Bush-Eastwood ticket in 1988?

"George H.W. Bush, trailing Democrat Michael Dukakis in the heat of the 1988 presidential campaign, briefly but seriously considered Hollywood renaissance man Clint Eastwood to be his running mate, a former Bush aide says.

"The revelation comes from more than 350 hours of audio interviews with 50 senior officials from the George H.W. Bush administration released today by the University of Virginia’s Miller Center and Bush Presidential Library Foundation. The decade-long oral history project documents the life and times of the 41st presidency.

"'When we were way behind. Honestly, [Eastwood] was suggested in not an altogether unserious – Well, he was a mayor. He was a Republican mayor,' former Bush campaign chairman and Secretary of State James Baker said.

"Eastwood served one term as mayor of the conservative ocean side community Carmel, Calif., from 1986-1988.

"AUDIO: James Baker describes consideration of Clint Eastwood

"'Anyway, it was shot down pretty quick. But we were looking at an 18-point deficit,' Baker said, suggesting the campaign was looking for a boost from its VP choice. Bush, who also considered Sen. Dan Quayle, R-Ind.; Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan.; Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo.; and Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., ultimately settled on Quayle."

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/10/clint-eastwood-as-vp-george-h-w-bush-considered-it/

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OK, I'm not saying it was likely, but what if GHW Bush decided he had to do something unconventional to beat Dukakis? (Though that big lead in the polls Baker talks about had actually already pretty much dissipated by the time of the GOP national convention.) There would be some ridicule, of course, but there was plenty of ridicule of Quayle in OTL, and my guess is that the ticket wins for the same reason Bush-Quayle won in OTL--it's the top of the ticket that matters to voters. But would Vice President Eastwood be seen as a future presidential possibility for the GOP?
 
Seriously, though, extrapolating from his later GOP convention speech, I think a candidate Eastwood would be a bit of a disappointment for the Republicans. In that particular "performance", he seemed quite reluctant to embrace the Dirty Harry/Man With No Name/Josey Wales persona that the organizers had clearly set up for him, even trying to resist the audience's request to yell "Make my day! at the end(and it wasn't just modesty, he really seemed dismissive of the whole schtick).

Even his putdowns of Obama, centred on that skit with the empty chair, seemed more like something out of Actor's Workshop than a typical Eastwood tough-guy role. And some of the opinions he expressed, eg. implying that the US should have learned from Russia's experience and stayed out of Afghanistan, were totally off-base for the audience he was addressing.

Nutshell: Eastwood the man would be too culturally and politically "Hollywood" to be a safe veep-candidate for the Republicans.
 
Also, from the same 2012 speech, while getting an extended ovation...

"Okay, okay. Save some for Mitt."

You do NOT do that to a candidate already perceived as uncharismatic and ineffectual. Which was pretty much Bush in '88.
 
Eastwood might prove to be less of a liability than Quayle during the election and Bush Sr.'s subsequent term. I could see Lloyd Bentsen underestimating Eastwood and not performing as well in the vice-presidential debate. That being said, I don't think that Eastwood will give Bush Senior the win in 1992 unless Eastwood somehow butterflies Perot's run. Still, he could use his 4 years as VP to run for the Senate in 1994, in OTL the GOP candidate only lost by a few percent, perhaps Eastwood's starpower gives him the win? If he's a sitting United States Senator in 1996 I think he'd be much more willing to make a run at the Presidency.
 
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No, Eastwood would not be chosen for the role of VP. He is an atheist, which is obviously a major no no amongst the American electorate.
 
No, Eastwood would not be chosen for the role of VP. He is an atheist, which is obviously a major no no amongst the American electorate.

I pretty much agree with you, but just for the sake of discussion, I wonder how easily he could fake a conversion. I think Obama was also on record as saying that he hadn't always been a believer, as well, but somehow managed to convince people that he was now devout.

At least according to the Oliver Stone film about his son, GHW Bush refused to say he was born-again, maybe because he knew it wouldn't sound sincere, but also maybe he knew it would be like saying his baptism didn't count. But he was still considered godly enough for the electorate.
 
For an old-looking 64-year-old to choose a part-time former mayor of a tiny hamlet to be one heartbeat away from the Presidency would appear dangerously unhinged. It would be considerably worse than OTL's choice of Dan Quayle by several orders of magnitude; Quayle, at least, was a career politician, a former Congressman and two-term Senator, with -- on face, anyway -- the requisite political experience to be President.

