Lloyd Bentsen pushed hard Tuesday to sell Michael Dukakis as someone who'll support a strong defense, and he worked to deflect any harm to the ticket from Dukakis' acknowledgment that he was a liberal. The Texas senator hopped into the cockpit of an F-16C jet fighter at the General Dynamics plant in Fort Worth, and told workers there the Dukakis-Bentsen team opposed the Reagan administration plan to reduce purchases of those planes next year from 180 to 100. ``Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen support a strong national defense,'' he said. ``The F-16 is an integral part of that,'' he said, pointing to the Democratic proposal for more conventional weapons instead of more spending on Star Wars and nuclear weaopons. Bentsen continued emphasizing defense at a rally outside the courthouse in Sherman, where he told several hundred spectators that Republican commercials in Texas claiming that the Democrats were going to shut down defense plants were ``absolutely untrue.'' The Democratic candidate stressed the same theme in Owensboro, Ky., telling a crowd of more than 2,500 in a tobacco warehouse that the Democrats support the creation of the best military in the world. ``I'll tell you what a second-best defense system is,'' Bentsen said. ``It has all the value of a second-best poker hand. All it does is cost you money.'' Joining Bentsen at the podium were Kentucky Gov. Wallace Wilkinson, Sen. Wendell Ford, D-Ky., and Rep. William Natcher, D-Ky. The rally ended with the singing of ``My Old Kentucky Home,'' and a balloon drop that didn't work. The rope to release the balloons broke and they stayed netted to the ceiling. Bentsen, questioned by reporters, brushed aside suggestions by reporters that Dukakis hurt himself in Texas by calling himself a liberal. Most Texans, according to polls, consider themselves conservative. ``He said (he was a liberal) ... in the terms of Jack Kennedy and a Harry Truman and I don't think anyone ever questioned their being for a strong national defense,'' Bentsen said. ``You know, what you have to look at and read is how he stated it,'' he said. ``He talked about it in the terms of Harry Truman, in the terms of Jack Kennedy, in the terms of balanced budgets, in the terms of paying your own way.'' The Republican administration ``talks about fiscal responsiblity and hasn't given us a balanced budget yet,'' he said. Bob Slagle, the state Democratic chairman who helped introduce Bentsen in Sherman, said he didn't think Dukakis did much harm. ``I don't think it's really hurting him,'' he said. ``They don't really attach that much to a label,'' he said, especially since Dukakis identified himself with Franklin Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. But Reggie Bashur, the spokesman for the Bush-Quayle campaign in Texas, said ``calling himself a liberal, he's really hurt himself in Texas.'' Evidence of that damage was already showing up in tracking polls, he said. In Texas, he said, the term liberal stands for the George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale school of Democrats. ``I don't know what his handlers were thinking'' when they let Dukakis say that, he said. After Owensboro, Bentsen flew to St. Louis, where he spoke to a charged-up crowd of about 2,000 students jammed into a quadrangle at Washington University. He came to the stage with the speakers blaring Aretha Franklin's version of the Rolling Stones' ``Jumpin Jack Flash'' and he urged the students to get out and vote. The Republicans, he said, were ``poppin those champagne corks but I'll tell you on November 9 they're going to have the worst hangover they've ever had,'' he said. Bentsen, a bomber pilot in World War II, clearly enjoyed the stop at the General Dynamics plant. Workers chanted ``Bentsen, Bentsen, and several employees yelled out in objection to George Bush's running mate, Dan Quayle, calling him a draft dodger. There were also Bush supporters in evidence, but they did not heckle or disturb the tour of the mile-long plant, which manufactures about 300 jets a year. Bentsen squeezed into the single-seat cockpit of a new F-16C for the cameras and afterward declared it ``fits like a wetsuit.'' He joked to reporters that he'd fly it to the next campaign stop and meet his entourage there.
