The White House Nervous and Nasty

By Dan Goodgame/Washington

George Bush trusts his gut in foreign policy. He knows what he wants to do and he does it. But on the home front, the President fears that his moderate instincts will only land him in trouble with the Republican conservatives who have distrusted and dogged him throughout his long career. Thus a hallmark of Bush's governing style has been his determination to have it both ways on contentious domestic issues. On civil rights, for instance, Bush declares himself an opponent of racial hiring "quotas" reviled by the right. Yet he supports "set-asides" that reserve a share of federal contracts for women and racial minorities.

The President came face to face with that contradiction last Wednesday evening when he returned to the White House from a campaign fund-raising dinner. He was scheduled to sign the compromise Civil Rights Act of 1991 in a major Rose Garden ceremony the following day. But unbeknown to him, a senior aide had prepared a directive designed to undermine the spirit if not the letter of the new law.

This eleventh-hour rearguard action was launched by C. Boyden Gray, the White House counsel, who had opposed the bill from the start. Between 4 and 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Gray instructed his staff to fax to federal departments an order that, in Bush's name, "terminated" all government programs that give preference to racial minorities and women in hiring, promotion, federal contracting, college admissions and scholarships. Gray's view that the new law should be blind to color and sex is popular not only with conservatives but also with a majority of voters. Yet his position flatly contradicted both the compromise on the civil rights law that the White House had reached with Congress and Bush's long-standing support for affirmative action to overcome discrimination. The civil rights compromise, according to congressional negotiators from both parties, was not intended to have any effect on affirmative-action programs but was designed to make it easier for women and racial minorities to prove discrimination, while not forcing employers to hire and promote according to rigid racial quotas.

Gray's unauthorized directive was immediately leaked from the agencies that received it, and angry calls from Capitol Hill jammed the White House phones. Democrats and moderate Republicans denounced the directive. It was, said Ralph Neas, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, "an attempt to gain by Executive fiat what the White House could not pass through the Congress." A senior White House official agreed: "Boyden and his staff were just too close to the civil rights bill, and too many animosities built up. When it was over and the compromises were made, they still couldn't let it go."

Moving to quell the protests, Bush irritably ordered Gray and other White House officials to rewrite the offending statement and eliminate the challenge to affirmative-action programs. Yet any good faith that Bush might have won for that gesture dissipated at the signing ceremony when he declared his support for a minimalist interpretation of the civil rights law, entered into the Senate record by Republican leader Robert Dole. Said a disgusted White House official: "We have managed to incur the wrath of both the supporters and the opponents of this bill."

These flip-flops, like half a dozen others that have occurred at the White House in recent weeks, grew out of Bush's persistent efforts to placate conservatives without alienating moderates. As the civil rights act percolated through Congress, Bush expressed his opposition to any bill that seemed to encourage racial hiring quotas. But he did not want to appear to tolerate job discrimination. Walking that tightrope, Bush vetoed a version of the act that Congress passed last year, blasting it as a "quota bill." But the law he signed last week is essentially the same. By claiming that his exertions had vastly improved the legislation, Bush in effect retreated while trumpeting victory.

Such straddles have often worked for Bush, who as a boy was nicknamed "Have Half" for his habit of sharing candy bars with friends. And they have been necessary up to a point, because Bush's electoral coalition is more ideologically diverse and volatile than was Ronald Reagan's largely conservative constituency. But as the economy has soured, Bush's attempts to split the differences between moderates and conservatives have infuriated both. Republican pollster Linda DiVall says voters are dismayed that the resolute and decisive leader of the gulf war has appeared so uncertain in addressing their economic worries.

The Administration's message is the responsibility of the White House domestic operation, which is stifled by the arrogant amateurism of chief of staff John Sununu and cannot approach the savvy of Bush's crack foreign-policy crew. Democratic consultant Mark Mellman quips that the shift in public attention from Bush's foreign triumphs to his domestic dithering has transformed the White House "from the O.K. Corral to Cape Fear." Examples:

-- At a political-strategy dinner in early November, Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's last chief of staff, suggested that Bush could score political points by bashing banks for charging high interest rates on credit-card debt. Bush and Sununu embraced the gimmick and, without consulting other advisers, inserted it at the last moment into a fund-raising speech Bush delivered in New York. The Senate liked the idea so much, it passed legislation that would force down the rates -- and cut into revenues of many already shaky banks. That action, along with Bush's faux-populist rhetoric, helped push the Dow Jones industrial average into a 120-point dive on Nov. 15.