If you want to write a TL in which an otherwise-unelectable candidate wins the Presidency in '88, this would be a good, if ASB-leaning, POD. But I can't actually fathom it as a serious possibility.
 
No, Eastwood would not be chosen for the role of VP. He is an atheist, which is obviously a major no no amongst the American electorate.
Is he? Trying to read up on it it just seems that he isn't so much an atheist as a man that doesn't subscribe to any particular theory. Agnostic comes across as a better label. Course I could be wrong and there may be a more clear-cut answer he has given I hadn't come across.

That said, I think how the public perceives Eastwood would be entirely dependent on how he is introduced to the American public politically. If Bush and his team were to properly prepare Eastwood to debate and discuss national issues, enough so that he doesn't seem out of his depth, and they play up Eastwood's Hollywood person within the public consciousness, then I believe Eastwood would prove a far more beneficial running-mate than Quayle did. As it was Quayle was being attacked left and right for perceived inexperience and ineptness despite his tenure on the Hill, so who is to say that the inverse couldn't be true?

Would it be easy? No. But I think it could done.

The only problem here that I can see is that Bush was already perceived as a Social Moderate, and Clint Eastwood in following his Libertarian philosophy is Socially Liberal, so Social Conservatives will feel slightly alienated if they are following the ticket on those issues exclusively. Some sort of compromise in their favor may be required.
 
Is he? Trying to read up on it it just seems that he isn't so much an atheist as a man that doesn't subscribe to any particular theory. Agnostic comes across as a better label. Course I could be wrong and there may be a more clear-cut answer he has given I hadn't come across.

That said, I think how the public perceives Eastwood would be entirely dependent on how he is introduced to the American public politically. If Bush and his team were to properly prepare Eastwood to debate and discuss national issues, enough so that he doesn't seem out of his depth, and they play up Eastwood's Hollywood person within the public consciousness, then I believe Eastwood would prove a far more beneficial running-mate than Quayle did. As it was Quayle was being attacked left and right for perceived inexperience and ineptness despite his tenure on the Hill, so who is to say that the inverse couldn't be true?

Would it be easy? No. But I think it could done.

The only problem here that I can see is that Bush was already perceived as a Social Moderate, and Clint Eastwood in following his Libertarian philosophy is Socially Liberal, so Social Conservatives will feel slightly alienated if they are following the ticket on those issues exclusively. Some sort of compromise in their favor may be required.

I'm wondering how much "Yeah, but it's CLINT!!" leeway social conservatives would be willing to give an Eastwood-veeped ticket.

Extreme ASB example, but if Jesus Christ came back to Earth, and stood atop Mount Rushmore and chanted "USA USA USA!!", and then read out a list of commandments which included, among more conservative-friendly positions, complete legal equality for gays and lesbians, most religious conservatives, after the initial shock, would probably just shrug their shoulders and say "Well, not gonna argue with Jesus."

Back to reality for a sec, even if it became known that a canddiate Eastwood harboured certain heterodox opinions on social issues, a lot of right-wingers would probably just think, even if it required a certain cognitive dissonance, "Well, can''t argue with Dirty Harry". Especailly given that Eastwood would likely pass the smell test on law-and-order, which was really the issue(rather than liberalism generally) that brought Dukakis down.

TL/DR: Eastwood's image as a macho, patriotic icon might allow him to get away with deviating from the conservtive line on social issues.
 

Archibald

Banned
I think an interesting question might be, could Eastwood stomach Lee Atwater disgusting, dirty campaign against Dukakis ?
Wouldn't Eastwood be outraged by the Willie Horton case ?
Either he would resign in anger, or he would punch Atwater in the jaw, Dirty Harry style...
 
I think an interesting question might be, could Eastwood stomach Lee Atwater disgusting, dirty campaign against Dukakis ?
Wouldn't Eastwood be outraged by the Willie Horton case ?
Either he would resign in anger, or he would punch Atwater in the jaw, Dirty Harry style...

I'm not sure if Eastwood would really object to a law-and-order campaign. That seems to me one issue on which he's probably in lockstep with GOP orthodoxy.

I guess if he was politically sophisticated enough, he might pick up on the racist dog-whistling, and register his complaints about that, but since very few other people in the Republican party had a problem with it, it's debatable whether he would.
 
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