More Verve, High Visibility : ‘Underdog’ Bush: Just Beginning to Bite

Brief as it was, Vice President George Bush’s swing into California this week offered a glimpse of the maneuvering that voters can expect in the coming months--carefully choreographed breaks with President Reagan, soothing and traditional entreaties to Republicans and an outright assault on his now all-but-official Democratic rival, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

And, always, there was something for the TV camera: Clad in an orange apron, Bush stood in a model pizza kitchen in Irvine on Monday, for example, learning how to place four dozen pieces of pepperoni on a slab of dough, cheese and tomato sauce as his pizza-concocting coach looked on approvingly.

Bush’s California trip was his first start out of the blocks since his campaign team hunkered down in Maine for strategy sessions last week. Within an hour of his arrival for the three-day visit, some change was apparent.

The vice president made two substantial breaks with the Reagan Administration, for example: On Sunday he called for delaying the sale of oil-drilling leases off Northern California, and, the following day, he came out in support of reparations to Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.

Statements to the Press

Both times the pronouncements were made in front of reporters rather than before Republican audiences. While Bush did later describe his shifted position on offshore drilling to a crowd of prospective voters, the matter of compensating Japanese-Americans was raised and dropped at one press conference--after, presumably, it had come to the attention of the ethnic voters to whom it was addressed.

Before Republican voters and business groups, Bush exercised his cautious streak and stuck with the same speech he has used since he campaigned in the snow of New Hampshire four months ago.

Bush called reducing the capital gains tax, blamed Congress for the federal deficit, touted the recently ratified Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, asked for the line-item veto and a spending freeze and bemoaned the state of affairs under the Administration of Jimmy Carter, the last Democrat to hold the job to which Bush aspires.

Aides said the themes are likely to recur in coming months, fleshed out with references to “investing in our children,” a promised new emphasis that received only passing notice in California.

“He’s going to be pretty repetitive on some of those major things,” said Ed Rogers, a deputy to Bush campaign manager Lee Atwater.

Attacks on Dukakis

The most consistent California refrain was Bush’s increased thumping of Dukakis.

“He is a Massachusetts liberal of the stripe of George McGovern,” Bush harrumphed in Ontario, Calif., on Monday before a small group of appreciative Republicans who had paid $50 to hear him.

That vein will be even more deeply mined today, when the vice president is expected to deliver a point-by-point comparison of his and Dukakis’ policy positions at the Texas State Republican Convention in Houston.

As he did in California, Bush can be expected to decry Dukakis’ support of a prison-furlough program and his veto of a bill to require teachers to open the school day with the Pledge of Allegiance.

“I’ll never understand, when it came to his desk, why he vetoed a bill that called for the Pledge of Allegiance to be said in the schools of Massachusetts,” Bush said in his election night address at the Doubletree Hotel in Orange. The mention prompted anti-Dukakis boos from the Republican crowd. “I’ll never understand. We are one nation under God. Our kids should say the Pledge of Allegiance.”

The biting nature of Bush’s anti-Dukakis remarks overshadowed the more relaxed public campaign style he unveiled in California.

A New Accessibility

As he did last week in Maine, Bush in California made himself more available to reporters than he was on excursions in months past. The political glasnost will continue this week, when Bush has press conferences scheduled for Thursday in Houston and Friday in Denver. Earlier in the primary season, before he slipped in national popularity polls, Bush had kept press conferences to a minimum.

While it did little to advance his own specific agenda, Bush has demonstrated a new enthusiasm, born of the underdog status his campaign has acquired.

When he stepped up to a podium at Chaffey High School in Ontario, Bush received the requisite applause--and a lone, loud wolf whistle. “Anything to get out of class, I know,” he joked. Then he delivered a well-received gag about cafeteria food.

His speeches, if the standard fare, nonetheless were delivered with more verve than the often-wooden Bush has exhibited in weeks past, and he repeatedly declared his enthusiasm for the season of Dukakis-bashing to come.

‘I Like Fighting Back’

“I can’t wait for this primary season to end,” he said on election eve, with what appeared to be a measure of spunk. “I can read these polls. In fact, I like it. I like fighting back.”

The vice president, in his most blunt public assessment of his current underdog dilemma, on Tuesday laid out his main objective for the weeks preceding the Republican National Convention in August.

“I have to spell out my own identity,” he said. “And when you’ve been vice president and conducted yourself the way I have, I think . . . people (are) wondering what does George Bush feel passionately about? And I do feel passionately about peace and prosperity and education. So I’ll have plenty of chance to spell that out.”