Sununu vehemently denied responsibility for the remarks, telling a television interviewer that "the President ad-libbed" them. That ignited speculation that Sununu was trying to make the President take the blame for the mistake and that Bush might move to replace him. But the President confirmed the chief of staff's account to at least one confidant, though neither he nor Sununu would say just how the bank-bashing idea made its way from the political-strategy dinner to the President's lips. Usually, Sununu takes the heat for unpopular moves or missteps by the President, which is the main reason Bush is loath to dismiss him. Another factor is Sununu's influence in New Hampshire, where Bush may face a challenge from conservatives in the first primary.

-- Bush says, "I'm concerned about the people that are hurting" and losing their jobs in the recession. Yet in the next breath he adds, "It's a good time to buy a house." Sounding eerily like Jimmy Carter in the last phase of his Administration, Bush often pins blame for the recession on consumers who are not spending as confidently as they should. Then he says he wants Americans to save more. Says Bruce Thompson, a senior Treasury official in the Reagan Administration and now director of government relations for Merrill Lynch, "They're all over the map."

-- The Administration has long maintained that modern communications allow the President to remain in constant touch with Washington while he travels the world. But when Bush came under fire for neglecting the U.S. economy, he and Sununu abruptly postponed a long-planned trip to Asia because, in Sununu's words, they didn't want to leave Congress without "adult supervision." Two weeks later White House press secretary Marlin Fitzwater was asked whether Bush would push for Congress to work through the holidays to pass economic legislation. Said Fitzwater: "They don't need the President to hold them in session overtime to get them to do something. It's not a schoolhouse full of kids up there."

Despised by much of his staff and many G.O.P. lawmakers, Sununu has drawn most of the blame for the Administration's foul-ups. Yet the problem really lies with the President. He bungles domestic policy because he has seldom made clear to his staff, the Congress or the public precisely where he wants to go, and by what means, on the economy, civil rights or most other homegrown issues. Several top Bush aides approvingly quote pollster Bob Teeter, who for years has urged Bush to "tell people what you would do if you didn't have a Congress, if you were a dictator."

Bush has resisted that advice out of fear that it might open him to attack from critics on all sides, make it easier to tell when he has compromised and prevent him from presenting his capitulations as victories. When Bush does take an unambiguous stand on a domestic issue, as he did in vetoing a law that would have allowed low-income women to obtain abortion counseling at federally funded clinics, it is usually out of fear of Republican right-wingers.

Bush is also worried that if he sends any new economic legislation to Congress, he will only cause the public to hold him more personally responsible for the recession. Bush fears that any economic-revival plan he puts forth will be outbid by the Congress, which will propose some combination of new taxes on the wealthy and new deficit spending.

Some of Bush's economic advisers have suggested ways to finance a stimulative tax cut without increasing the deficit: for example, through cuts in spending on defense and on Medicare and farm subsidies for the wealthy. But Bush so far opposes further defense cuts or any politically explosive fight over welfare for the well-to-do. Most of his advisers believe that unless the economy turns sharply downward, Bush will content himself with rejiggering the "growth package" -- centered on a cut in capital-gains taxes -- which Congress has failed to adopt for almost three years. Only if economic growth dips further is Bush expected to risk proposing a broad-based tax cut for the middle class.

Instead, Bush's current economic policy consists mainly of blaming congressional Democrats for the decline and turning nastier in his retorts to their criticisms of his failures to act. The President hopes that approach will pay off when he runs for re-election. But it is no substitute for a coherent attack on the nation's economic and social woes.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: TIME/CNN polls by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman

November figure from Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press

CAPTION: BUSH'S APPROVAL RATING