Is Bush Losing the Numbers Game?

Matthew Beck, a deputy sheriff from Pleasanton, Calif., stood up in the White House Rose Garden Wednesday morning and asked George Bush a question that's been on a lot of Americans' minds lately. "I'd like to know," Beck said, "why I should vote for you."

"That's a good one," Bush replied, as if Beck had just got off a real knee slapper. "That is good."

The President then launched into what has become the essential message of his re-election bid: "I think in the final analysis people are going to say, 'Who has the experience, who has the temperament to take on these big problems day in and day out?' Not that I'm perfect, but I've got a proven record of being tested by fire. I think that's a good reason to ask for some more time as President." Basically, explains the Chief Executive's general campaign chairman, Robert Mosbacher, with a fine disregard for grammar, Bush "will be the lesser of three evils."

That the White House has begun to resort to that least persuasive of arguments fully four months before the election suggests how clouded Bush's political future has become. The President of late seems more melancholy than usual, flashing with uncharacteristic anger in public, seemingly haunted by unseen furies. At a political fund raiser in Detroit last week, he complained that this "weird, peculiar" political season comprised little more than "endless polls, weird talk shows, crazy groups every Sunday telling you what you think." But less than 48 hours later, Bush himself was appearing live from the Rose Garden on the CBS This Morning show. The network's producers had plucked 125 somewhat perplexed people from a White House tour to ask questions while the Commander in Chief shifted uncomfortably on a wrought- iron lawn chair.

Bush knew he had to go on the offensive. A day later, the Labor Department would report that the nation's unemployment rate had risen in June to 7.8%, the highest in more than eight years. Bush called the jobless rate a "lagging indicator" in a recovering economy. But within an hour of the department's announcement, the Federal Reserve dropped the prime rate by half a point, to 3% -- the lowest level since 1963 -- in yet another attempt to jump-start a sputtering economy. But that news eventually drove stock prices lower as investors feared that the combination of more unemployed workers and falling interest income would conspire to depress corporate earnings.

The bad economic news may also explain new polls, released last week, that show a continuing slide in Bush's standing. A Washington Post-ABC News survey for the first time put Bill Clinton in the lead with 31%, followed by Ross Perot with just a fraction less and Bush with 28%.

Meanwhile, a summary of 41 statewide polls by the Hotline, a daily report on politics, shows that Perot is leading in 22 states to Bush's 12 -- enough to carry the Electoral College. Clinton, the Hotline said, was ahead in only four states, but that was twice what he held in the Hotline's last survey.

With Clinton's apparent bump in the polls stemming at least partly from several weeks of bad press for both Bush and Perot, the Arkansas Governor prudently stuck to his low-profile strategy. He concentrated instead on choosing a running mate and seemed to be narrowing his focus to two well- respected Capitol Hill veterans: Tennessee Senator Al Gore, who has strong defense and environment credentials, and Indiana's veteran Congressman Lee Hamilton, a foreign policy expert regarded as one of the House of Representatives' wisest heads. If the job goes to either man instead of an upstart newcomer like Pennsylvania Senator Harris Wofford or Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, Clinton will be betting that even in a "weird" political year, more voters value Washington experience than resent it.

Late last week, when Bush -- as expected -- vetoed the "motor voter" bill that would have required all states to allow voter registration when citizens apply for drivers' licenses or government benefits, Clinton was ready with a quip. "With 10 million Americans out of work," he said, "no wonder the President doesn't want to make it easier to vote." Bush's argument that the bill was needlessly bureaucratic and open to fraud was expected, but oh so uncomfortable in a season of such discontent.

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