Courting The

By MICHAEL DUFFY

For George Bush, the stinging criticisms by stalwart right-wingers like Jesse Helms of his handling of the Panamanian coup attempt were a bitter reminder of an old political truth: he has never been a favorite of Republican conservatives. As President, Bush might have been expected to ignore the demands of a faction that has been sniping at him for years; instead, he has wooed the right, doing the minimum, and sometimes more, to keep it happy. Says Stuart Rothenberg, a political analyst with Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Research and Education Foundation: "He's like the constant suitor. He's always there with the candy and flowers."

The wooing has heated up lately because Bush has angered conservatives by making concessions to Democrats on clean air, the contras and gun control. Unlike Ronald Reagan, whose ties to the right were so strong that he could occasionally ignore conservatives, Bush routinely courts the right.

Part of the courtship involves paying lip service to hot-button right-wing issues like abortion, tuition tax credits and the flag, though Bush has done little or nothing to advance those causes. For example, in June he called for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's ruling that flag burning is legal. But last week, after the Senate passed anti-flag-burning legislation as part of a plan for derailing any change in the Constitution, the White House reiterated its preference for an amendment but stopped short of threatening a veto. In late September Bush broke weeks of silence on the abortion issue by praising the "protection of human life" to a group of Catholic lawyers in Boston. But his Justice Department will not make oral arguments in any of the three abortion cases that will come before the Supreme Court this term.

Bush's romance with the right has shaped his approach to foreign policy. The President dismissed Democratic complaints that he has been slow to respond to the dramatic changes taking place in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with the comment, "I don't want to do anything dumb." That remark has several translations, among them: "I don't want the anti-Communist right to accuse me of giving away the store."

Bush has also allowed the right to veto some appointments. Two weeks ago, conservatives torpedoed M. Caldwell Butler, the White House's tentative choice to be chairman of the Legal Services Corporation. But Butler's future dimmed when the former Virginia Congressman told a group of conservatives that he would not stop a Legal Services lawyer from suing a hospital that refused to provide a Medicaid abortion. The group complained to chief of staff John Sununu, who backed away from the nomination.

Bush's hope is that by seducing the right he can pre-empt a conservative revolt that would complicate his re-election. "You just don't want them stirring up trouble," admits a senior Administration official. "If you can keep them happy now, then you're saving yourself a lot of headaches."

Some Bush advisers say his bows to conservatives are unnecessary. They argue that the right is unlikely to defect from the G.O.P. "A challenge from inside the party is likely only in the abstract sense," says a senior Republican official. That view is disputed by other Bush advisers, who maintain that the President has no choice but to tend to his right flank. Says Republican chairman Lee Atwater: "They're not going to bolt as long as George Bush keeps doing what he's doing."

But the right wing may prove to be a mistress that Bush can never fully please, especially if his strategy is to take no chances and give no offense. Conservative outrage over his handling of the Panamanian crisis is a virtual mirror image of liberal charges that he has been dragging his feet in response to developments in the Communist world. The President, both sides say, seems averse to taking risks and may miss historic chances to advance U.S. interests overseas. Complains a prominent conservative activist: "Enough of these lost opportunities will ultimately cause conservatives to call him timid." If so, Bush may reflect that it would have been better to anger right-wingers now than to disappoint them later.

With reporting by Hays Gorey/Washington