Bush’s Worst Political Nightmare: Banks and Oil Fields Shut on Same Day : GOP: Conservatives could well support a candidate against the President in ’92. Bungled domestic issues, not foreign policy, really draw their ire.

It’s ironic that even as George Bush organizes the Western alliance for what could be war against Saddam Hussein in the Persian Gulf, forces in the Republican Party’s conservative wing prepare to fight him in Iowa, New Hampshire and other points of the GOP’s 1992 presidential selection compass.

U.S. policy in the gulf could become a factor--especially if it fails--because one possible Bush challenger, ex-Reagan aide Patrick J. Buchanan, is a critic of what he scorns as White House attempts to make America the world’s policeman.

Bush’s pursuit of a “new world order” is hardly central to the prospect of bloody civil war in the Republican Party. Conservative anger is more a function of Bush’s broken pledge on taxes and his lack of any serious domestic-policy agenda. But in what could be a revealing signal of rising dissatisfaction, five men are already getting encouragement as possible challengers: Buchanan, former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. duPont IV, retiring U.S. Sens. Gordon J. Humphrey of New Hampshire and William L. Armstrong of Colorado and state representative David Duke of Louisiana, the former Ku Klux Klan leader who drew 44% of the vote in October’s U.S. Senate race there. Duke, apparently set to enter Louisiana’s gubernatorial election this fall, has shown some interest in challenging Bush in a few Southern primaries. Humphrey is being courted to run as a favorite son in New Hampshire--where Buchanan has accepted an invitation to speak to the state GOP’s big Jan. 16 dinner.

Some of this is to be expected. The last two moderate Republican Presidents were also challenged: Rep. Paul N. (Pete) McCloskey and John M. Ashbrook opposed Richard M. Nixon in 1972, and Ronald Reagan almost unhorsed Gerald R. Ford in 1976. The list of possible Bush opponents is surprisingly long, notwithstanding that a Persian Gulf success could quickly trim it.

The basic right-wing complaint--that Bush isn’t trustworthy, isn’t even a conservative--echoes a similar dissatisfaction with Ford 15 years ago. There are some new twists, however, including resentment of Bush’s anti-tax infidelity; awareness that the bonds of the GOP presidential coalition hammered out during 1968-1984 are now weakening, and sensitivity to a growing intra-GOP tension between supporters of Bush’s “new world order,” who want the United States to be a global policeman--even if someone else writes the checks--and neo-isolationists, preoccupied with more narrowly defined national interests.

The upshot, then, is a strong probability that eroding bonds and common interests within the Republicans and conservative constituencies will support a 1992 challenge to Bush, principally over domestic issues and intramural animosities unlikely to be more than briefly subordinated--even by a U.S. triumph in the Persian Gulf. Not a few conservatives argue that Bush, preoccupied by foreign interests, doesn’t even have a serious domestic policy agenda--to say nothing of one appealing to the right.

Burton Y. Pines, senior vice president of the ultraconservative Heritage Foundation, has suggested conservatives could profit from running a third-party candidate in 1992, who would split the Republican vote, defeat Bush and get conservatives’ juices flowing again as they combat a liberal Democratic President.

They could be on the right track. That certainly worked back in 1976, when Reagan’s intraparty challenge to Ford divided the GOP and helped Democrat Jimmy Carter narrowly win the White House. Carter was like Geritol for the conservatives. Spending four years in opposition and ideological self-renewal helped conservative Republicanism come surging back to power in 1980.

Not that 1992 is quite the same. The conservative era appears to be winding down. Returning to power in 1996 will be difficult. But for elements of the right, more basic considerations of regaining self-respect are also at work. Some prideful conservatives feel they’d be better off going into opposition than atrophying in a second Bush Administration.

Psychologies like this would breed serious conservative intraparty opposition to Bush in 1992--just as they did to Ford. Back in 1972, by contrast, conservative hostility to Nixon--fierce as late as mid-1971--eased in early 1972. When the Democrats nominated liberal George McGovern, pushing the election dialogue into a more ideological mold, Nixon himself took up liberal-bashing.

Bush might get a similar break in 1992 if the Democrats nominate a liberal such as Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York. Bush could also get a significant near-term benefit if he can force Hussein to make an unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait. On the other hand, as Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas has indicated, the Persian Gulf and the economy together confront Bush with a make-or-break situation over the next few months.

If triumph is possible, so is tragedy. Should events sour for Bush on both fronts, he would start looking like a one-term President. In that case, not only would Democratic challengers start declaring for 1992, even the Republican candidate field would grow.

DuPont, Buchanan, Humphrey and Duke, for all their embarrassment potential, represent the sort of second-tier insurgencies unlikely to flourish under a national spotlight. Yet if difficulties intensify in both the Persian Gulf and in the domestic economy--up to the ultimate, one-in-100 scenario of Middle East oil fields and U.S. banks shutting down together--a strong protest vote climate could develop. In that case, even seemingly weak Republican challengers could poll strongly enough to frighten party leaders and start backstairs discussions about Bush retiring.

It sounds far-fetched and, if things go well in the gulf, it quickly could be. But it should be remembered that America’s 20th Century wars produced serious embarrassments for the Presidents who fought them--or for their party. By 1920, this country’s 1917-18 entanglement in World War I and in postwar European diplomacy was unpopular enough that Democrats lost the White House in a landslide.

Then in 1952, resentment over President Harry S. Truman’s controversial management of the Korean War was one reason for his defeat in that year’s New Hampshire Democratic primary and subsequent retirement. Again in 1968, voter discontent with Lyndon B. Johnson’s conduct of the Vietnam War was the principal explanation for his weak showing in New Hampshire. Johnson, too, retired after the dust had settled.

This could haunt Bush. Not only do wars that don’t go well militarily--Korea and Vietnam--force the Presidents who began and managed them to step down, but even conflicts brought to a successful military conclusion have later spun off a powerful politics of recrimination.

This happened after World War II, over such issues as “who lost China” and “who lost Eastern Europe” to communism. Republicans accused Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats.

World War I was even more vivid. The U.S. Congress eventually held hearings, through the famous Nye Committee, on the role of munitions makers in drawing the United States into the war. Other critics fingered Wall Street and British financial interests.

The White House willingness to risk tens of thousands of U.S. casualties to restore the El Sabah family as emirs of Kuwait would develop kindred overtones.

Kuwait is not your ordinary small and helpless invaded country. To the contrary, it may be the wealthiest small nation in the world. Its total overseas investment was recently reported at $2.8 trillion--including slices of major British and German corporations. In 1987, its per capita income exceeded that of Britain and Germany. Kuwait is now so rich from investments that it has been siding with Wall Street and the City of London, trying to reduce oil prices--contrary to the wishes of Kuwait’s fellow Arabs. This is one reason why Iraq invaded.

Bush, incidentally, has longstanding business ties to Kuwait. At a recent White House dinner, he startled guests by revealing that Zapata Offshore, which he founded and owned, built Kuwait’s first offshore oil well. Potential Bush challenger Buchanan has attacked the Administration for readiness to send Americans to die for rich Kuwaitis who regard U.S. soldiers as mercenaries. It’s not hard to imagine Buchanan and others further developing these charges if diplomacy gives way to body bags.

Thus the irony. Even as Bush seems to be leading a global coalition toward war with Iraq, the likelihood of a challenge to his 1992 renomination seems to be growing within the GOP. If the results in the Middle East aren’t auspicious enough to squelch that insurgency, the recent decisions and events in the Persian Gulf could become part of the debate. For Bush, the political stakes could not be higher.