Bush Talks Up His Health Care Plan in San Diego Visit : Politics: President’s trip to California was policy oriented but it is also indicative of how vital the state is regarded by his top campaign aides.

President Bush on Friday touted his new health care plan during his first election-year appearance in California, where his advisers now expect him to spend more time in 1992 than in any other state.

The plans for intensive attention to California reflect Bush aides’ unease about the political impact of the state’s parlous economy, and their conclusion that the state will be the crucial battleground of the general election.

“We’ll tamp down our states and they’ll tamp down theirs,” a senior Bush campaign strategist said in an interview this week. “But then it’s going to come down to California.”

Because Bush traveled to California to deliver a policy-oriented speech, the costs of his trip were borne by taxpayers and his freedom to make partisan political points was limited.

But Bush conceded to the San Diego Rotary Club he had been “sorely tempted” to make a more overtly political appeal.

He also confided earlier to a group of students at the Logan Elementary School that running for President meant that you had to “campaign a lot” and “tell people things.” He slyly advised them to stay tuned to his “big announcement” of candidacy next week. And when some showed signs of impatience, he showed off a keen multiculturalism. “Momentito!” Bush pleaded with a grandfatherly smile.

For the second day he sought to sell his plan of tax breaks to help low- and middle-income families pay for health care, while bashing Democratic alternatives as steps toward “socialized” health.

“Some say nationalized health care would serve everyone. Sure, it would--just like a restaurant that serves bad food, but in very generous proportions,” he said to laughter and applause in his speech to the Rotary Club.

Bush also erected a new defense against criticism that his $100-billion plan could not be adequately funded. He suggested that health care costs to government and individuals would plummet if Americans would just take better care of themselves.

“If you exercise and eat right and don’t smoke or abuse drugs and drink less and avoid risky sexual behavior,” he said to the Rotary Club. “You live longer. And America will live better.”

He also cut short a reporter who asked what he would do if new taxes were required to pay for the plan. “It’s not required,” Bush said.

After a day in which his plan had seemed to fall flat on audiences in Cleveland and San Diego, Bush won a far more enthusiastic response here from the Rotary audience that reflected the chapter’s heavily Republican membership.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said that the reception to the plan from the health industry itself had been “very good. It’s been excellent. Great.”

Other sources said Bush had added San Diego to his health care itinerary in large part at the urging of Gov. Pete Wilson and other state Republicans, who have forcefully warned the Bush reelection campaign that it must not take California for granted.

In a series of interviews this week, top officials of the campaign stressed that they were taking the message literally. “It’s safe to say that we’re going to wind up spending more time in California than in any other state,” one official said. One-fifth of the electoral votes needed to win a presidential election are at stake in the state.

Republicans have carried California in every presidential election since 1964. But Bush defeated Democratic Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts by only three percentage points in the state in 1988, and his advisers concede that its economic troubles have plainly undermined his appeal.

Bush is expected to begin a series of political trips after he makes his candidacy formal at a rally in Washington on Wednesday.

Bush campaign officials said they hoped additional Bush trips to California would blunt economic-based anger in the state by featuring his plans for the environment and education.

Among the trips already scheduled is a journey to San Francisco and Los Angeles later this month for $1,000-a-plate fund-raisers. At the same time, campaign officials said they planned to hire advisers better versed in California.

“It’s just a different world out there,” one official said wearily in an interview near the campaign’s downtown Washington headquarters.

Campaign strategists remain confident that Bush can fare well in the Southern states that have become a Republican stronghold. But, for now, at least, they are less certain about his prospects in the industrial states where Democrats have historically run strongest.

In looking toward California as the site of the general election showdown, the Bush advisers said that their conclusions were motivated in large part by a continued belief that a victory in the state would make it all but impossible for the President to lose reelection.

“It’s almost impossible to see the other guys getting to 270 without California,” one Bush campaign official said, referring to the number of electoral votes required for election. “It wouldn’t be easy for us. But we could do it.”