Aides Drum Up Backing for Bush Address

An increasingly worried White House appealed Thursday to every Cabinet department to whip up public support for next week’s State of the Union address in a new effort to help pull President Bush from his political malaise.

At a meeting Thursday, Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner called on top government officials to help create the maximum impact for the address, which Bush’s chief speechwriter has called “the biggest speech of the next five years.”

The hastily assembled strategy reflects the mounting sense of urgency in a White House that needs to end the President’s seemingly ceaseless political slide as Bush prepares to formally declare his candidacy next month.

For more than two months, Bush has touted the speech as the answer to the economic ills affecting the nation. But with senior Bush advisers still worried that the public reception of Tuesday’s speech could be underwhelming, the President’s aides are now confronted with the dilemma of how best to portray an address that may be longer on rhetoric than substance.

The major constraint, some officials said, is that Bush’s apparent aversion to abrupt changes of course--whether through deep defense cuts, sharp tax reductions or abundant new spending--has severely limited his opportunity to score a dramatic success.

In what one White House official called “a big rah-rah session” with top government officials Thursday, Skinner and top White House aides urged that the Cabinet adopt a “unified message” in preparation for criticism that Bush’s proposals are too spare.

“The overarching message was that the government isn’t the only answer,” a participant in the session said, describing a theme Cabinet members have been asked to echo as they are dispatched around the country in coming weeks as part of the White House strategy.

At the same time, other top Bush aides have begun what one source called a coordinated program of “structured leaks” to add to the impact of what officials have said will be relatively modest proposals on domestic issues. The plan also included a pre-speech announcement by Bush on Thursday promising more budget money for environmental problems.

As the White House seeks to deflect complaints that the President’s new budget offers too little, the top government officials also were advised at Thursday’s meeting to make implicit comparisons to Bush’s Democratic rivals by noting “our message is real.”

Participants in the meeting described the gathering as unprecedented in the Bush presidency, in which there has been little formal coordination of communications strategy.

The White House effort to maximize the impact of the State of the Union message included hasty decisions this week to present in advance--through presidential appearances and deliberate leaks to news organizations--the details of Bush proposals for budget increases for Head Start, the environment and other programs.

The strategy of pushing the good news of the budget a week ahead of its formal release is a huge turnabout from the Administration’s former practice when the White House stoked anticipation of forthcoming proposals by enforcing a blackout on every detail, large and small.

It represents a tactical victory for reelection-campaign chairman Robert M. Teeter, who had warned against relying on the State of the Union itself to resuscitate Bush’s political prospects.

But some Bush advisers indicated Thursday that they are worried that the strategy might have gotten out of hand. “If they leak everything this week, what’s going to be left for the big night?” one campaign source said.

Other officials said, however, that the plan being prepared for the State of the Union address and its aftermath calls for Bush to withhold some details of the proposed economic recovery package until the first week in February, to be followed over a period of several weeks by the details of his plans to combat crime and drug abuse, and proposals to address health care problems.

Thus, this official said, the State of the Union address will be “the big George Bush vision, details to follow in the next couple of weeks.”

The White House was also moving toward naming a new communications chief in a renewed effort to restore clarity to a muddled presidential message, one of Skinner’s top goals since taking over five weeks ago.

Skinner and others close to Bush were said to have leaned heavily on Robert Grady, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and a Bush speechwriter during the 1988 presidential campaign, to accept the communications post. But Grady was said to be reluctant to leave the budget job to which he had only recently been promoted.

Grady, meanwhile, was sharing with Cabinet secretary Edith M. Holiday the overall responsibility for the government-wide public relations effort surrounding the State of the Union speech.

“There has definitely been a communications problem,” one senior Administration official said. The official complained that a budget cut sharply from the days when the communications office was given top priority in the Ronald Reagan White House had forced senior officials to hire young, inexperienced assistants “who wouldn’t know substance if it sat on their laps.”

Meanwhile, Bush was said by a White House official to be preparing to appoint Sherrie Rollins as his assistant for public liaison, an addition to the White House staff. She is a conservative activist who is currently director of news information for ABC News.

As the Administration continued its effort to spread good news about environmental initiatives Thursday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly appeared in the White House press room to announce that his agency’s new budget request will total $7 billion, a whopping 44% increase since the first year of the Bush Administration.

The announcement followed the disclosure Thursday that the Administration plans to endorse a 4,000-square-mile Monterey Bay marine sanctuary, increase funding for San Diego-Tijuana sewage treatment and end consideration of oil drilling in the Santa Barbara channel for the foreseeable future.

Included in the new EPA budget, Reilly said, will be a $2.7-million operating fund to carry out its major programs, such as writing and enforcing clean air and clean water regulations, an increase of 54% since 1989.

The Administration, Reilly said, will ask for $5.5 billion so the government can meet its commitment to accelerate the cleanup of radiation-contaminated nuclear weapons sites.

The Administration’s energy program, previously criticized for being light on conservation and too heavily oriented toward increased oil production, will include significant new initiatives in conservation, alternative fuels, research and development, Energy Department officials said.

The budget to be unveiled next week, they said, will include a 24% increase in funding for energy conservation research and a fivefold increase, to $41.5 million, in spending for development of a battery for electric-powered autos.

Plans also call for nearly doubling spending on research aimed at producing ethanol from a variety of sources, the goal being to produce ethanol for 60 cents a gallon by the end of the decade. It now costs about $1.10 a gallon.

Times staff writer Rudy Abramson contributed to this story.