“Rubbers”

The Seventh District’s newly seated member of the Ninetieth Congress was about as progressive as his constituency could stand. His legislative record matched his party’s traditional center as he cast all the right votes for reducing spending and federal regulatory powers. Congressional Quarterly showed that his voting record placed him in 80-percent agreement with the Republicans and Democrats who roughly constituted a conservative coalition. ¹ Insofar as foreign policy was concerned, he observed the old adage that “politics stops at the water’s edge” even when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. He came up on the conservative side often enough to earn a perfect zero rating by the AFL-CIO’s Political Education Committee of organized labor. He also received a distinguished service award from the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action. He was, all in all, a well-liked popular newcomer. That first summer in Washington, he joined with other Republican moderates, including Charles Goodell, an upstate New Yorker, in embracing what they called a Neighborhood Action Crusade. Goodell, who headed the Planning and Research Committee of the House Republican Conference and shared Bush’s pedigree, convinced Bush that Republicans should not merely thwart the president’s programs but had to demonstrate their own responsiveness to social needs.