Bygones

By Amy Wilentz.

"He was not always my biggest fan," George Bush deadpanned to the black-tie crowd of 400 in the capital's cavernous Sheraton Washington Hotel. That was one of many understatements that the keynote speaker delicately delivered in his tribute to a man who, above all else, was not given to understatement. The Vice President, eager to defuse the lingering ultraconservative hostility that could block his presidential ambitions for 1988, bravely forayed into the far- right corner of the lion's den last week to honor the memory of William Loeb, the late publisher of New Hampshire's Manchester Union Leader. No puller of punches, Loeb regularly aimed sprays of front-page vitriol at those he regarded as ideologically impure, Bush prominent among them.

"A spoon-fed little rich kid," Loeb called Bush during his 1980 primary campaign against Ronald Reagan. Knowing full well that such Loeb rantings still rattled around in the minds of his audience, Bush parried by recounting them himself. After Loeb called him an "incompetent liberal masquerading as a conservative," Bush says he formed a task force to win Loeb over. Subsequently, Bush noted, came other Loeb broadsides: "Involved up to his neck in Watergate . . . candidate of the Trilateralists and Rockefeller barons." When Loeb wrote that "Republicans should flee the candidacy of George Bush as if it were the Black Plague," Bush said he gathered his task force and finally faced up to the awful truth: "We're going to have to put Bill Loeb down as doubtful."

Bush's decision to join the Loeb tribute highlights the battle that is already under way for the mantle of Reaganism. For five years Bush has acted as an unabashed cheerleader for Reagan's programs in an effort to shed the moderate taint that can destroy a Republican hopeful these days. Nevertheless, the loyal Vice President is likely to face a strong challenge on the right, notably from New York Congressman Jack Kemp, who missed the dinner.

In the spirit of the evening, Bush worked in some words of tribute to Loeb, who died in 1981. "Nobody, least of all me, is going to disagree that Bill Loeb raised his share of hell." Added Bush plaintively: "I think in my case, he overdid it." His reception was overwhelmingly lukewarm. Nackey Loeb, the Union Leader's current publisher and William's widow, spoke as gingerly as had Bush. Her late husband, she said, "would be grateful to the Vice President of the U.S." for his presence, though she carefully refrained from specifying which Vice President. The evening, with all its tiptoeing over sensitive ground, brought a sparkle of amusement to the eyes of Democratic National Chairman Paul Kirk. "The right-wing litmus tests are already coming fast and furious," he said, "pushing Republicans even farther to the radical right." That, no doubt, would have brought a sparkle to Loeb's eyes too.

With reporting by Hays Gorey/ Washington