What's Wrong With Bush?

By DAN GOODGAME

As a stony-faced George Bush struggled through a week of plunging approval ratings, sluggish economic-growth figures and angry sniping from his fellow Republicans, his personal physician, Dr. Burton Lee, mused on the fierce "predatory" impulses that politicians and journalists share with beasts of the jungle. "The second somebody looks like he's on the ropes," Lee said, mixing metaphors, "the hyenas come circling and howling around him. Then some people say, 'Oh my, he doesn't look well!' "

In response to persistent and unsubstantiated rumors that Bush is ill, Lee insisted that the President was in "excellent health." But Lee and others close to Bush can also see what is evident to anyone who watches TV news: the President is under enormous strain. Bush often said after the Gulf War he felt he, like his hero Abraham Lincoln, had been "tested by fire." But in that case, Bush was battling on the foreign-policy turf, where he is most sure of himself and for a cause in which he deeply believed. "This is in some ways a harder test for him," says a Bush campaign official. The President is now "forced to compete on the Democrats' home field" of domestic and economic policy. He also must absorb "a really unsettling rejection" of his campaign -- not only in opinion polls but even among his erstwhile Republican allies in Congress, who are alarmed at new surveys that show Bush is hurting their re- election chances.

The Bush-Quayle high command tried to counter this brewing insurrection last week by dispatching campaign manager Fred Malek to Capitol Hill. Malek gave House Republicans an upbeat private briefing and a slick brochure trumpeting the President's accomplishments. But many G.O.P. lawmakers felt patronized and berated Malek and his campaign colleagues for the message "vacuum" that has allowed Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore to pull some 30 points ahead of Bush in the polls. Minnesota's Vin Weber said several of his colleagues sarcastically urged the Bush-Quayle campaign to stop "sitting on our lead." Meanwhile, some of Bush's conservative critics -- including columnists George Will and A.M. Rosenthal, direct-mail impresario Richard Viguerie and policy analyst Burton Pines -- suggested that he step aside in favor of a stronger candidate. Terry Eastland, author of a new book on the presidency titled Energy in the Executive, speaks for many fellow conservatives when he observes that "Bush has not put forward a positive reason for people to elect him to a second term, other than his foreign-policy record, which is simply not enough." There is no evidence, however, that Bush is even considering quitting.

Bush looked relieved at the chance to flee Washington last week for swings into Texas and California. His speeches, forcefully delivered and with less of the mangled syntax to which Bush is prone, were generally well received. Yet bad news stuck to Bush like a cheap summer suit. In Waxahachie, Texas, he lobbied for reinstatement of the $8.2 billion superconducting-supercollider research project, which would create more than 7,000 jobs nationwide. By an awkward coincidence, however, General Dynamics had one day earlier announced that it would lay off 5,800 workers from its F-16 fighter plant in nearby Fort Worth.

Moving on to California, Bush defended high levels of peacetime defense spending as, in effect, a make-work jobs program -- an effective pitch in a state with a large aerospace industry. But once again, the President's timing was unfortunate. He arrived just as a newly published statewide poll put him 34 points behind Clinton, the most lopsided margin in that state's polling history. Then Bush's message was overshadowed by the release of a new economic report showing that gross domestic product grew only 1.4% in the second quarter -- half the rate of the previous quarter. Even Bush advisers concede that is not sufficient to reduce unemployment, which stands at 7.8% nationwide and 9.5% in California.

Bush and his economic advisers continued to try to divert blame for the economy to everything from Congress to the end of the cold war to Saddam Hussein to the German central bank. In a hard-hitting speech in New Orleans, Clinton portrayed the Administration's economic excuses as a Bush character flaw, proof of "the failure of the President to assume responsibility for the future of this country."

Under this double-pronged assault from foes and "friends," Bush has generally maintained a flinty stoicism. "It's tough now, but I know it's going to be O.K.," he calmly told one group of advisers. "I've been through this before, and I know my timing is right. This is my last campaign, and I'm going to run it my way."

Still, small cracks are showing in the President's facade. Confidants say he privately sounds "wounded" by a public that takes for granted his leadership in the Gulf War and his prudent oversight of communism's collapse. Sometimes this petulant attitude slips out in public, as when Bush recently observed that despite his signing a historic nuclear weapons treaty with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, the public remains fixated on the economy and asks, "What have you done for us lately?"

Bush is especially annoyed at the disloyalty of Republicans he has supported for decades by campaigning for them, attending fund raisers, even leading their families on private tours of the White House. He recently addressed a fund raiser for Senator Alfonse D'Amato, for example, only to have the New York Republican blast him days later for spending too much time on the golf course. Says Thomas ("Lud") Ashley, a close Bush friend since both men were at Yale: "George is normally a very even-tempered guy, but he's also a very loyal guy. And when he doesn't get loyalty in return, that does tick him off."

Ashley, who recently spent several days with Bush at Camp David, believes the President is getting good rest on the weekends -- jogging the wooded paths, hitting golf balls and taking frequent naps. But against the urgings of Dr. Lee, Bush last week heeded the fears of his political handlers and curtailed a planned 11-day vacation at his oceanfront mansion in Kennebunkport, Me. Instead he scheduled several new campaign trips and ordered his speechwriters to serve up tougher rhetoric for his surrogates and him. "I've been going through a little javelin catching . . . from the political opposition," Bush said Friday. "They've been dishing it out for 10 months. Let's see if they can take it." He also retaliated against at least one ungrateful Republican: word was sent to D'Amato that he could forget about any more help from the President.