Reagan, Bush Blast Dukakis at L.A. Rally

In a partisan attack designed to fire up California conservatives, President Reagan and Republican presidential nominee George Bush joined Wednesday to blast Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis as a liberal and to challenge him on the issue of the Pledge of Allegiance.

“What is it about the Pledge of Allegiance that upsets him so much?” Bush asked a crowd of nearly 3,000 supporters jammed into a Century Plaza Hotel ballroom. He was referring to Dukakis’ veto of a 1977 Massachusetts bill requiring teachers to lead the pledge in their classrooms.

Bush strategists believe that veto gives them a clear-cut way to hang the liberal tag on Dukakis. They hope to make special use of it in California, where Reagan has had huge success over the years by polarizing elections into liberals versus conservatives, rather than Democrats versus Republicans.

‘Founding Fathers’

“It’s very hard for me to imagine that the Founding Fathers--Samuel Adams, John Adams and John Hancock--would have objected to teachers leading students in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States,” Bush said to strong applause. “I just don’t believe that was their concept.”

Bush got a huge, emotional response from GOP convention delegates last week in New Orleans when he closed his acceptance speech by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

On Tuesday, Dukakis attempted to turn the issue around by charging that by criticizing his veto, Bush did not understand the Constitution and thus was “not fit” to be President.

Dukakis noted that before his veto, he got an opinion from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which held that the Pledge of Allegiance bill violated the teachers’ First Amendment rights by requiring them to lead the pledge each day in their classrooms or face punishment.

Thus, he argued, he could not as governor sign unconstitutional legislation. The Massachusetts Legislature overrode the Dukakis veto but the law has never been enforced, according to Dukakis advisers.

Bush said Wednesday: “I would have signed that bill. Any constitutional questions that someone might raise should be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States.”

The vice president also went after Dukakis on foreign policy, charging that the governor’s opposition to the MX and Midgetman missiles and the Strategic Defense Initiative would lead to weakness and invite attacks.

Those positions, Bush charged, put Dukakis on the “far out liberal left wing” of the Democratic Party and would abandon bipartisan foreign policy objectives.

“And so I ask,” Bush said, “is he (Dukakis) discarding the mainstream strategic doctrine of Democratic and Republican presidents alike for 30 years? Is he saying we don’t need it? I want to know.”

For his part, Reagan on Wednesday kicked off a crucial effort to energize his conservative California base for Bush by accusing Dukakis and the Democrats of hiding “the liberal face of their agenda.”

Saying that the Democrats engaged in a “masquerade” at their Atlanta convention several weeks ago, Reagan charged: “When they said ‘opportunity,’ they meant ‘subsidies.’ When they said ‘reducing the deficit,’ they meant ‘raising taxes.’ When they said ‘strong defense,’ they meant ‘cutting defense spending.’ ”

In the ballroom where he celebrated his 1980 and ’84 presidential campaign victories, Reagan praised Bush as the California conservatives cheered.

“No one has been closer to my side and has contributed more to our successes than George Bush,” the President said.

He also had a message for California voters who are not so partisan--the Democrats and independents who voted for Reagan twice but now seem restless with him not on the GOP ticket.

Boasting that the Reagan-Bush Administration had created “17 1/2 million jobs and reduced the unemployment rate to the lowest rate it’s been in 14 years,” the President asked rhetorically: “Do you want this era to be over?”

Reagan also praised Bush’s running mate, Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle, who has become controversial because of questions about whether his family used its influence to get him into the National Guard during the Vietnam War in 1969.

In a pointed criticism of Dukakis’ lack of Washington experience, Reagan said of Quayle, an 8-year senator and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee: “He has more years of national security experience than the head of the other ticket.”

The Los Angeles ballroom of the Century Plaza was so crowded that many Republicans were barred from entering by Los Angeles County fire marshals.

Among those warming up the audience was comedian Bob Hope, a longtime Reagan friend who appeared to make some in the crowd uneasy with a joke about Dukakis’ Greek heritage.

“You remember all that nice china Nancy Reagan bought when she went to the White House?” Hope asked. “If the Greeks get in, they’ll break it the first night.”

In Los Angeles Wednesday, and in Sacramento the day before, Bush’s strategy for taking California’s 47 electoral votes was clear: run against Dukakis as though he were a liberal candidate for governor and make him defend his positions on such issues as gun control and capital punishment.

Dukakis favors gun control and opposes the death penalty, putting him at odds with the majority of the state’s voters in recent votes on ballot measures affecting those issues.

Both are key issues in Sacramento and surrounding counties, one of several “swing” regions in the state that Democrats and the Republicans say are up for grabs in this election.

In Sacramento County, for example, registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans. But in 1986, they overwhelmingly rejected former state Supreme Court Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, an opponent of capital punishment.

And Bush made a pointed reference to gun ownership in his Sacramento remarks Tuesday because he knows that opposition to gun control is characteristic of the rural and semi-rural voters in the Sacramento area and nearby San Joaquin Valley.

Staff writers John Broder and Patti Klein Lerner contributed to this story.