Bush and Buchanan, Scrappy to the End, Go for Knockout

Patrick J. Buchanan, ebullient, boasting, even gleeful, ran roughshod across the countryside like a bull on the loose. President Bush, properly presidential but subdued and looking a little tired, stumped by satellite and surrogate.

And thus the oddly disjointed Republican primary campaign here came to a close Monday, much as it began. The only thing linking the two men seemed to be their mutual desire to clobber each other and a fine set of nerves as voting begins this morning.

The President, maintaining a public attitude that mirrored his 1988 campaign theme--”Don’t worry, be happy”--dispatched his most popular stand-in, wife Barbara, to coax votes from New Hampshirites.

At the same time, he flooded the airwaves from Washington, hitting numerous radio stations in the early morning and trumping Buchanan with live appearances Monday night on the four major television stations that pipe news into this state.

Bush went the length of the campaign without mentioning his challenger by name. Even on the last day before balloting, Buchanan was elevated only to the level of “this guy.”

“I think what’s happening is they’re saying, ‘Look, this guy’s got Bush’s attention in some way, but we’re not going to change horses here. We believe the President’s been a good President,’ ” Bush told viewers of the CBS Boston affiliate, which broadcasts into New Hampshire. “And that’s my appeal to ‘em.”

Not so, said Buchanan, predicting the possibility that he could “shake the world” with today’s results.

Buchanan had battled, angry and combative, for 10 weeks, but he closed out his effort here in atypically upbeat fashion. Almost giddy with enthusiasm, he mounted a bus with dozens of supporters and led a caravan of reporters on a winding, 13-city tour that covered half the state.

In the southern town of Windham, his entourage spilled out at a golf driving range, where Buchanan grinned wickedly as he held a golf ball on which someone had printed “Bush.”

“There’s a chance this could be the pistol shot that really is heard around the world,” he told a group of supporters who dogged his every move.

The two men were tussling for the small minority of the Republican electorate here that had not already chosen up sides. Although not crucial to the numerical outcome--it appeared that Bush would win comfortably--the undecided voters could be pivotal when it comes to the bragging rights that emerge from this primary.

The President is struggling to keep Buchanan at the roughly 30% level he has been running in the polls, and not let him inch higher into territory that might prove embarrassing. Buchanan is battling to keep the President’s lead as small as possible, the better to crow over Wednesday morning.

To that end, Bush’s operation, from the President and his wife on down, emphasized Buchanan’s lack of executive experience and sought to persuade voters to spurn the challenger’s suggestion that they “send a message” to Bush today.

“In the final analysis, I think the voters of New Hampshire are going to say, ‘Look, let’s get somebody who’s in there, really trying to do something with the Congress, trying to get something done, who’s had a good record in war and peace, who’s helped our kids go to sleep a little more soundly because they don’t worry about nuclear weapons and who’s working hard to turn this economy around,” Bush told television viewers.

Bush had spent the weekend campaigning in New Hampshire and told his radio and television audiences that he was in Washington Monday because “I do have a job to do here.”

His stand-in, Barbara Bush, seconded the President’s theme while she toured the Concord and Manchester areas, reading books to youngsters at a public library and dishing a little gossip with senior citizens at a group home.

There, in confidential tones, she told residents that she and the President were “thrilled” at the weekend engagement of their daughter, Dorothy Bush LeBlond, to Robert Koch, a top aide to House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.). LeBlond, the mother of two children, was divorced from her first husband in 1990.

Mrs. Bush, calling her husband “the best qualified, the finest, most decent man I’ve ever known,” soon shifted gears to remind voters: “Remember, you’re voting for President, you’re not voting to send a message.”

A veteran campaigner, Mrs. Bush spurned more than a few chances to get in a dig at Buchanan. Asked by reporters if she had any advice for the challenger, she smiled and said, “Vote for George Bush.”

Buchanan, too, was on good behavior, spending much of the day reminiscing about the start of his scrappy, seat-of-the-pants campaign last December.

“We started a campaign with nothing and all of a sudden we’re on the map in New Hampshire and we’re on the map nationally,” Buchanan told backers gathered on the steps of Exeter’s historic brick town hall.

“And I think if we get the votes we can get tomorrow, we can take this crusade out of New Hampshire into Georgia and into Super Tuesday.”

Buchanan’s tour was only loosely organized, and he drew small crowds. He was trailed by opponents who accused him of anti-Semitism for his past criticism of Jews and Israel and for his support of an accused Nazi death camp guard. One, who identified himself as Rabbi Avi Weiss of Riverdale, N.Y., wore a mock uniform of a concentration camp prisoner.

In today’s determining vote, turnout may be the key to a perceived victory here for either Bush or his challenger--and on Monday both sides were worried about who would show up. A high turnout is expected to benefit Bush, whose voters tend to be less enthusiastic, so Buchanan’s forces were hoping for rain, snow, anything to depress the vote count.

“I’m looking to the skies for the clouds,” said Angela Buchanan, the candidate’s sister and campaign manager.

The Bush supporters were twisting arms as forcefully as possible to ensure a larger and presumably more supportive electorate.

“I hope no New Hampshire Republicans will add their votes to the Democrats’ vicious negative attacks on President Bush,” Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.) told voters of his state in a radio commercial that ran almost continuously Monday.