Toward a New Hampshire Decision : Republicans: Bush, Buchanan battle for votes of disgruntled, undecided.

It is the weekend before the New Hampshire presidential primary and here is George Bush, scrapping for every vote he can get.

In a small, drafty airplane hangar, not even half-filled, he tells potential voters, almost pleadingly: “I’m in a tough race, but I’ve been in tough races before. The stakes are high. I need your help and I’m asking for your support.”

At midday, he has his motorcade pull off a freeway so he can stop at the Fireside Restaurant in the Manchester Holiday Inn to wolf down a cheeseburger, french fries and an ice cream sundae. He pays with a credit card and then dashes off to a fishing and outdoor show.

And in the Mountainview Middle School gymnasium here in Goffstown, he sits on a four-legged wooden stool at mid-court, surrounded by a hand-picked audience that tosses softball questions in an “Ask George Bush” program, as he serves as a warm-up act for Hollywood muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Such campaigning may sound familiar. Four years ago this weekend then-Vice President George Bush was in similar locales, fighting back from the edge of political oblivion.

But listen to Schwarzenegger, as he verbally worked the crowd Saturday--getting a bigger hand than the candidate himself:

“We want to make sure that when it comes, Tuesday, Feb. 18, will you all go out there and pump up his vote? I want you to vote and at the same time send a message to Congress and at the same time send a message to Pat Buchanan: Hasta la vista , baby.”

The candidate this time around is President George Bush. The opponent is conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan, not Sen. Bob Dole, as it was four years ago. But just as he did four years ago, Bush is struggling to regain his balance and capture a crucial political victory.

From Nashua to New Boston, from Goffstown to Derry, Bush crisscrossed the heavily populated southern tier of New Hampshire on the first day of a final push for votes from recalcitrant Republicans.

Gone was the blunt “Message--I care” approach that he tried here a month ago, to let voters in this recession-buffeted state know that he had not forgotten them.

Rather, with upstart Buchanan causing the Bush organization increasing worry three days before the voting, Bush repeatedly reminded his audiences that the election was “not about who can trash another’s candidacy in some 30-second spot.”

At a rally in Derry he said, “You go to the polls not to send a signal of protest. You go to the polls to elect a President of the United States of America.”

Seeking to draw a contrast between himself and Buchanan--as his Oval Office television advertisements were trying to do all weekend--Bush said the election is “about somebody that has the toughness and the experience to lead this country. I believe I am that man.”

Unlike four years ago, when he was coming from behind against Dole, Bush’s victory against Buchanan does not appear in doubt. The real question is how close Buchanan will come to Bush’s total.

Various polls in recent days have shown the President with 50% to 60% of the Republican vote, Buchanan with roughly 30% of the vote and the rest undecided.

In Manchester, Buchanan told a rally Saturday that “Mr. Bush and his friends are in for a surprise. . . . Come Tuesday, the Buchanan brigades are going to run head on into the hollow army of King George and cut through it like butter. We are here to take away this nomination, to take our country back in November.”

Buchanan’s supporters then joined voices with those of Democrat Bob Kerrey’s workers across the street in a common chant: “Hey, hey, ho, ho, George Bush has got to go.”

Bush’s advisers were most worried that the undecided voters will turn to Buchanan to send the President a message of dismay over the sorry state of the economy, or that the President’s own supporters will stay home on what is forecast to be a snowy election day on Tuesday.

“You’ve got a high unemployment rate, you’ve got a lot of foreclosures, you’ve got a lot of bankruptcies. It’s a very hostile environment for any candidate up here,” said Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), one of Bush’s chief political cheerleaders in the state.

The ultimate result of the race in New Hampshire is often based on expectations, and the Bush organization stands everything to gain at this stage by lowering expectations for his performance. A wider-than-expected margin, even if it shows the incumbent barely squeaking by, can then be touted as a solid victory.

At the New Boston Central elementary school, like the hangar only half-filled, Jay and Dot Marden stood on the gymnasium floor awaiting the President’s remarks, offering just the sort of split that is causing the Bush organization fits and encouraging Buchanan.

The President’s economic program, Jay Marden said, won’t do the trick.

“We can’t borrow money up here. People are laid off,” he said. As for Bush’s proposal for a $5,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers, it still won’t give the confidence a young couple might need to commit themselves to a down payment and mortgage, if they “don’t know if they’re going to have a job next month.”

His vote is going to Buchanan, he said, to send Bush “a message.”

“If it hurts him now, it ought to be a catalyst for him to change his program and get the country moving,” said Marden, whose real estate and construction business is, like so many others here, suffering through the recession. “My family is buried up on the hill, 200 years. We’re all a bunch of financially walking dead. Just haven’t learned to fall down yet.”

Dot Marden’s vote, however, is going to Bush, whom she has supported since he lost to Ronald Reagan in New Hampshire in 1980.

“I don’t want to change ship. He’s a great guy. He’s got the experience Buchanan doesn’t have,” she said.

Nearby, Mary Ann O’Neill, a 40-year-old homemaker who brought her two daughters to the rally so they could see the President, was typical of the crucial undecided voters.

“I’m not happy with Mr. Bush--what he’s done for the economy. I see the middle class sinking deeper and a few wealthy people getting wealthier and I don’t see it changing,” she said. But she said she was reluctant to vote for Buchanan because the former White House speech writer, who has never run for elective office, lacks the executive experience of the President.

Throughout the day, Bush avoided mentioning his opponent, but accused him nevertheless of telling “flat outright lies” about his plan to yank America back from its economic morass.

“The people of New Hampshire are a little bit tired of all the negative advertisements and all the attack-dog tactics coming from the left and coming from the right,” Bush said. “I will continue with a positive campaign.”

For his part, Bush on Saturday was clearly seeking to accentuate his stature over Buchanan and was acting, well, presidential.

Gone was the goofy guy who dropped into truck stops to ask the cook for “just a splash” more coffee, then commandeered an 18-wheel truck and drove off like an errant kid, his security detail following in close pursuit.

Gone, too, was the relative freedom to mingle unfettered among voters, as Bush did in 1988 when he showed up at shopping malls to glad-hand anyone within range and chatted up waitresses over the counter at Herbert’s Potato World. When he went to the shopping mall Saturday, shopkeepers had to show up four hours before his arrival to pass through the security cordon and catch a glance.

In place of the scattershot, almost whimsical campaign of 1988, Bush traveled Saturday with a cortege-length motorcade, and the poignancy he occasionally displayed then was gone. But at his New Boston appearance, he seemed to hark back to those more desperate days.

“It does seem like old times,” he said. “ . . . I came here to thank you, but I also came here to ask for your vote.”