‘Tranquil Presidency’ Cited : Regard for Eisenhower Sheds Light on Bush Style

Looking beyond the victory he hopes to achieve in November, George Bush has a role model for the kind of President he would like to be: Dwight D. Eisenhower.

“I think he had a certain character, a certain commitment to integrity and honor, and he enjoyed a rather tranquil presidency because the problems that faced him--although the problems facing any President are great--were not overwhelming for the nation. It wasn’t the most traumatic time in our history,” Bush said during a recent interview with The Times when asked to name his model for the presidency.

In significant ways, Bush’s choice of Eisenhower as a model sheds light on one of the most important questions facing voters as they assess the Republican ticket this fall: How would Bush manage the presidency? What kind of leadership and operating style would he use as chief executive? What might that mean for the country?

The answers, gleaned from the record of the vice president’s long career and from interviews with many who know him well, are something of a puzzle: Even some who are close to him acknowledge that--unlike Ronald Reagan, for example, who rose to prominence as the voice of conservative ideology--Bush’s life is marked by almost no deep-rooted commitments to specific issues or government policies.

And the evidence suggests that George Bush-the-senior-government-official and George Bush-the-politician have operating styles that are very different. That, plus his lack of clear identification with fundamental beliefs and policies and his limited administrative experience, are obstacles that Bush would have to overcome in the Oval Office.

In terms of his record as a government official, the choice of Eisenhower as a model reflects an approach to leadership and management that has marked Bush’s performance at almost every stage of his career. As U.N. representative, emissary to China, CIA director and vice president, Bush surrounded himself with capable aides. He showed warmth and concern in his dealings with others. He was moderate and pragmatic, shunning ideology, risk and confrontation.

He also left the nitty-gritty of government policy and administration to others.

In the words of David Keene, a political strategist who worked for Bush in his 1980 campaign for the presidency, the vice president is a product of the Northeastern Republican good-government tradition, “more process-oriented than goal-oriented, trying to bring the best minds to bear on public policy problems.” The strength of that approach is basic competence, Keene said, but the weakness may be lack of purpose and direction.

‘Bring the Best People’

“Bringing the best people into government is fine, but what would you tell them to do?” Keene asked. “I remember when I first met with him in 1978 in Texas and I asked what were the two or three things he’d like to accomplish and he said, ‘just bring the best people into government.’ I said fine, but what would you want them to do? He didn’t know.” By contrast, Keene said, “the way Reagan operates, he says, ‘Here’s what we want to do. Let’s get some people to do it.’ ”

Speaking for himself, Bush said in The Times interview:

“The way Eisenhower did it, attracting good people to office and delegating, and yet leading through spelling out clearly what he wanted--I thought all that was good. I would be a combination of delegator and hands-on. There are many, many specific problems and there are people to handle those specific problems that know more about them than I do. And yet I would set a philosophical direction.”

Such an Eisenhower-like approach to the presidency seems quite different, however, from the style Bush has displayed in politics. Pursuing his personal political goals, he has become a vigorous advocate of conservative ideology, a highly partisan and combative campaigner. As a politician he has taken the kinds of risks that Bush the government official has studiously avoided--choosing a little-known junior senator, Dan Quayle of Indiana, as running mate, for example, with little or no input from his highly experienced advisers.

And he has shown a taste for negative campaigning and slashing attacks on his opponents--from his labeling of Reagan’s economic programs as “voodoo economics” in the 1980 presidential campaign to his current allegations that Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis lacks patriotic zeal.

Could Pose a Problem

Such political tactics are well within the American tradition, but they could make it difficult, given a residue of political bitterness, for Bush as President to operate as the master of “gentle persuasion” as he suggested he wanted to do in his acceptance speech in New Orleans.

“Ike was a unique President. No one knew what party he was in until just before he ran for President,” said Robert J. Donovan, a biographer of both Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman. “Eisenhower’s campaign and presidency were as lacking in partisanship as he could make them. He didn’t have partisan enemies as we know them today. Already today we have a highly partisan, bitter campaign.”

Dealing with the consequences of his partisan political style could be especially difficult for Bush as chief executive because the Democrats are almost certain to control both houses of Congress. And they have grown accustomed to waging partisan battles with Republican presidents.

