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

DATE: FRIDAY, March 27, 1992                   TAG: 9203270466
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-9   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: AL CASEY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LEADING US ON

UNDER HIS leadership the Gulf War has been won, Kuwait has been liberated, Egypt's debt in the millions has been forgiven - and Saddam Hussein is well and still in power, thank you. What does it matter if the United States has not benefitted substantially? We are still getting oil from the Arabs. The important thing is that we won the war.

George Bush is a good president. Although he unwittingly signed a top-secret national security directive for closer ties with Saddam plus $1 billion in aid, he nine months or so later exonerated himself by winning the Gulf War.

Bush is a good president. In the clandestine Iran-Contra affair, which was carried out during the tenure of President I-Don't-Remember Reagan, although he was vice president and former CIA chief, Bush was not found to have been involved. Both he and Ronald Reagan did not know what their White House staff were doing under their noses. Believe it.

Bush is a good president. The American auto executives took him along with them to Tokyo. He was their sole sales representative whose purpose it was to sell American cars to the Japanese. Well-meaning and sincere, Bush was apparently not aware that selling cars to the Japanese is like sending coals to New Castle or selling pineapples to The Dole Company. The Japanese say that to keep one American car they will have to take two Japanese cars off the parking space on the street. Bush was desperate: We want to sell you any size car, he said.

Bush is a good president. He was vice president with I-Don't-Recall Reagan as president for eight years and himself as president for four years, yet he didn't see the recession that was looming during the 12 years he was in office as leader of a great nation. His advisers were not aware either. His foreign travels were more important than the country's internal problems. He suddenly heard voices in the market place. The rise in unemployment goes on unabated, the poor and the sick are suffering hardships. Now it is customary in this country to blame Hong Kong or Singapore whenever there is a flu epidemic. So it didn't need much intelligence for Bush to blame Japan for the country's economic "flu."

Now that the primary elections are gaining momentum, Mr. Bush is not to be caught sleeping. His brilliant State of the Union address containing his panacea for the country's ills, the Bush masterpiece, was unfortunately called "trash" by the well-informed, the experts, economists and others.

Need more to be said? Verbum sat sapienti. Bush is good . . . but not good enough.

Al Casey lives in Troutville and is a retired electrical engineer from New York.

by CNB