagan would board an elevator on the second floor of the White House, ride down to the ground floor, pick up a few Secret Service agents and the appointments secretary awaiting him and stroll along a colonnade past the Rose Garden to begin his workday in the Oval Office. Under George Bush, there will be some changes made.