Recognizing the potential problem, Bush said: “I’d certainly try hard for a more cooperative relationship with Congress, and it’s not easy but I’d try.”

The next President will also encounter a world much more complicated than the one presidents such as Eisenhower faced, with complex domestic and international problems undreamed of in less unsettled periods. When Eisenhower entered the White House, for example, he inherited a relatively small federal deficit, civil rights was only beginning to emerge as an issue, and problems with things such as the environment and drugs were barely recognized.

More important, Japan and Europe were still digging out of the ruins of World War II, the global economy of today did not exist and the United States was by far the richest and most powerful nation on Earth.

Thus far in Bush’s career, the contrast between the politician and the government official has been obscured by the fact that in almost every assignment he has operated in the shadow of a more commanding public figure.

Supporters say--and even some Bush critics agree--that he has performed capably in all these assignments. But even when he ostensibly has been in charge, he has usually played a supporting role, either by choice or by force of circumstances.

As U.N. ambassador, Bush was kept on a short leash by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. As emissary to China, Bush’s major task was to hold things steady for Kissinger’s grand maneuvering. As Republican Party chairman, Bush’s job was to deflect fallout from the Watergate scandal from President Richard M. Nixon and the GOP.

As CIA director, he saw his assignment as mainly to restore the morale of an embattled agency and he generally left the task of making intelligence assessments and policy decisions to others with more expertise.

“He raised the morale of the staff enormously in a short period,” said Ray Cline, a national security analyst and former director of intelligence for the State Department. “George has had a remarkable career, but you’ve got to recognize that none of the jobs he’s held, including DCI (director of central intelligence), has been a managerial job.”

Stayed at Policy Level

George Carver, who served as a Bush deputy at the CIA, defended Bush’s performance at the agency: “I would have been very disconcerted if he had come in with 15 new initiatives he wanted to launch without knowing diddly about the intelligence business. He didn’t do that. . . . I wouldn’t call it a hands-off approach, but he had the sense not to go banging into things of a highly technical nature that he knew very little about. He stayed at the policy level.”

People who have worked with Bush in government, when asked what kind of President he would make, respond unhesitatingly that he would bring first-rate people into his Administration, consult widely with them before making decisions, and be more compromising than combative in his approach to problem solving.

Bush, talking in some detail for the first time about how he would envision his own presidency, said: “I think you have to delegate because nobody can be expected to know everything about everything. Government is too complex, the problems too enormous. But I think I’d be good in setting a philosophical direction, setting certain objectives, delegating authority and then staying in touch and I’ve always done that, in something as complicated as the CIA, or for the short period of time I was in business.”

Associates also say Bush would be more hands-on than Reagan, whose extraordinarily detached management style was cited by the Tower Commission as a major contributing factor in the development of the Iran-Contra scandal. At the same time, they say Bush as President would be more detached than Jimmy Carter, who over-managed to the point of keeping up with who was playing on the White House tennis court.

Settle Internal Disputes

Internally, friends say, a Bush Administration probably would run more smoothly than the Reagan Administration because Bush would be more willing than Reagan to step in and settle the kinds of internal disputes that frequently have rocked--and even paralyzed--the White House and the State and Defense departments during the last 7 1/2 years.

Bush’s problems as President probably would revolve more around external than internal operations--seeking support from a populace that so far has shown little enthusiasm for his leadership and searching for common ground on Capitol Hill, where even some Republicans have seriously questioned his ability to lead the nation.

And there is wide agreement both in and out of government that the next President will face extremely difficult and contentious challenges in economic and national security policy.

His supporters argue that Bush has the steel needed to meet such challenges. They point not only to his combat record in World War II but to his toughness as a campaigner this year.

Last February, for instance, after his humiliating third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses behind Sen. Bob Dole and even religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, Bush summoned his top campaign advisers for an emergency meeting in his sixth-floor hotel room in Nashua, N.H.

‘Going Down the Tube’

His aides could see the presidential nomination “going down the tube,” as one of them put it, and they were devastated. But not Bush.

