Bush’s Trip Carries Heavy Political Load : Asia: He must persuade American voters that opening markets abroad will help resolve what is wrong at home.

President Bush today began a politically daunting new year confronted with the need to persuade American voters that his trip Down Under and beyond could help resolve what is wrong back home.

Indeed, Bush’s four-nation Asian trip seems to be taking on the trappings of a campaign whistle-stop tour as he seizes every opportunity to drive home the message that what is good for trade is good for America.

With hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs dependent on Asian markets, Bush’s economic logic is faultless. But the political burden of a sluggish economy means that what might have been a simple diplomatic journey now carries a homeward-looking cast.

As he climbed aboard Air Force One to begin his 10,000-mile journey here, the President was still trying to make a case for a “new reality,” in which a trip to Asia should be seen as looking out for domestic interests.

And after a jog on the grounds of a posh Australian boys’ school near his hotel, he told reporters that his New Year’s resolution “while people are hurting like that . . . has to be for the well-being of the American people.”

Yet the way Bush greeted the new year--to spectacular fireworks over Sydney Harbor--when it was still barely New Year’s Eve in the United States--seemed to symbolize the disconnection between President and voters that now appears to plague his reelection prospects. Indeed, political polls indicate a mounting impatience among ordinary voters with his penchant for foreign travel and that new political math.

“I must not have been as clear in terms of emphasis as I should have been because they say the President doesn’t understand what’s happening,” Bush said last week in a rare concession.

But as he began his 12-day swing through Australia, Singapore, South Korea and Japan--the longest trip of his presidency--there was little indication that Bush has yet found a way to make his point.

On a trip intended to voice the pique of American consumers, he appeared likely to be confronted instead on his first full day with Australian complaints. At a get-acquainted meeting with Australia’s new prime minister, Paul Keating, Bush will be asked instead to defend an unfair U.S. trading practice: a decision to subsidize wheat sales to China and Kuwait in apparent violation of a pledge not to meddle in the markets of Australia, another big wheat exporter.

And by inviting 21 U.S. business executives to join him on the journey, Bush has attracted complaints from voters who see the highly paid, all-male and nearly all-white group as unrepresentative of American concerns.

A Wall Street Journal survey found that the average annual income of each of the 12 corporate chairmen in the group exceeds $2 million. In denouncing Bush’s close ties to that group, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, a Democratic presidential aspirant, has blasted Bush for allowing “self-serving CEOs” to “build an economy out of paper and perks instead of people and products.”

Bush has warned critics “not to underestimate me again” and pronounced himself eager to return to what he calls the “combat” of a presidential campaign.

“We’re going into a hell of a year over there,” he said this morning. “It’s politics from tomorrow on, and it isn’t very pleasant.”

His trip to Asia, twice-postponed and now overlapping the beginning of the campaign, is bound to be a distraction. Bush is expected to consult by telephone across about 16 time zones with his new chief of staff, Samuel K. Skinner, and other advisers who stayed behind to plot reelection strategy.

Among the issues to be resolved while Bush is away is whether he should wait until the State of the Union address or proceed more quickly in putting forward proposals designed to rekindle the economy.

And from the road, Bush’s early efforts to put a domestic stamp on a foreign trip have not been without awkwardness. This morning, he invited an Australian doctor to visit him in his hotel room for no reason other than that the man flew an American flag from a pole along Rose Bay.

“I think I speak for all the American people when I tell you how wonderful it was to see the Stars and Strips flying along the shore,” Bush told reporters.

The President was not expected to discuss controversial grain issues with Australian officials in any detail until Thursday. His New Year’s Day here is to be devoted primarily to sightseeing and relaxation.

But in his one public address, at the National Maritime Museum, he praised the “fraternal ties of culture and commerce” between the two nations. And with Australia facing unemployment of 10.5% and an 18-month-old recession, he made clear to reporters that he does not intend to seek the kinds of trade concessions from Canberra that he hopes to win from Tokyo and Seoul.

Nevertheless, in meeting today with Prime Minister Keating, a man he had met only once before, Bush was confronted with an uncomfortable reminder of political mortality.

Bush had come to Australia in large part to fulfill a longstanding promise to former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, a fellow golfer and kindred spirit. But Hawke unexpectedly lost his hold on power last month after proving unable to reverse Australia’s economic misfortunes.

Hawke joins former Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu as one of the officials Bush had hoped to visit while in office but must instead meet as private citizens. And because both men were ousted in leadership battles within their own parties, Bush may well be relieved that, in all likelihood, his own day of judgment will not come until November.

“I count my blessings that we have the presidential system and not a parliamentary system,” Bush said in a television interview as he looked forward to the trip.

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