Cover Stories "A New Breeze Is Blowing"

By Michael Kramer

Kind words. Gentle words. Nothing flashy or particularly memorable. Just good, plain talk from the heart. And a departure: if George Bush signaled anything by proclaiming a "new breeze," it was a new altruism, a move away from the Reagan era's tacit approval of selfishness, an end to the glorification of greed. "Use power to help people," said the 41st President. "We are not the sum of our possessions . . . We cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account. We must hope to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it . . . in all things, generosity."

John Kennedy's "ask not" formulation was better put, and Eisenhower's too: "A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." But Bush's simplicity was profound, and more in keeping with his underlying message. After a negative campaign that valued victory above all, Bush's positioning himself as a moral leader may seem strange. But the new President, for one, believes that the election "was then" and that the "time to govern" should obliterate inconvenient memories.

All ceremonial addresses are laced with generalities. The trick is to pick the right ones -- and Bush did. In tone and substance, the President's Inaugural was upbeat and confident, exactly what an inherently optimistic people expects at a moment of national celebration. Jimmy Carter showed how easy it is for a leader to lose his way. "Even our great nation has its recognized limits," said Carter in his Inaugural. He was right, of course, but missed the point nonetheless. A country conditioned to being No. 1, a country that believes that by right it should be No. 1, is not disposed to countenance slippage on what Bush called "democracy's big day."

From the political master he served loyally for eight years, Bush has come to appreciate the value of symbolism. By now it is innate: telegraphing decay is not the way to lead the free world. So it was that last Friday the new President said, "We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on earth," the accuracy of his certitude being irrelevant to the occasion. He even looked good doing it. "I can't explain it," Barbara Bush once said, "but . . . the camera shrinks him and makes him seem small." Not last week. Perhaps it was only the trappings, but George Bush finally looked presidential.

The perception has already taken hold: Bush is more sensitive and caring than Ronald Reagan, more of a hands-on administrator (could anyone be less?), a more accessible leader who will conduct spontaneous press conferences (if only to prove he is on top of his game), a pragmatic moderate willing to accommodate reality rather than rail against it. Already his excessive jingoism has been banished, out of sync with the style he seeks to project. (Was it really George Bush who said, after the Vincennes disaster last July, "I will never apologize for the United States of America. I don't care what the facts are"?) Already forgotten as well is the promise of "wholesale change" and "fresh faces." In the Bush Administration, the experienced and credentialed are welcome -- and everywhere. More than 80% of the top White House staffers appointed so far have served there previously.

Almost heretically, given the Republican Party's current center of gravity, National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft has moved his boss to the center by calling him a "Rockefeller Republican." To the Republican right, those are fighting words. So repugnant was Nelson Rockefeller's pragmatic moderation that they forced him from Gerald Ford's ticket in 1976. "Look at most of the ((Bush)) Cabinet and White House staff," says George Clark, the former New York State Republican leader who supported Reagan in 1980 against the preferences of the state party's dominant Rockefeller wing. "The more I see and read -- and I hope I'll come to think I'm just joking -- the more I think we should get ready to primary ((i.e. challenge)) Bush in '92."

Before then, Bush will have four years to entrench himself, and the significant difference between the new President and his predecessor was actually highlighted months ago. In his Inaugural, Reagan reiterated the basic tenet of his political philosophy: "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." In accepting the presidential nomination last August, Bush stated his view, sublimated for eight years, in five words: "I do not hate government."

Bush's "liberation" (as he put it in an interview with TIME) was on full display as the transition played out. The entire week, not merely the Inaugural, was carefully choreographed. "This is the week," said White House chief of staff John Sununu, "designed to set the tone for governing." The difference in tone was immediately apparent. On the Sunday-night television program 60 Minutes, Reagan once again disparaged civil rights leaders for "doing very well ((by)) keeping alive the feeling that they're victims of prejudice." The next day Bush attended a prayer breakfast honoring Martin Luther King Jr. Bush opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and once called King a "militant," but now he hailed the civil rights champion as a "great gift from God."

From there, Bush "shared" the disabled's "dreams of full participation" in society, and then promised a group of schoolteachers that "education will be on my desk and on my mind from the start, every day." At yet another gathering, he said the country should "work together to bring light to shine on all of God's children," a notion revisited movingly in the Inaugural when he charged the nation to help "the homeless," the "children who have nothing and those who cannot free themselves of enslavement to whatever addiction -- drugs, welfare, demoralization -- that rules the slums."

Symbols all. But something else was going on last week, something of substance and paramount importance: the beginning of what may be an exquisitely orchestrated retreat. The flip side of "kinder, gentler" is embodied in Bush's famous campaign pledge, "Read my lips: no new taxes," a politically expedient stance that helped him win election and now threatens his ability to govern successfully. "Backing off that promise could destroy his presidency," says a senior Administration official. "But we'll probably have to do just that. How we do it without making the President out to be a liar or an incompetent weakling is going to take all of George Bush's skills. The shiftiness required to get out of that box is going to make everything he's done to get here seem like child's play."

