
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 6, 1991                   TAG: 9103060342
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

BUSH LOOMS AS TOUGHER CANDIDATE IN '92

Twenty-one months from Election Day, Democrats are looking at an incumbent Republican president who is commander in chief of a war victory and soaring around 90 percent in approval ratings.

It's no wonder George McGovern is the only Democrat openly talking about challenging George Bush for re-election.

About the only solace Democrats have is that Bush's popularity will likely go down.

"George Bush is in as good a shape as anybody I've seen the year before an election campaign," said Robert Beckel, who led Walter Mondale's 1984 challenge to Ronald Reagan.

There is a conspicuous reluctance among Democrats to gear up for a challenge to Bush.

"I am not running; I have no plans to run," Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., told reporters in Boston on Monday.

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, Gov. Mario Cuomo of New York, House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri, Sen. Al Gore Jr. of Tennessee and Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas all have their backers. But none has made an overt move toward a candidacy. Ask any one of them about the possibility and the response ranges from coyness to horror.

Given those circumstances, you'd expect Bush to permit himself a moment to gloat.

Yet he hardly permits himself a smile. Last week a reporter asked him why he was so somber. "I haven't yet felt this wonderfully euphoric feeling that many of the American people feel," he said. "I'm beginning to.

"I'm not gloomy about it," he went on. "I'm elated. But I just want to finish my job, my part of the job."

Michael Deaver, master of imagery in the Reagan White House, offered a cautionary note: "We are as a people so quick to forget."

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB