Racial Issues Still Stirring Emotions, Outburst Shows : Politics: Remarks by Bush and Bradley show the harsh feelings on both sides of the spectrum. Senator’s attack has a personal edge.

Quotas and affirmative action. The future composition of the Supreme Court. Lifting sanctions against South Africa. Mounting antagonism over these and other civil rights issues flared on Capitol Hill and at the White House Wednesday in an unexpected burst of emotional charges and countercharges.

And the eruption provided disturbing evidence that, despite more than 30 years of legal advances, tensions over racial issues are once more boiling up within the American political system.

Both Republican President Bush, by striking back at his critics in emotional remarks at a White House press conference, and Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley, by lashing out at the President in an impassioned address on the Senate floor, brought to the surface harsh feelings on both sides of the political spectrum that have long been festering.

On one level, the course of this angry debate over how the nation should deal with its intractable racial problems will help determine whether the Democrats and the Republicans gain or lose in partisan political terms.

But the more fundamental issue is whether the argument over differences between black and white Americans will help to clear the air--or poison it.

In terms of political strategy, the outbursts on each end of Pennsylvania Avenue were not hard to understand. Dating back at least to the 1988 campaign, with its GOP television commercials about a Massachusetts murderer who committed a rape while furloughed from prison, Democrats have seethed over what they see as a succession of Republican efforts to manipulate racial tensions for political advantage. For their part, many Republicans have reacted angrily to what they see as the Democrats’ effort to paint them as racists for disagreeing over the shape of government civil rights policies.

“I think the Republicans have manipulated racial issues for political advantage,” said Bert Rockman, University of Pittsburgh political scientist and co-editor of a forthcoming book on the Bush presidency. “The Democrats are trying to neutralize this by painting the Republican tactics as polarizing.”

In the short term at least, Republicans are confident of the outcome of this competition. “I think the civil rights issue hurts Democrats,” said Fred Steeper, a GOP pollster and 1988 Bush campaign adviser. “So it doesn’t bother me if the story is Bradley vs. Bush on civil rights.”

Steeper cited polling figures which show that a substantial majority of Americans oppose giving special preference to blacks and other minority job seekers. But views on race and civil rights are not all that simple. Steeper acknowledged that polls also show that Americans favor the idea of affirmative action when the phrase “special preference” is omitted.

Another factor that remains to be judged is the impact of Bradley’s attack on Bush. Anita Dunn, the New Jersey senator’s press secretary, claimed that he delivered the address not because of considerations of political strategy but because he was “personally very angry” at Bush’s handling of racial issues.

The personal thrust of his remarks gave them added force. “Mr. President, tell us how you have worked through the issue of race in your own life,” Bradley challenged Bush. “I don’t mean speech writer abstractions about equality or liberty but your own life experiences.

“We measure our leader by what he says and by what he does,” Bradley continued. “If what he says and what he does are destructive of racial harmony, we must conclude that he wants to destroy racial harmony.”

“That’s pretty powerful stuff,” said John Petrocik, a UCLA specialist in political parties and a Republican consultant. “Bush is probably going to have to respond to those charges.”

Bush did respond briefly in his press conference, striving to dismiss Bradley as “a very liberal senator.” And he went on to defend his own version of pending civil rights legislation to combat discrimination in the workplace.

“He sounded sincere,” Petrocik said. “I was listening to the press conference on the radio and I thought, if Americans listen to this, he’ll probably come off pretty well.”

In the end, for all the polling data and political calculation, race is an issue that Americans tend to view through the prism of their own personal experiences.

“Take all the kids walking around this campus,” the UCLA scholar said. “They all believe in racial justice. But if they want to go to law school and they can’t get in because of some black kid who is less qualified, it grinds them.”

Wednesday’s outbursts in Washington reflect the rising tension between those abstract commitments--shared by whites and blacks alike--and the far different perceptions of reality that many blacks and whites derive from their own personal experience.