Bush Tries to Shake Image of Inaction : Economy: President orders aides to fully implement programs to aid unemployed. But his spokesman admits that the action means nothing.

Still uncertain how to respond to the troubled economy, President Bush sought Monday to put the best face on inaction even as he came under new pressure to devise a plan to promote economic growth.

As he returned to Washington after a holiday weekend devoted to political strategy, Bush vowed anew that his Administration was “not going to do anything dumb,” despite mounting calls for action.

In a telling gesture, Bush summoned reporters to declare that he had ordered his Cabinet “to assure the most effective implementation” of existing programs designed to help those most affected “by the current economic climate.”

The chief White House spokesman acknowledged later that the move had no practical significance, and the announcement served only to betray uneasiness within the Administration at being seen as doing nothing.

“The President simply wanted to make a special point of the fact that we are in a time of serious economic difficulty,” Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

As a group of real estate agents met with Bush to plead for urgent action, there were hints that the President might step up his timetable. But White House sources, noting that senior officials remain locked in indecision, cautioned that action is unlikely to come soon.

“At least for the next couple of weeks, don’t expect anything,” a White House official said.

With senior officials scheduled to defend the Administration stance this week during congressional committee hearings, the policy deadlock has left the White House casting about for short-term public-relations solutions.

In an eleventh-hour endorsement, Bush last week gave his blessing to an economic growth package backed by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), despite objections from his senior advisers to some of its key provisions.

The move was designed to put Democrats on the defensive on the last day of the congressional session. But it backfired when congressional leaders scheduled this week’s hearings, and sources said there was renewed debate within the White House on Monday about the degree to which the Administration should continue to embrace the Gingrich plan.

Instead, after a weekend of reconsideration, Bush and his senior advisers seemed to be doing their best to put the one-day affair behind them, instead proceeding with caution as they weighed what to do next.

“Maybe there are some good suggestions coming right out from the front lines here that will help us even more,” Bush said as he began what he said would be a monthlong effort to “stay engaged with the mainstream.”

In addition to Monday’s meeting with real estate officials, Bush is scheduled to visit Florida, Mississippi, California and Illinois in the next week to “get a feel of what the problems are and what the solutions should be,” a White House official said.

“Over the next month, I’m going to continue to challenge our Administration as well as the American people to address these tough times with confidence, with enthusiasm that has become an American trademark,” Bush told reporters, reading from note cards.

Separately, Administration officials disclosed that Bush was preparing to invite a group of top U.S. corporate executives to join him on his visit to Asia later this month in order to emphasize the link between the trip and the domestic economy.

Bush postponed the trip after a sudden plunge in his standing in opinion polls showed that voters were increasingly troubled by his preoccupation with foreign affairs. With corporate leaders now expected to join him in some meetings on the two-week trip to Australia, Singapore, South Korea and Japan, the focus will be “more of a trade mission,” a White House official said.

With his public remarks, Bush appeared to be responding to loyalists’ advice that he counter public perceptions of White House paralysis by emphasizing instead what his Administration is already doing to ease the burden of a crippled economy.

Among those whose counsel Bush sought over the holiday weekend, Republican sources said, were his son and sometime political adviser, George Bush Jr., and his 1988 campaign manager and longtime friend, Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

But the main plank of his Monday morning statement began to splinter as White House officials were forced to concede that in “directing the Cabinet” to fully implement federal job placement and unemployment benefits programs, Bush had done nothing more than instruct his subordinates to do their jobs.

“There isn’t any new money involved,” Fitzwater said, “and we assume that it has already been done. . . . “

While at Camp David, Bush also heard from advisers who have urged him to find a replacement for his embattled chief of staff, John H. Sununu, who many blame for recent White House miscues. But Fitzwater on Monday said of Sununu: “The President has full confidence in him. Nothing’s changed.”