Presidential Prankster

By Michael Duffy/Washington

He orchestrated George Bush's daring behind-enemy-lines raid on Boston Harbor during the 1988 campaign. Later that year, he struck again, winning from several Massachusetts' police groups endorsements of Bush instead of the state's Governor, Michael Dukakis. At the time, he described himself as a practitioner of "psychological terror" and "disinformation."

The late Lee Atwater? Nope, Ron Kaufman, George Bush's new deputy assistant for political affairs. Named last month to the job held by Atwater during the Reagan years, Kaufman comes from the same school of hardball politics as the former Republican Party chairman. Kaufman once asked an associate why his reputation as a prankster was so enduring. Came the reply: "Because you are a prankster."

Last summer Kaufman allegedly conspired to disrupt the Massachusetts state Democratic convention. Party officials say he helped organize a picket line of local policemen outside the hall in Springfield. The demonstrators roughed up a few would-be conventioneers and delayed the start of the ceremonies for a few hours. Within days, the state party sued Kaufman and other local operatives for damages. Lawyers will take Kaufman's deposition in Boston this week.

Kaufman claims he had nothing to do with the fracas. He insists that he was holed up in a nearby hotel room -- and in constant cellular telephone contact with the picket line -- for a benign purpose: boning up for an appearance as a guest commentator on local television and radio news programs that night. One of the pickets allegedly boasted that "me and Kaufman really screwed up the convention." He later said the comment was just a joke.

| Justice Department officials have warned lawyers for the Massachusetts Democratic Party that requests for depositions by Kaufman's White House co- workers may be met with claims of "Executive privilege." The White House doesn't want to talk about the case because Kaufman represents an awkward side of Bush's personality. The polite, ever congenial President throughout his career has surrounded himself with political hardballers whom he counts on to say and do the nasty things that sometimes get politicians elected. For much of his career, Bush has begrudgingly gone along, even if the better angels of his nature have regrets about it later.

Those regrets were conspicuous by their absence last week. Bush, who as Vice President, made a profession out of going to funerals, passed up the rites for Atwater to go bonefishing in the Florida Keys; he sent Dan Quayle to the South Carolina ceremony and attended a Washington memorial service near the end of the week. It was a curious decision. Atwater, more than any other person, was responsible for Bush's 1988 election triumph and was, Barbara Bush once said, "like a son" to the First Family.

Before he died, Atwater apologized to Dukakis and others for the harsh personal attacks and mudslinging that marked the 1988 campaign -- and were a hallmark of his career. "Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people," he said. That deathbed conversion had to be difficult for Bush. The President may harbor misgivings about the mudslinging of the campaign, much of which he opposed initially. "He and Mrs. Bush were always a little ambivalent about Lee," said an official last week. In recent weeks Bush has chatted with unusual intimacy with at least one top aide about the personal price of politics. In public, Bush would say only that he found Atwater's realizations "interesting and enlarging."

For weeks, the former G.O.P. chairman's public recantation has seemed to echo in political circles. The Sawyer/Miller Group, a New York City-based political consulting firm, which recently lured former Reagan political field marshal Ed Rollins, has sworn off political work. Even Atwater's old firm, Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, has made a similar move.

But however uncomfortable Bush may have been with Atwater's public confessions, he cannot join in the redemption. The late C. Fred Chambers, an old Bush friend from Texas, once explained that the President was often willing to do what was necessary to "get to a position where he can do what & he wants." Bush may again have a need for a Lee Atwater, and Kaufman might have to be drafted for the job.