Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/072792/07279924.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5KB | 111 lines

                                                                                THE CAMPAIGN, Page 44

Waiting for Baker


Bush's floundering campaign needs help -- and may soon get
it

By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Dan
Goodgame/Washington


    If anyone at the White House had doubts that George Bush
was in trouble, the President's visit to last week's All-Star
Game must have dispelled them. The event was designed to
showcase the President as a normal, red-blooded American just
when the Democrats were listening to Jesse Jackson and AIDS
activists in Madison Square Garden. Instead it turned into
another Bush public relations fiasco. Showing uncommon
disrespect for the man as well as the office, the crowd at San
Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium booed Bush as he strode to the
pitcher's mound with the legendary slugger Ted Williams -- not
exactly the image he wished to convey to roughly 22 million
television viewers.

    It was only the latest in a series of mishaps that have
sent Bush tumbling in the polls and fueled speculation that
Secretary of State James Baker, the engineer of Bush's 1988
election victory, would have to put aside his diplomatic
portfolio and bail out his old friend once again. During a
fishing trip at the Secretary's Wyoming ranch last week, Bush
seemed to leave the door open to such a move, saying he hadn't
"yet" discussed Baker's return. But it is a foregone conclusion
inside the Administration -- especially in the wake of Ross
Perot's exit and Bill Clinton's surge in the polls. "There are
two truths this week," said a top White House official. "First,
it's better to have Perot out than to have him in. Second, we're
in horrible shape."

    Baker's return to the White House staff is expected to
take place around the time of the Republican Convention, in
mid-August. The Secretary of State wants to avoid leaving
government for a job in the campaign, in part because ethics
laws would make it impossible for him to exert control over the
Administration as a private citizen. Nor does Baker want to go
through the confirmation process again in order to rejoin the
Cabinet in the event of a Bush victory. Last week Bush's legal
advisers were studying ways to allow Baker to remain as
Secretary of State and simply append himself to the White House
staff as a kind of supercounselor who would oversee both the
White House and the campaign. To avoid excess publicity, Bush
may skip a big takeover announcement. "Baker will come over,"
said an adviser, "and that will be it."

    But the actual mechanism is less important than the
reasons for what White House aides are already calling "the big
switch." Chief among the problems is Bush himself: the President
is an undisciplined campaigner who is prone to sloppy mistakes
without a full-time minder. He continues to insist, for example,
that Americans are wrong to think the economy is sputtering,
even though his own Administration's statistics prove them
right and him wrong. "Bob Teeter, Fred Malek and Sam Skinner are
all too nice," said an official, referring respectively to
Bush's campaign managers and chief of staff. "We need somebody
who has the guts to go into the Oval Office, slam his hand down
on the desk and say, `George, shut up.' "

    Baker alone has provided that service through much of
Bush's political career. But the Texas lawyer's return is even
more likely now that Perot's departure has made G.O.P. campaign
officials believe that it will be easier to re-elect Bush. After
months of struggling to grasp the dynamics of a three-way race,
the Bush team finds itself back on familiar ground in the
middle of a good old-fashioned two-man fight. With a speed and
coordination not seen since their 1988 campaign against Michael
Dukakis, Bush aides fanned out last week after Perot's
withdrawal, armed with talking points labeling Clinton and Gore
as tax-and-spend liberals. "We've pulled out all the old maps,
all the old playbooks," said a campaign official. Added
Republican pollster Bill McInturff: "They're back on familiar
terrain. This is the first shot of good news they've had in
months."

    Perot's exit should lend Bush the upper hand in such
Republican strongholds as Florida, Texas, Georgia, Alabama,
South Carolina and Mississippi. Clinton might be able to make
up for losses with improved footing in California, Oregon and
Washington, the border states of Kentucky, Tennessee and
Missouri, plus his home state of Arkansas. Bush can count on a
natural advantage in the West, but the industrial Midwest
remains up for grabs.

    The big question facing the Bush campaign is whether the
President will make a positive case for a second term or rely
solely on negative tactics to defeat his opponent. Baker is the
one man who can force Bush to lay out a plan for another term
and force the President to stop viewing his re-election as a
reward for past performance. Already, Republican pollsters say,
focus groups for statewide candidates reveal that more and more
voters believe that the economy will not improve unless Bush is
defeated. "If the President's people think they have to do
nothing more than bash Clinton to win," said the G.O.P.'s
McInturff, "they are sadly misreading the American public."