Bush Team to Shift Gears and Hit the Road

“This isn’t a wake-up call,” one adviser to President Bush’s reelection campaign said Tuesday, describing the results of the New Hampshire GOP primary. “It’s a 2-by-4 across the front of the face and head. It’s a sledgehammer.”

Bush’s campaign team, clearly shaken by conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan’s strength in New Hampshire, scrambled Tuesday to devise a new strategy that would help repair the damage.

They hastily devised a rigorous campaign travel schedule that is likely to put Bush on the road nearly every day between now and the next important test: the Super Tuesday primaries in the South on March 10.

Although Bush won the New Hampshire contest with well over 50% of the vote, he acknowledged in a written statement issued about an hour after the polls closed that he had heard the message that New Hampshire voters delivered with such explosive force.

Although pleased he could claim victory, the President said: “I understand the message of dissatisfaction. The message of tonight is that Americans are concerned about the future. I have the right answers, and I will take my case to the voters in the next 8 1/2 months,” he said. “The goal of my campaign is to win reelection in November.”

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Bush typed the statement in his study on the third floor of the White House at about 6 p.m. EST, two hours before the polls closed. He then watched televised accounts of the returns with First Lady Barbara Bush, and the couple dined together at about 7:30 p.m.

Fitzwater described the President as “very comfortable” with the results, but “obviously, we wish the margin had been greater.”

Fitzwater predicted that in the weeks leading to the Super Tuesday primaries, the Bush campaign would take a much tougher approach toward the challenger.

“We will have to be a little more direct in pointing out the difference between the two candidates. . . .” Fitzwater said. “Buchanan has earned that attention. We’ll be a little tougher the next time around.”

Some Bush allies fear the New Hampshire results will produce a fundamental change in the political equation: Bush could lose his leverage with recalcitrant Democrats in Congress and even with congressional Republicans and maverick members of his own team--such as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp--because he no longer appears the sure winner in November.

“In the substance of governing, it erodes some of his strength,” the political adviser said, warning that Bush could find himself in a downward spiral: Political slippage leads to a loss of leverage over Congress, and failures there present him as a weak leader, serving up the risk of even greater political damage.

“Obviously, this is not helpful,” a senior White House official said.

By this past weekend, as Bush worked his way feverishly across New Hampshire’s southern tier, his campaign organization expected Buchanan to get no more than 33% to 37% of the vote.

But when exit polls began suggesting a considerably higher Buchanan vote, those arguing for a “Rose Garden” campaign--in which Bush would stress the authority of the incumbent while campaigning from the White House--were outvoted by those arguing for greater presidential visibility on the road in the South.

Bush campaign Chairman Robert M. Teeter headed to the White House at midafternoon Tuesday to work with officials there on “how we allocate the President’s time,” a campaign official said.

“We knew late last week that the hopes this thing might effectively be over in New Hampshire were dashed,” a senior White House official said. The realization that Buchanan’s insurgency could not be put down in one Northeastern state led White House planners to begin mapping out “a full Southern travel schedule,” he said.

Thus, during the week leading up to the Super Tuesday voting, Bush is likely to be on the road nearly every day. Combined with already-scheduled travel this week and next, the President is likely to be out of Washington at least 13 of the next 20 days, beginning with a trip to Knoxville, Tenn., today.

“If you haven’t washed your socks, do it now, because we aren’t going to be home for a long time,” Fitzwater told reporters Tuesday.

“There was a lot of talk about running a Rose Garden campaign. It doesn’t appear to be happening,” another senior White House official said.

In Washington and New Hampshire, Bush allies were agreeing that the President was hurt over the weekend when Buchanan and Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, who was struggling to regain the lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, hammered away at the idea that Bush had abandoned the interests of the middle class.

They built their case around the President’s decision to narrow the elements of his economic recovery plan; he demanded quick congressional action on only seven points of the plan and did not include a $500 increase in the personal income tax exemption for children.

Bush angrily argued throughout the weekend that the tax cut was included in his overall plan, which he waved at his audiences at every stop, but the damage--apparently unforeseen by the Bush team when the seven points were sent to Congress for action by March 20--was already done.

At the Bush campaign headquarters, officials maintained that regardless of the narrow margin, the President emerged the winner.

“The bottom line is who wins. The bottom line is who is going to get the nomination. The bottom line is, we won,” said spokeswoman Torie Clarke.