Bush Praises Citizenry for Taking Back a Park : Drug War: The President lauds a grass-roots effort as his top aides battle behind-scenes over the federal role.

President Bush Thursday saluted the efforts of a mostly black, mostly poor community to reclaim a local park from drug dealers and equated such efforts to the movements for freedom that are sweeping Eastern Europe.

But while the President hailed the role of private citizens in the nation’s fight against drug abuse, renewing a public campaign that had flagged in recent weeks, senior aides were waging a behind-the-scenes battle over an updated strategy being drafted by William J. Bennett, director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy.

For Bush, the trip to Houston for a political fund-raiser provided an opportunity to turn a spotlight on what he wants to make a central element in the drug war--the work of community organizations, individuals and local governments without expensive federal government contributions.

“It’s a good chance to have a drug event and dramatize the efforts of the President in that area--keep the momentum going,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said aboard Air Force One as Bush flew here from Washington. The President plans to attend another anti-drug rally in Denver today.

But in Washington, Bennett and Richard G. Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, are in the midst of a fight over the scope of federal assistance for the anti-drug work of state and local governments.

Darman is aggressively opposing a Bennett proposal to provide state and local authorities with $700 million--a near-doubling of the current assistance package to which they are entitled. His opposition is based on concern that the huge increase could set a precedent that would encourage cities to turn to the federal government for law enforcement instead of raising the funds themselves.

Bush recently bowed to pressure to increase federal financing of the anti-drug war, when Congress approved an additional $3.2 billion for the program. The funding brought federal anti-drug spending to $8.8 billion this year, which is $900 million more than the President sought when he unveiled his national drug strategy--based on greater drug education, treatment and law enforcement--on Sept. 5.

Facing a crowd of about 1,000 people in Andrew Winzer Park, named after a slain police officer, Bush declared here Thursday afternoon that the nation’s anti-drug campaign “is not a federal problem for which there is a simple federal solution. We can’t do it by looking to the government alone.”

He said that in Eastern Europe, “people are seeking freedom to travel and freedom to vote, the freedoms we take for granted here in Houston, here in the United States.”

“But right here . . . brave men and women have used ‘people power’ to fight for another kind of freedom,” he said. “The freedom from fear. The freedom from crime. And freedom from drugs.”

Bush built his remarks around the successful drive 20 months ago by local residents in the Acres Homes area to rid the park of 25 or 30 cocaine dealers. The dealers had been conducting their business for drive-by customers in a dusty driveway just behind the field where his podium was situated, he said.

At one time, Bush said, Acres Homes was “the largest unincorporated black community in the south; its quiet tree-lined neighborhoods were mainstream America, the embodiment of the American dream.” Situated in the congressional district that Bush represented 20 years ago, the neighborhood near the park is now one of run-down bungalows and rutted streets.

“In recent years, the dream on Main Street has become the nightmare on Elm Street, a twisted, backwards world where our children and our playgrounds are taken away by an evil menace called cocaine, often out there in broad daylight,” the President said.

In Winzer Park, he said, that scene was redrawn when “1,000 people swept into the park” on April 9, 1988, and “swept the drug dealers out. And they haven’t come back.”

Neighbors banded together, got their children involved, and started an aggressive neighborhood watch program that included writing down license numbers and turning alleged drug dealers in to police.

Bennett, who is overseeing the federal government’s anti-drug fight, accompanied Bush to Houston, as did Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady. In a recent interview, Bennett expressed concern that progress in the anti-drug effort might have been slowed in recent months by the shift in attention to the events in Eastern Europe.

“We suffered a little bit in terms of attention,” he said. “Drugs yielded to the struggle for freedom. . . . In terms of the public debate and people keeping the hammer on--ringing the bell, every day, bang bang bang--that’s been a little hard.”

James Gerstenzang reported from Houston and Douglas Jehl from Washington.