The money game, or more precisely the lack-of-money game, began its long and intricate course in earnest last week. There were direct signals, mixed signals, contradictory signals -- something for everybody. The central point, however, was unambiguous. A debate rages over the exact effect monumental federal deficits have on the nation's economic health and its role as a world leader. But the President left no doubt that he disdains those who claim that deficits do not matter. If asked, Bush would undoubtedly agree with the assessment of Alice Rivlin, a former head of the Congressional Budget Office. "The budget deficit," she told the Wall Street Journal, "has become a defense issue, a foreign policy issue, a health-care issue, an education issue. Getting the budget deficit behind us has become a test of our ability to govern."

On his own, Bush despairs. "If it weren't for this deficit looming over everything else," he said, "I'd feel like a spring colt." The emphasis carried into the Inaugural. "A thousand points of light," Bush's call for increased volunteerism, can be interpreted as a deficit-constrained alternative to federally funded programs. Soothing symbols may be all that the less fortunate get from the Bush Administration because, as the President said, "we have a deficit to bring down . . . We have more will than wallet."

Previous Inaugural calls for bipartisanship were almost always exclusively pleas for a unified American front in foreign affairs. Bush's seemed aimed primarily at domestic fiscal policy. "We need compromise," he said. "We need harmony . . . The people await action. They did not send us here to bicker . . . Let us negotiate soon -- and hard. But in the end, let us produce." Here, if nowhere else, one heard an almost plaintive cry: Help me, Congress, help me escape from the box I've created.

But didn't the man who Ronald Reagan once said "is part of every decision . . . part of policymaking here" know the magnitude of the problem long ago? Bush wants the nation to believe he did not -- a claim reminiscent of his assertion that he was out of the loop when Iran-contra went awry. To TIME last week, the President professed surprise. "I've started going over the ((deficit)) numbers finally, and they're enormous," he said. "I've been going over the realities of the budget . . . There are constrained resources . . . We've got to be a little careful in terms of not saying what year which initiatives would be undertaken or accomplished."

Supporting this incredible confession, Bush's aides have described a period of "reality therapy" for the President. "Frankly," says one, "he didn't understand the deficit until after the election. The sessions have been real eye-openers and have shown him how crucial a budget strategy is to everything else he wants to accomplish." Transition co-director Craig Fuller, who was Bush's vice-presidential chief of staff, agrees that the President has but recently delved deep into the budget. Bush is only now fully aware of the difficulties facing his "flexible freeze," says Fuller, especially if interest rates do not drop by the 3 percentage points that Reagan's last budget wildly assumes they will.

If the idea of presidential ignorance takes hold, the press and Congress will have a field day portraying Bush as a lightweight. Nonetheless, it could permit Bush to accommodate a "newly perceived reality" and then allow him to abandon his "no new taxes" promise. If so, the President will undoubtedly be glad to take a passing hit for having been misinformed. Bush survived Iran- contra, when reporters and adversaries were rooting around in his record to prove his complicity. He is even more likely to survive an Ignorance Sting, since most responsible Congressmen and economists have been hoping that he will somehow wake up and do "the right thing."

But how to proceed to the right thing? Last week's signals from Budget Director-designate Richard Darman were intriguing. At the outset, Darman seemed willing to raise new revenues if euphemisms like "definitional changes" and "user fees" could be substituted for the word tax. Then, in a yin-yang reminiscent of the early 1980s, when he helped craft Reagan's acceptance of revenue enhancements, Darman backed off, invoking the "duck test." No matter what a revenue raiser is called, he told Congress, if it looks like a tax and sounds like a tax, and people perceive it to be a tax, it is a tax -- and thus violates the President's pledge. Unless, he concluded cryptically, there are special circumstances.

A man who has worked with Darman for years calls him a "past master of the three-cushion shot. He'll always travel the more difficult route, in part because he likes the sport, in part because that road invariably leaves him the greatest number of options in the service of the ultimate objective."

It was no surprise, then, that a careful reading of Darman's statements (which also hinted at few, if any, dollars for the President's "kinder, gentler" programs) led some to conclude that he was allowing the Administration considerable wiggle room to raise taxes without using the dreaded T word. Watching Bush and Darman play out the game may become a full- time occupation. They could succeed. Congress is not eager to force legally mandated across-the-board budget cuts next fall. After posturing for partisan effect, the Hill may be more than willing to become a co-conspirator in permitting Bush to backtrack.

Yet a Bush "victory" in retreating from no new taxes would cheat the electorate of a fundamental choice. In a democracy, the central questions are who pays and who gets. How a government taxes depends on its rulers' political philosophy. Had new revenues been required in a Democratic Administration, Michael Dukakis would surely have opted for increasing income taxes. Bush and Darman have already indicated their preference for increasing the regressive sin taxes. Had Bush honestly said, as did Dukakis, that he would raise taxes only as a "last resort," the country might have had a genuine debate.

