Critics Say Bush Campaign Lacks Firm Hand at Helm : Republicans: Wrangling among his advisers and a series of ever-shifting plans add to the President’s woes.

As President Bush coyly tells voters to “stay tuned” for his approaching State of the Union address, a mood of unease is spreading among dispirited aides who fear that too much political hope is again being invested in a single event.

At a time when memories remain sharp of an Asian trip that failed to live up to its “jobs, jobs, jobs” advance billing, the internal debate about how to avoid a painful repetition is creating new tension between the White House and the Bush campaign, according to Republican officials.

And the disagreement over how to handle the State of the Union message is only one symptom of a larger problem: With the early presidential primaries drawing near and the nation’s continuing economic troubles eroding Bush’s popularity, the crew assembled to steer his reelection course lacks a seasoned hand at the helm.

“It’s as chaotic as I’ve ever seen it,” one White House official says. “People are following orders with no clear purpose.”

As a candidate four years ago, Bush could count on the proven judgment of veteran campaign operatives led by Lee Atwater and Bush’s longtime friend and former top White House official James A. Baker III. But time and circumstance have broken up the old team: A brain tumor claimed Atwater’s life last year and Baker’s current assignment as secretary of state prevents him from playing the constant hands-on political role he played before.

Now, the President is relying primarily on White House Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner and campaign chairman Robert M. Teeter, two senior aides who are neither as close to him as Baker nor as experienced in all the aspects of running a presidential campaign.

The result, Republican officials say, has been a period in which other Bush advisers, including former Commerce Secretary Robert A. Mosbacher, have enjoyed considerable influence. It is Mosbacher, now the campaign’s general chairman, who is blamed by many Bush advisers for urging that the President’s Far East trip be transformed into what proved an unwinnable quest for jobs.

Bush advisers are wrangling about how best to set the stage for the Jan. 28 State of the Union speech, long advertised as the blueprint for Bush’s reelection agenda. And Rep. Vic Fazio (D-West Sacramento) has already taken to mocking the address as Bush’s “New Millennium Speech.”

The uncertainties of Bush’s advisers have been manifest in a series of ever-shifting plans, including the abrupt postponement of two presidential trips.

According to officials involved in the debate, Skinner has argued that key details of Bush’s State of the Union proposals be kept secret to add to the event’s drama. Other advisers, led by former pollster Teeter, are said to be more concerned about the risks of raising expectations for the speech and setting the stage for opening-night disappointment.

“I think a lot of people feel that we’ve let the expectations get too high,” a White House source said. Just as Bush’s trade mission to Asia “wasn’t going to mean jobs for 10,000 unemployed people,” the official warned, “this speech is not going to be the be-all and end-all of turning the economy around.”

With winks, nods and calculated leaks, Administration officials have offered a fleeting glimpse of what may be included in the address. Bush is expected to offer proposals for economic growth and health care reform, among a variety of other initiatives.

Yet Bush has begun increasingly to tout the speech as his answer to public dissatisfaction, adding to aides’ worries that his short-term need to score a political success may once again have caused the President to promise what cannot be delivered.

Adding to the discontent of some, plans for Bush to unveil some proposals in Florida on Friday and in California next week were ordered scrapped by Skinner as part of the apparent effort to maintain an atmosphere of suspense.

Instead, Bush, in a speech in Atlanta on Friday, announced plans for a reorganization of the federal job-training system, an initiative involving no new spending.

As for his major proposals, Bush, in an opening campaign swing through New Hampshire on Wednesday, once again advised voters simply to “stay tuned” for the State of the Union--his unchanging message during two months of political woes.

That wait-till-you-see-this approach has already prompted grumbling in New Hampshire, where one newspaper editorial complained that rather than offer long-awaited specifics, Bush has simply told voters that “things would get better.”

“It always comes back to bite you,” one Bush adviser said. “You just can’t hang everything on one speech.”

According to officials within both the White House and the Bush-Quayle campaign, an added source of friction has emerged in recent weeks as the two have increasingly overlapped. Skinner and Teeter, for example, are said by associates to consult with each other several times a day about what Bush should say and do. But the relations between the campaign and the White House are not always cordial.

“We’re trying to get our rhythm down,” one White House official said, explaining the on-again, off-again scheduling that has resulted from problems in what he called “getting the cart before the horse.”

“I guess you could put it in the general category of growing pains,” a campaign adviser sighed. “We’re just trying to smooth out some of the kinks.”

The disarray may be showing up in Bush’s early campaigning.

In New Hampshire he adopted a challenger’s style, using the same attack tactics he practiced as an underdog four years ago, first in overcoming Kansas Sen. Bob Dole’s lead in the Republican primary campaign and then against Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis.

In some ways, the “kinder, gentler” image he has sought to project as President has given way to an at-times snarling, red-faced campaigner baiting his critics with a lashing tenor.

“He likes to govern, but he also likes to politic,” says a senior aide. “He’s been sitting on the bench for a while. This is his first chance to get in as the quarterback in politics.”

At the same time, Bush has shown a peculiar zeal to be seen as in touch with voters’ discontent, even to the point of readily agreeing with a questioner Wednesday who declared the economy was in “free fall.”

“I think I’ve known, look, this economy is in free fall,” he said. “I hope I’ve known it. Maybe I haven’t conveyed it as well as I should have, but I do understand it.”

As Bush addressed a Rotary Club dinner 12 hours later, that tone had been abandoned, and he launched into a rapid-fire attack:

“I vowed I would come over here tonight and be calm, but I’ll tell you something. I’m a little sick and tired of being the punching bag for a lot of lightweights around this country yelling at me day in and day out. And I’m sick of it. And they want a fight, they’re going to have one.”

“You’ve got to calm him down at times,” said one longtime adviser to the President, referring to Bush’s competitive style: a head-bobbing, finger-jabbing, near-caricature of an on-the-stump politician, punctuated with torrid rhetoric.

“He’s instinctive. He reacts by the gut. If he feels an emotion, he expresses it,” the adviser said.

He said any one of three situations can provoke Bush: “He can be that way when he’s the underdog. He can be that way when he feels like he’s surging. And he can be that way when he’s out front.”

The danger, some aides acknowledge, is that without careful management, Bush--like other candidates facing the exhausting grind of a presidential campaign--can get into difficulties. And his performance during 12 hours of stumping in New Hampshire was a case in point.

Before an audience at the Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. office in Dover, N.H., Bush got onto the subject of presidential health and seemed to lose his way in the rhetorical thicket:

“Somebody said to me, ‘You know, we prayed for you over there.’ That was not just because I threw up on the prime minister of Japan either. Where was he when I needed him? But--but I--I said, ‘Let me tell you something.’ And I say this--I don’t know whether any ministers from the Episcopal church are here. I hope so. But I said to him this. You’re on to something here. You cannot be President of the United States if you don’t have faith. Remember Lincoln, going to his knees in times of trial in the Civil War and all that stuff? You can’t be. And we are blessed.”

He continued, without pause:

“So don’t feel sorry for--don’t cry for me, Argentina. We’ve got problems out there, and I am blessed by good health, strong health. You get the flu, and they make it into a federal case. But anyway, that goes with the territory. I’m not asking for sympathy. I just wanted you to know that I never felt more up to the charge.”