How to Start a Landslide

Texas. Can George Bush at last beat Lloyd Bentsen? He couldn’t 18 years ago, in a race for the U.S. Senate. But now Texas’s two most puissant politicians have squared off for a second, and probably final, shootout on November 8. The stakes are immensely higher than in 1970. This time I predict a different outcome.

Unless before election day the Gulf of Mexico floods the Texas Panhandle, the Bush-Quayle ticket should carry Texas fairly strongly against Bentsen and that other fellow—the short one who went to Harvard. The victory margin in Texas will not approach Ronald Reagan’s margin over Walter Mondale—1.5 million votes—but don’t expect anybody in the Bush campaign to give a damn. Texas’s 29 electoral votes, a prize exceeded only by the votes of California and New York, will be theirs just the same.

PO

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Peter Osterlund

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Presidential Election

Texas. Can George Bush at last beat Lloyd Bentsen? He couldn’t 18 years ago, in a race for the U.S. Senate. But now Texas’s two most puissant politicians have squared off for a second, and probably final, shootout on November 8. The stakes are immensely higher than in 1970. This time I predict a different outcome.

Unless before election day the Gulf of Mexico floods the Texas Panhandle, the Bush-Quayle ticket should carry Texas fairly strongly against Bentsen and that other fellow—the short one who went to Harvard. The victory margin in Texas will not approach Ronald Reagan’s margin over Walter Mondale—1.5 million votes—but don’t expect anybody in the Bush campaign to give a damn. Texas’s 29 electoral votes, a prize exceeded only by the votes of California and New York, will be theirs just the same.