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                                                                                U.S. POLITICS, Page 50

The Incredible Shrinking President


With Bush under wraps, Quayle emerges as the Administration's
re-election point man

By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON


    Like a once great slugger emerging from a long slump,
George Bush finally pushed one over the bleachers last week.
After 10 months of maneuvering to little effect on the
recession, the Los Angeles riots and the Rio Earth Summit, Bush
won from Boris Yeltsin a breakthrough arms-control deal and
engineered the horseshoe-throwing, arm-around-Barbara scenes
that remind people of his other up-close-and-personal diplomatic
triumphs.

    Nonetheless, it is doubtful that the first
Russian-American summit did Bush much good. He is in such poor
political shape that Yeltsin, world peace and a cure for the
common cold might not revive him. The public's regard for the
dithering President has sunk to all-time lows: more than 50% of
those questioned in a recent survey disapprove of his handling
of his job. "Bush had a pretty good substantive week," said a
campaign official last Friday, "but the sad thing is that what
we do has very little effect on folks. He's had such a bad spell
for so long that it's hard for people to believe he could do
anything right. By now, when George Bush talks, a lot of people
just turn down the volume."

    Bush's shrinking presidency is, oddly enough, partly the
result of his re-election strategy. Since late last year, Bush
has seen his campaign through the prism of 1988, when he
ignored his advisers' pleas and waited until August before
casting off the constraints of the vice presidency and posing
as a moderate who had chafed under Ronald Reagan's conservative
shackles. Bush, who likes to lower expectations and then
surprise everyone by beating the depressed odds, again wants to
wait until the Republican Convention in August to redefine
himself. Bush expected that just as in 1988, he would slip
behind in polls and then, when pundits had nearly written him
off, he would come back with a boffo convention speech and a
blitzkrieg campaign. In the meantime, he would direct his army
of surrogates to shoulder the unpleasant job of "defining" Ross
Perot and Bill Clinton.

    At the moment, Vice President Dan Quayle is doing most of
the heavy political lifting, arousing the G.O.P. faithful by
labeling Perot a "temperamental tycoon" and attacking totems of
the "cultural elite," from Murphy Brown to Time Warner and its
rap recording artist Ice-T, as out of touch with family values.
Bush likes to pretend he finds such negative tactics
distasteful. When encouraged to comment on his sidekick's
speeches, Bush is careful to distance himself with such lines
as, "You better ask Mr. Quayle." But the Vice President isn't
free-lancing; Bush campaign chairman Bob Teeter personally
approved Quayle's characterization of Perot. As a Quayle staffer
puts it, "Bush's genius is that he's always kept people around
him to do his dirty work."

    Veeps from Richard Nixon to Spiro Agnew rode point for
embattled Commanders in Chief. But Quayle has an extra reason
to strut: the only thing worse than being the Vice President is
being the former Vice President. What's more, Quayle has a lean,
smart staff that works well together and turns out speeches that
are vivid, provocative and ideological -- exactly what Bush and
his aides are not. By instinct, Quayle is several notches to
Bush's right. Add calculation to that, and the Vice President
will continue to be far more outspoken about whom and what he
likes and dislikes. Bush could never, even if he believed it,
have said he wears the "scorn" of cultural elites as "a badge of
honor." As a result, it is Quayle, not Bush, who has sparked a
national debate during the past month about values, in the
process helping both himself and his mentor shore up their
conservative support.

    Bush is hardly helped when the Vice President sabotages
his best performances with what a top Bush aide derisively
called "long foul balls." Quayle's own negatives in public
opinion polls remain so high that an innocent spelling mistake
can undo two weeks of hard work in mere seconds. But the bigger
problem for Bush in Quayle's high-visibility strategy is that
with each new volley, Quayle reminds voters how few convictions
Bush has. It was one thing for President Nixon to unleash Agnew:
Nixon had such a strong political persona that no amount of
Agnew invective could overshadow the boss. But Bush's message
is so muted and confused that Quayle threatens to eclipse the
President. "The reason why the President is crumbling," says a
senior G.O.P. strategist in California, "stems from his failure
to set forth what he truly believes."

    To help start his climb back, Bush has agreed to appear on
a variety of network television programs during the next few
weeks to explain who he is and what he stands for. Though they
are under no illusions that these appearances will make much
more difference in Bush's poll ratings than the Yeltsin summit,
aides now fret openly about whether the big speech can wait
until Houston. They say Bush talks too much about his record and
not enough about his plans. They also want to eradicate the
sense of entitlement that has led Bush to say recently that he
"deserves" to be re-elected. Bush, they add, must look ahead,
not back, if he is to win. "What we have to hear from Bush,"
says a top campaign official, "is why he wants another four
years, and with more passion and forcefulness."

    Despite all the internal doubts, one can nonetheless
detect at Bush headquarters a palpable glimmer of optimism. For
the first time since the campaign began, Bush's dizzying array
of consultants and stand-ins are operating in sync, uniformly
tagging Perot as a quitter too untested to trust with the Oval
Office. After months of confusion over what to say to Americans
beyond, "Message: I care," Bush's aides have agreed on a new
theme, "Message: Attack Perot." It isn't great, but it's better
than nothing. Says a relieved Republican: "They've finally
deep-sixed the list of 12 legislative accomplishments and
jettisoned the five pillars of reform."

    For Bush, there was one other hopeful sign last week. Four
years ago, on June 16, 1988, Bush was reported to be 15 points
behind the Democratic front runner, Michael Dukakis, in a
national poll and was widely believed to have all but lost it.
Later he slipped even further behind before finally pulling
ahead. Bush has almost five months left in the 1992 contest, and
as Bill Clinton said recently, five months is an eternity in a
presidential campaign.