California Schemin'

By MICHAEL DUFFY

George Bush hasn't been seen rollerblading in Wayfarers and spandex biking shorts down the Pacific Coast Highway, but judging from the ardent way he has been wooing California for the past few months, it may be only a matter of time. After blowing off California during his first two years in the White House, Bush has lately turned to blowing it kisses. He has assured Californians how much he enjoys visiting them, telling a Los Angeles audience in September that his wife Barbara "likes, just plain likes coming out to California." And he vows to keep coming back.

If this seems like an election-eve conversion, it should. The President doesn't really like much about California except its trove of 54 electoral votes, 20% of the total he needs to win a second term. His weird Tex-prep political roots have always put him culturally closer to Barbara Mandrell than to Michelle Pfeiffer. As an Administration official explained, "I don't think Bush has ever had an affinity for the place. He finds the culture rather alien." In his autobiography, Bush mournfully recalled the late 1940s when he worked as a traveling drill-bit salesman in California's dusty oil fields. Bush spent his days dreaming of Texas. "Barbara and young George couldn't wait to get back," he wrote. "Neither could I."

Being Ronald Reagan's Vice President left Bush no choice but to cater to the California operatives who turned the White House into an imperial palace and presidential events into Hollywood extravaganzas. But he escaped whenever he could. While Reagan fled Washington for the mountains north of Santa Barbara, Bush preferred the rocky coast of Maine -- about as far from Malibu as he could get without leaving the continental U.S.

His unease grew worse during the 1988 presidential campaign. Bush resisted his handlers' desire to schedule repeat visits to the state, understandably reluctant to appear at campaign stops alongside such silly cartoon characters as the Three Little Pigs and a trio of purple, rug-cutting California Raisins. Luckily for Bush, his advisers prevailed: he narrowly won the state, eking out a 51% majority with the help of last-minute appearances by home state hero Reagan, two of them the day before the election.

Once elected, Bush did his best to ignore California. White House chief of staff John Sununu got into several ugly rows with then Senator Pete Wilson, who was running for Governor and charged that the White House was treating California as just another "account."

By February 1990, California Republicans were feeling so scorned and abused that Bush set out to repair the rift. That spring, Sununu and the late Lee Atwater mended fences with several dozen big-dollar fund raisers at the Orange County home of developer Donald Bren. More recently, Wilson invited Sununu to Sacramento for his swearing-in.

By rights, Bush shouldn't have to do so much to woo California Republicans. His natural moderation should appeal to the average California Republican, who is fiscally conservative but socially more liberal than most G.O.P. voters in other states. But Bush's hard-line opposition to abortion -- adopted to placate his party's right flank -- lands him to the right of 60% of California's G.O.P. conservatives, according to a private Republican poll. And his refusal to ban all oil drilling off the coast places his ecological credentials in question in a state where everyone is an environmentalist.

But what really gives Bush the creeps is the dark portents California holds for the future of the Republican Party. The whirlwind that the G.O.P. sowed nationally with its antitax campaigns -- and its neglect of highways, schools and other public services -- has touched down in California, battering Wilson and tearing the state G.O.P. apart. The antitax revolt that was started by California Republicans and culminated in Bush's "read my lips" campaign of 1988 has hardened voters so indiscriminately against taxes that those same Republicans can't govern after they're elected. Trapped in their own antitax rhetoric, they find that voters are refusing to pay for programs that even Republicans support. Like Wilson, Bush nearly lost control of his party during a bloody budget fight last year. Abortion could cause even bigger battles in Bush's party -- and not only in California.

These demons, plus the state's ailing economy, make winning California a formidable challenge for Bush. A White House strategist put it this way, "In 1992, there will be two campaigns: California and everywhere else." Those dancing raisins may soon find themselves in presidential company again.