Former Texas Attorney General Jim Mattox on Reagan / Bush (2002)

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Excerpts from Sander Hicks' unpublished interview
With Former Texas Attorney General, Jim Mattox

Interview Transcript 1/2/02

http://sanderhicks.com/reagan.html

Rove’s pattern is to get his candidates on one or two subjects and carefully script what they have to say. He isolates them from the press and public, reinventing them. Bush refused to answer questions about the drug issue. His kids were doing the same thing…they could be poster children for (the juvenile deliquency issue) he was attempting to portray at the time.

I want to give Rove credit—they are smart. They know how to manipulate the press. Bush knows so little that its relatively easy to keep him scripted. When I was Attorney General, we had an occasion to go meet with Reagan. There were 15 or 20 there, around mid 1983 to 85. Reagan’s handlers said he was glad to meet with us. There was to be a question and answer period, and the handlers gave us three questions we could ask. The questions were relatively immature. We agreed among ourselves to ask two of the questions, then get a Republican among us to ask a third question of our own. The first two questions had no meaning. For the first two questions, Reagan pulled index cards out of his inside coat pocket. The whole discussion was as if he was talking to the PTA, clearly not appropriate to the group he was talking to. Bob Steffen from Kansas asked the third question of our own—"Can we get a commitment from your administration on consumer protection enforcement?"

As soon as the question was asked, handlers jumped up on stage, "The President must leave now the time is expired." They ushered him over to have pictures taken. And there were Republican Attorneys General who clearly were happy to have their picture taken with the President. But I said, "This guy is not running this place."