“I don’t want to see any long faces and let’s don’t wring our hands or point fingers,” said the vice president, looking around the room at campaign manager Lee Atwater, pollster Robert Teeter, adviser Nicholas F. Brady, press spokesman Peter B. Teeley, and vice presidential Chief of Staff Craig Fuller. “Let’s sit down and figure out a way to win New Hampshire.”

And that’s what they did. Bush went on to win New Hampshire with such bare-knuckles attacks on Dole’s position on raising taxes that the irascible Senate minority leader finally demanded on national television that the vice president “stop lying about my record.”

Bush supporters say the New Hampshire incident, and his combativeness in defending Quayle, reflect a resilience and a coolness under fire that would enable “President Bush” to operate with equanimity in time of crisis or adversity.

Brent Scowcroft, who served as President Gerald R. Ford’s national security adviser when Bush was director of the CIA, said: “After Iowa, he kept his cool, revised his strategy and let others implement it. And I can’t recall any time when Bush didn’t behave well under pressure.”

Resourceful, Determined

In fact, when he has had something personal at stake, Bush has shown a resourcefulness and determination over the years that have served him well, ranging from his surviving two close calls with death in World War II to emerging--at least so far--relatively unscathed from Iran-Contra and other Reagan Administration scandals.

But when policy issues have been at stake, the vice president does not have a record of battling for policies or positions he cares about. Even his staunchest allies appear to be at a loss to cite anything he has done as vice president during the last 7 1/2 years that would indicate how deeply he feels about any issues or about how he would lead the country.

If his government record is any indication, says presidential scholar James David Barber, Bush would be “a steady, reliable, consultative President, but any major foreign or domestic initiatives in a Bush presidency would be unlikely.”

Bush’s record as vice president appears to support that assessment. At Cabinet sessions and other White House meetings, he has seldom offered an opinion on anything. For that matter, he hardly engages in the discussions, say officials who have sat in on numerous sessions that he has attended.

“In almost six years of White House meetings I attended,” says a former senior White House official, “he spoke up only once, and that was in behalf of an oil depletion allowance. He had no influence that I could see.”

Supportive of President

On the other hand, some Bush advisers argue that a vice president is not supposed to have an imprint on policy. James A. Baker III, Bush’s longtime close friend and new campaign chairman, says that Bush has been “a super vice president for this President--completely loyal and supportive of the President’s policies.”

The vice presidency, says the politically astute Baker, “just isn’t a good place to run for President. It’s not an operational job.”

Bush does not necessarily agree with that. In his 1987 autobiography, “Looking Forward,” he wrote that while “everybody belittles” the vice presidency, nobody turns down a chance to serve in the office. And he quoted the nation’s first vice president:

“Today I am nothing,” wrote John Adams, “but tomorrow I may be everything.”

“But beyond the morbid,” wrote Bush, “the modern vice presidency holds out other possibilities. The prestige, if not the power of the office, has grown since the end of World War II. . . . Given the right President, it’s possible for the right vice president to have an impact on Administration policy.”

Pinpoint Influence

Whether Ronald Reagan and George Bush have not been the right mix or whether Bush was wrong about the modern vice presidency, the fact is that under Reagan the vice president finds it difficult to pinpoint any influence he has had on public policy.

He refuses to talk about the substance of his one-on-one discussions with Reagan at their weekly luncheon sessions on grounds of confidentiality and loyalty to the President.

However, when asked during a recent interview with The Times to cite any issues where he had made a difference during the Reagan Administration, Bush mentioned foreign affairs, government regulations, and programs to combat drug abuse and terrorism.

“Our record in interdicting tons of marijuana and cocaine--I’ve had some direct role in that,” said Bush, who headed an Administration anti-drug task force. “Although the agencies themselves are directly responsible, the vice president had a coordinating role.”

The vice president also cited his role as head of an Administration anti-terrorism task force and called a report issued by the task force “very sound.”

In a sense, the report of the anti-terrorism task force--and the events surrounding it--reflect the puzzle of George Bush:

The report, which Bush points to as reflective of his leadership, cautioned against dealing with terrorists for the release of hostages. And it was being prepared even as the Iran-Contra scandal was unfolding, an affair that involved exchanging arms for hostages, and that Bush supported although he has insisted that he knew little about the details.

Staff writers Cathleen Decker and Doyle McManus contributed to this story.