Chicken George (politics)

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Chicken George was the name for a man in a chicken costume who shadowed George H. W. Bush through a portion of the 1992 U.S. presidential election.

1 Debating the debate format
2 Portraying Bush as "chicken" about debating
3 Bush responds to the stunt
4 Debate format eventually formalized
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Debating the debate format

Bush first began being called the pejorative term "chicken" by Democrats when he refused to agree to the debate format determined by the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates. In previous years the normal pattern had been for a period of direct negotiations between the parties after the non-partisan CPD's decision. In earlier years the general consensus was that the Republicans had benefited most from these negotiations. To prevent a repeat of this pattern, the Clinton team thus refused to conduct any negotiations to alter the CPD rules. The Bush camp threatened to cancel all of the debates if the negotiations did not occur.

The Chicken was played by Darrel Parker and John O'Meara, volunteers from Michigan. The Chicken's mouthpiece, who represented himself to by James Baker III, the spokesman for the Chicken (who was too afraid to talk) was always played by Corbett Edge O'Meara, then an unemployed former paralegal and cab-driver and now a Detroit lawyer. The only time that HW Bush took notice of the chicken was at a rally at a Wixom, Michigan plant where the President when off-topic and started rambling on, directly addressing the Chicken who was standing on a platform about two hundred feet away.

The President breaking down and berating a man in a chicken suit was viewed as a major breakdown in the President's dignity and was reported in Time Magazine, the New York Times and across the country. The President agreed to debate shortly after the Wixom fiasco.

The Chicken was a guerrilla-politics operation of the Michigan Campaign and was directed by Jay Byrne, then local director of the Clinton-Gore '92 election effort. Byrne recruited O'Meara and Parker and bankrolled a trip in O'Meara's Geo Metro where the pair shadowed the President as he travelled by train across Michigan.

The Chicken, and his handler "Jim Baker" would get out of O'Meara's Geo Metro with a sandwich board that read: "Chicken George, Afraid to Debate". They would position themselves in a location convenient to media outlets, to aid in the media response that the campaign was seeking to manufacture. They would report their location to the campaign, who would begin calling the local media wherever the pair were. The campaign workers would pretend that they were people in whatever town the Chicken was in, and would act like the Chicken was draawing huge attention.

Some media person, either a print reporter with a photographer or a TV crew, alswys responded. The manufactured stories would appear, and created a buzz. By the final day of the train tour, the maufactured local response had been hyped by Byrne to the National campaign, and the national media began to buy into the completely manufactured media event. When the President broke down and started talking to the Chicken, it became a major story and O'Meara and Parker were interviewed by the national and local media.

They stuck to the party line, denying any campaign involvenment, indicating that they were just a couple of victims of HW's economy out trying to speak their minds. Parker parlayed his 15 minutes into a job at the DNC and a career as a government employee. O'Meara, a briefly sober drug-addict, relapsed during the brief media frenzy and would not sober up again for five more years. As he writes this, O'Meara is sober almost ten years and has three great kids.

[edit] Portraying Bush as "chicken" about debating

The Clinton campaign worked to portray the President as cowardly, or chicken, due to his fear of debating Clinton. On the initiative of a local Democratic organization, a young campaigner crashed a Bush event in a giant chicken costume as a publicity stunt. This technique proved successful and soon the Clinton campaign was ensuring that the chicken would appear at each Bush event (the name "Chicken George" was a reference to a fictional character in the Roots television miniseries.

[edit] Bush responds to the stunt

According to all reports Bush found the chicken quite funny and at the end of stump speech would hunt down the chicken, generally to tell it jokes about fish. The President's amicability charmed many of those inside the costume and others in the immediate vicinity.

In the wider media it had a very different effect. That day after day the President deliberately placed himself next to the chicken meant that the chicken appeared on television newscasts far more often, and the argument that George Bush was scared of meeting Clinton got wider publicity. The image of the leader of the free world conversing with a giant chicken was felt by some observers to not be in keeping with Bush's desired image.

The Bush campaign responded by unleashing packs of live ducks at Clinton rallies as a reference to Clinton's supposed "ducking" of the draft. Gathering large numbers of live ducks proved difficult and this was only done a few times.

[edit] Debate format eventually formalized

Eventually, Bush agreed to participate and the debates were only delayed. The chicken thus stopped shadowing him. It is not true that George Bush voluntarily, or ever, appeared with the Chicken. The Chicken was played by Darrel Parker and John O'Meara, volunteers from Michigan. The Chicken's mouthpiece, who represented himself to by James Baker III, the spokesman for the Chicken (who was too afraid to talk) was always played by Corbett Edge O'Meara, then an unemployed former paralegal and cab-driver and now a Detroit lawyer. The only time that HW Bush took notice of the chicken was at a rally at a Wixom, Michigan plant where the President when off-topic and started rambling on, directly addressing the Chicken who was standing on a platform about two hundred feet away.