Nine Key Moments : 1988 Campaign

1 Dole is on a roll, but a tough Bush ad called "Senator Straddle" trips him up in New Hampshire

Helicopters buzzed, limousines purred, and George Bush waved. But Iowans didn't care one bit for the imperial vice presidency. By the time he left Iowa for New Hampshire on the day of the caucuses, he knew he had been beaten in a state he had won eight years before. That night, in the Clarion Hotel dining room in Nashua, N.H., Bush had a somber supper with Barbara. Later, chief of staff Craig Fuller told him he had placed third, with Dole a cocky first and Pat Robertson a surprising second. "It's a humiliation," Bush said.

At a Manchester plant gate the next day, there was precious little flesh to press. More reporters hovered around him than workers. Bush seemed bewildered and out of place. At a high school, he blurted out, "I'm one of you" -- an outright appropriation of Dole's Iowa slogan that appealed to working-class voters. At the end of the day, Bush retreated to Washington for clean laundry and fresh ideas.

Peggy Noonan, a former White House speechwriter and Reagan favorite, was driving with her mother from a supermarket in suburban Virginia when she heard a radio sound bite of Bush's "I'm one of you" quote. She felt her stomach sink. She called Fuller, who told her to be on Air Force Two the next afternoon for Bush's return to New Hampshire. Sitting next to Bush on the plane, she tried to make sense of what he was trying to say about himself. His hands fluttered near his chest, as if seeking his heart, and he said softly, "I guess we've got to get more of me out there." Working all night in her hotel room, Noonan cobbled together a stump speech that revealed a new Bush persona, later known as the "kinder, gentler" George. "Here I stand, warts and all," she wrote (attributing the phrase incorrectly to Abraham Lincoln). "I don't always articulate, but I feel."

Meanwhile, media adviser Roger Ailes arrived with a tough anti-Dole ad titled "Senator Straddle." It showed a grim-faced Dole waffling on various issues, notably taxes. Campaign manager Lee Atwater was for it, but two other advisers, Nick Brady and Robert Mosbacher, demurred, noting that it violated Reagan's "eleventh commandment" -- Thou shalt speak no evil of a fellow Republican. At first, Bush sided with them.

But with only three days to go before the vote, Bush had little momentum. Dole had picked up Alexander Haig's endorsement. (When a Bush aide later read him a Haig quote saying "I did all the damage I could," Bush stared out a window and muttered, "That's sick.") That Saturday morning, Atwater told Bush he was dead even in the polls and that only the "Straddle" ad would put him over the top. Bush looked over at pollster Bob Teeter and said, "I thought you said I was 5 or 6 up!" Teeter shrugged. New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, Bush's state chairman, assured him the voters could handle the ad. Finally, Barbara Bush chimed in, "I don't see anything wrong with it." Bush decided he had no choice but to go with the ad.

The campaign immediately went into motion. Ailes called a friend in Boston and arranged for air time there. Sununu telephoned the Channel 9 station manager at his home in Manchester, and within hours, they had bought every available 30-second spot through Tuesday.