The Nation; When the Subject Is Civil Rights, There Are Two George Bushes
By
STEVEN A. HOLMESJUNE 9, 1991
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June 9, 1991, Page 004001 The New York Times Archives George Bush, the man whose Presidential campaign benefited from the now notorious Willie Horton commercials, also has the distinction of having appointed the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Colin Powell. He will be remembered as a President who vetoed a civil rights bill in 1990 and, if he carries through with his threat, again in 1991, while making a point of donating half the proceeds from his autobiography, "Looking Forward," to the United Negro College Fund.
Images of Mr. Bush's relations with blacks collide at odd angles, revealing no coherent pattern other than contradiction. It is a Janus-like approach that allows his enemies or supporters to choose the lens through which they view him -- as an enlightened healer or a cynical opportunist. And combined with his flip-flops on issues like abortion, "voodoo economics" and "no new taxes," his approach to race raises a broader question: Is there no coherent pattern, or no coherent value system?
The President says he would veto the job discrimination bill approved last week in the House by a vote of 273 to 158, contending that it would force employers to adopt hiring and promotion quotas. Recently his top aides helped undermine efforts by civil rights groups and corporate executives to hammer out a compromise bill they hoped would satisfy the President's objections. Critics said that Mr. Bush was more interested in using quotas as a political issue than in having the bill enacted.
Mr. Bush clearly believes, with some justification, that he has fought for equality, and he and his associates display flashes of outrage when faced with accusations of insensitivity to the rights of any American. "He would be so offended by any kind of prejudice and racism that it must be terribly painful to have those kinds of charges hurled at him, particularly in light of his record," said Sheila Tate, Mr. Bush's press secretary during his Presidential campaign. Associates of Mr. Bush also cite polls showing he has a high approval rating among blacks.
Mr. Bush's history reveals a man whose public and private life has included both episodes of moral courage and incidents that his opponents say demonstrate either racial insensitivity or a willingness to use the racial card for political gain.
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In 1948, as a student at Yale, he led a fund-raising drive for the United Negro College Fund, following the lead of his father, former Senator Prescott Bush, who had been chairman of the group's fund-raising appeals in Connecticut.
But as a candidate for the Senate from Texas in 1964, Mr. Bush came out against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark law that ended segregated lunch counters, restrooms, movie theaters and other public accommodations, and made employment discrimination illegal. In the campaign, Mr. Bush said the law was "politically inspired and is bad legislation in that it transcends the Constitution." He was essentially following the lead of his party's Presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, who had denounced the bill. Hopes and Regrets
Three years ago, writing in his autobiography about his successful 1966 race for the House, Mr. Bush lamented that it was "both puzzling and disappointing" that he attracted so few black votes. "My hope had been that a Republican candidate might be able to break the Democratic Party's grip on black voters in the area," he wrote. "As county G.O.P. chairman, I'd placed our party funds in a black-owned bank and opened a party office with a full-time staff near Texas Southern, one of the state's major black colleges." In the book, Mr. Bush didn't mention his opposition to the 1964 civil rights bill.
In 1968, when the cause of civil rights was more politically popular, following the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Bush voted for the Fair Housing Act, legislation that banned discrimination in housing. The vote touched off a firestorm of criticism within his conservative Congressional district. As Mr. Bush describes the situation in his autobiography, he faced down conservative critics of the vote at a meeting in his district, saying, "Somehow it seems fundamental that a man should not have a door slammed in his face because he is a Negro."
Mr. Bush seemed to be carrying on the theme of racial justice in 1988 when as Vice President he brokered a deal between Congressional backers and critics in the Reagan Administration of a bill that significantly strengthened the Fair Housing Act.
But that same year, Mr. Bush left himself open to charges of racial insensitivity when his Presidential campaign benefited from advertisements depicting the case of Willie Horton, the black inmate who raped a white Maryland woman while on a furlough program from a Massachusetts prison. The Horton Case
Mr. Bush said the Horton case simply highlighted his Democratic opponent Michael S. Dukakis's approach to crime. But many blacks were offended by the racial overtones and Lee Atwater, Mr. Bush's campaign manager, apologized for the commercials before he died last year from a brain tumor.
And so the contradictions continue. In addition to yearly donations of about $1,000 to the United Negro College Fund, Mr. Bush contributes on average $750 annually to Morehouse College, the black school in Atlanta on whose board of trustees his wife has served since 1983. Yet he has also at times displayed a startling myopia to conduct many blacks might find offensive.
Ten days ago he denounced the civil rights bill now before Congress in a speech at the F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Va. In choosing this forum, Mr. Bush seems to have ignored the sensitivities of many blacks to the F.B.I.'s history of trying to discredit Martin Luther King Jr. Last August, without admitting any wrongdoing, the agency agreed to a $1 million out of court settlement with a black agent who charged that he had been harassed because of his race. High in the Polls
Still, the President remains popular among black voters, at times achieving an approval rating of 70 per cent in the New York Times/CBS News Polls. Even with his threatened veto of the civil rights bill, he racked up a 58 percent approval rating among non-whites in a Gallup poll released on June 2. In comparison, Ronald Reagan averaged an approval rating of 23 per cent among non-whites in the eight years of his Presidency and was never able to top a 50 per cent approval rating.
"Bush enjoyed one major advantage -- not being Reagan," said Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Congressional delegate from the District of Columbia. "He has done cosmetic things in office, but it is difficult to cite evidence of policy improvement in favor of minorities and poor people over his predecessor."
Two memos written by The Nathan Group Inc., a black political consulting company hired by the Republican National Committee, lay out a strategy to attract more black voters "without compromising a single plank in the Republican platform." Whether by design or coincidence, Mr. Bush appears to have followed the company's recommendations almost to the letter.
In March 1989 the Nathan Group recommended that the President meet with the Congressional Black Caucus "for the sole purpose of listening, and showing his sensitivity to black issues and a rapport." Two months later Mr. Bush met with 20 members of the caucus, the first time the group had been to the White House in eight years.
Among the recommendations made in a second memo, written in February, was that Mr. Bush look for opportunities to attend "significant black events such as speaking at major black institutions like Hampton University." Four weeks ago, Mr. Bush gave the commencement address at Hampton.
"In politics, perceptions are the only reality," The Nathan Group wrote. "The only thing that's going to count when black Americans consider the merits of the Republican Party is how their perceptions have been molded, negatively or positively."
But political consultants, like television programmers and advertising executives, have a way of underestimating the public. In a country still so divided, 27 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, voters both black and white may be less impressed by grand gestures than by concrete plans to lead them out of a dangerous racial impasse.