5/29/00 9:20 a.m.
GWB, Meet JFK
The Austin camp is pulling a 1960.

Robert A. George is an editorial page writer
for the New York Post------------------------------------RAGGEDmail@aol.com

t the presidential level, what year is it? Is it 1988 all over again? Or 1992? If it's '88, Al Gore would become the George Bush, Sr. of 2000 — a vice-president following a "popular" president in an extended period of economic growth. Or is George W. Bush the Bill Clinton of 1992? If so, he would then be the energetic, likable agent of change running against an ideologically exhausted opponent.

Based on Bush’s recent call for a unilateral reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons alongside the deployment of a missile-defense system, it’s beginning to look like the proper comparison might be 1960. In such a case, George W. Bush would look increasingly like John F. Kennedy. Recall that in 1960, the nation was still experiencing a vibrant economy. A controversial vice president sought to succeed a very popular two-term president. An attractive scion of a political dynasty emerged as the "hot" challenger.

If the ’60 parallel holds, this would be profoundly ironic. Bush is currently under regular assault from late-night comics who question his intelligence. This conjures up poor Dan Quayle and the merciless attacks the media launched against him starting in 1988. The pile-on continued in the vice-presidential debate. Texas Democrat Lloyd Bentsen hit Quayle with the now-famous, "I knew Jack Kennedy; Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. You, sir, are no Jack Kennedy." Yes, it was demagogic (were any Texas Democrats real "friends" with any Kennedys?) and unfair. But as political theater, it worked.

But Bush’s capturing of the missile issue shows that he may have Kennedy-esque political savvy. Kennedy attacked Nixon — and, implicitly, Eisenhower — for having allowed a "missile gap" to develop between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Kennedy’s charge was that the Soviets now had an advantage over America in their number of missiles. The fact was that Kennedy’s argument was bunk, but Nixon was hard-pressed to respond without explaining exactly how many missiles the U.S. had in relation the Soviets. The genius of Kennedy’s maneuver was in attacking the Republican administration from the right — on national-security terms. In the context of the Cold War paradigm, this was seen as a bold move.

George W. Bush has exercised a similar bit of jiujitsu this time around. Wanting to deploy the missile-defense shield is fully in keeping with established Republican dogma of the last dozen years or so. But offering a unilateral nuclear-weapons reduction going beyond the terms of Start II can be seen as an implicit attack on current administration policy from the left (who remembers the "nuclear freeze" fad from the ‘80s?). At the same time, Bush notes that since we don’t know where a missile strike might come from, a defense shield becomes the greater priority.

Al Gore’s response that Bush’s plan shows his inexperience in matters of foreign policy falls upon deaf ears. The average American has now lived in a world without a "Soviet Union" for ten years now. It seems right that a political leader should question why we need to have the current high level of missiles.

While Kennedy warned that the country was vulnerable because we had a missile "gap," Bush observes that a missile "oversupply" and no defensive capability amounts to a serious misuse of resources.

Neither political dynasty might particularly enjoy the comparison between GWB and JFK. On the other hand, considering what it might presage, the Bushes may somehow just be able to live with it. George W., you, sir, just might be some Jack Kennedy.