Why didn't he? Why, instead, did Bush voluntarily saddle himself with a seemingly intractable position? Roger Ailes, the media magician who crafted the Bush ads that permitted Dukakis no quarter, was one of the architects of "Read my lips." The "point is really pretty simple," says Ailes. "At the time, the race was close, and Dukakis had given us an opening by talking about taxes as a last resort. Now, let me tell you, the people believe politicians are going to raise their taxes. All the polls confirm this. So they're interested in figuring out which candidate is really going to do it only as a last resort.

"When a guy like Dukakis says what he says, no matter how responsible it may be, the people take it to mean that he'll raise taxes as a first resort. What you have to say to get on top of an issue like taxes is that you'd rather see your kids burned in the street than raise them. It wasn't the easiest case to make to Bush, but he understood the stakes. We did what we had to do."

Betting against Bush's ability to retreat without crippling himself politically is a fool's wager. If Bush's Inaugural-week activities revealed a near perfect pitch, it is because he has learned to discipline himself to do and say whatever is required to accomplish what he calls his "missions."

It wasn't always so. Beneath his sweet, decent facade, Bush, a no-nonsense taskmaster, is often described as pigheaded, a politician who frequently ignores his aides' advice in favor of his own instincts. As former aide Frederick Khedouri has put it, "George Bush holds strong opinions, and he is not particularly interested in elaborate discussion of whether he's right."

Sometimes trouble results. In 1980 Bush torpedoed his chances of winning the G.O.P. presidential nomination when Reagan surreptitiously invited the other contenders to a debate in Nashua, N.H., which was advertised as a two- man show. Against his handlers' advice, Bush refused permission for the others to participate. His petulance wore poorly, and Bush fled home. There, in the steam room of the Houston Country Club, Bush finally caught on: "How the hell am I ever going to get from here to there if I don't have the discipline to listen and watch and learn?"

Bush turned an important corner after Reagan won the New Hampshire primary. With only a few glitches, he demonstrated an ability to do whatever was necessary to become President eventually. After Nashua the goal was to contest Reagan graciously; a chance at the second spot was otherwise deemed out of the question. Bush bore down. Even in private, all talk of Reagan as "too old and out of it" to be President was banned. Followed almost scrupulously, the strategy worked. Bush was rewarded with the vice presidency and, following the next game plan, tried his best to disappear.

"Real success in American politics," said Nelson Rockefeller, "means only one thing." Which is why Rocky said he "never wanted to be vice president of anything." Neither did Bush. To reach his next goal, the 1988 G.O.P. presidential nomination, Bush proceeded offensively and defensively at the same time.

Knowing that Republican conservatives didn't trust him, Bush wooed them assiduously. Sometimes his obsequiousness was comical: until confronted with taped evidence, Bush denied having said Reagan's supply-side nostrums represented "voodoo economics." Sometimes it was dispiriting: Bush changed his positions on issues like abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment in order to conform to Reagan's views. His most blatantly fawning behavior, like saluting Jerry Falwell ("America is in crying need of the moral vision you have brought to our political life") and praising William Loeb, the New Hampshire publisher who had belittled him, caused critics to wonder about Bush's "corruption of ambition." Even George Will, one of the conservatives whose support Bush most coveted, was repelled. "The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another," wrote Will, "is a thin, tiny 'arf' -- the sound of a lapdog."

Defensively, Bush's "big decision," said Richard Williamson, a longtime Reagan aide, "was to salute the flag. When the Administration jumped, Bush jumped too." Shortly after Reagan-Bush won in 1980, the Vice President told key staffers that he would keep his head down and his mouth shut. "I'm not going to operate like Mondale," an aide recalls Bush saying. "I'm not going to leak my differences with policies that are unpopular. No one's going to catch me trying to cover my ass that way." And no one ever did. By the end, even some of Bush's oldest friends fretted. "He's submerged his own views," said former Maryland Senator Charles Mathias. "The question is whether they have survived and will they surface?"

"But it all worked, didn't it?" says Richard Bond, a longtime Bush aide who helped mastermind the President's election. "George Bush is one of the most underestimated men in politics. The key to him is that he has learned to keep his eye on the ball. He's learned that getting there requires that you sometimes swallow hard in order to later be in a position to do the things you want to do. The real way to view Doonesbury's line about Bush having put his manhood in a blind trust is to see it as a masterful act of political calculation and an extraordinary example of self-discipline."

So keeping his eye on the ball has finally got Bush "there." Getting to the next step -- re-election in '92 and then to a consensus verdict that he has been an effective President -- is going to require an even more disciplined devotion to competence over ideology. For although Bush has said, "We're coming in to build on the proud accomplishments of the past, ((not)) to correct ((its)) ills," a failure to redress the Reagan era's greatest ill could consign this President to political oblivion. Ironically, given his insistence that the key lesson to be learned from Reagan is that a successful President takes "a principled position and stays with it," Bush's own success may depend on yet another 180 degrees turn: the far more difficult task of abandoning a cardinal promise while keeping the Teflon intact.