White House Tries to Dump Bush’s Political Liabilities

Faced with a thicket of political problems, the White House has moved to clear away the underbrush of several sensitive and often divisive issues that threatened to interfere with President Bush’s reelection campaign.

The series of steps--including the forced resignation of John E. Frohnmayer, the controversial chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and a decision to drop a Treasury Department plan to require churches to divulge names of major donors--bring home the ever-deepening connection between policy and politics as the 1992 campaign gains speed.

The moves also reflect the increasing pressure felt by Bush and his advisers to steal the fuel that could be used by Republican challenger Patrick J. Buchanan as he turns his insurgent presidential campaign to the South and seeks to stoke fires of voter dissatisfaction.

In apparent response, the Administration has sought to eliminate targets of attack that could be used by Buchanan and his conservative allies.

“People are getting smart. Their jobs are at stake,” said a senior White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “It’s sort of like clearing the decks, battening down the hatches for a stormy political year.”

Beyond the departure of Frohnmayer and the abandonment of the proposed Treasury Department regulations affecting churches, the Administration has sought to quiet the outcry from a powerful voting bloc by backing away from a plan that would have opened Veterans Administration hospitals to some non-veterans.

Also, Atty. Gen. William P. Barr has introduced a plan that would allow the Administration to use antitrust regulations to pressure Japanese industrial cartels that restrict American exports--a proposal providing the White House with a new way to show it is taking steps against Japan without yielding to the trade “protectionism” promoted by Buchanan.

And, in an indication of the breadth of the repositioning, the Administration agreed earlier this month to move up the deadline for the elimination of chlorofluorocarbons from products sold in this country, blunting the complaints of environmentalists who had urged such a move.

That decision was made after government scientists released startling findings showing that the hole in the ozone layer above the Arctic was growing faster than once believed, increasing the risk of cancer.

“You have political appointees in charge of these agencies. As they begin looking at the political campaign, they realize their daily decisions have political consequences,” said a former White House official with close ties to the Administration.

The White House’s purging of controversial issues and personalities reflects what campaign officials described Saturday as a belated recognition among Bush’s senior advisers of the breadth of the President’s vulnerabilities.

In a new indication of difficulty, a straw poll taken Saturday among delegates to the Conservative Political Action Conference meeting in Washington showed Buchanan besting Bush by 54% to 40%, despite a pointed warning Friday from Vice President Dan Quayle that a split within GOP ranks could only help “liberal Democrats” regain the White House.

Senior White House and reelection campaign officials gathered Saturday for a strategy session to consider other potential changes in course that some Bush aides believe are needed to shore up public support for the President.

But even as Buchanan began to broadcast television commercials in Georgia attacking Bush for violating his “no new taxes” pledge, the Bush aides said the campaign remained undecided about whether to respond in kind.

“We haven’t made any decision yet,” campaign manager Frederic V. Malek said.

Instead, White House Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner, campaign Chairman Robert S. Teeter and others attending the meeting were said to have agreed on the need to “sharpen” what has been a flaccid Bush message as the President begins a six-day, cross-country trip.

“The idea is to make sure that the upcoming speeches present the message that we want to deliver,” one official said. While Bush does not plan to alter a strategy emphasizing his economic growth package, the official said: “We’ve got to make sure that we’re sharp.”

As part of that effort, another source said, the campaign was seeking to enlist help from former Bush speech writer Peggy Noonan and media adviser Roger Ailes.

Bush himself delivered what was billed as a nonpolitical radio address Saturday in which he again focused his fire on Congress and its refusal thus far to endorse his economic plan. He urged voters to “join me in telling Congress: ‘Stop fooling around with our future.’ ”

Bush has threatened to veto an alternative plan put forward by congressional Democrats. “Put the plans side by side, and here’s the bottom line,” he said Saturday, “My plan works, theirs doesn’t.”

While the departure of Frohnmayer was announced Friday as being voluntary on his part, White House officials said Saturday that Skinner demanded his resignation at a meeting earlier in the week.

Buchanan had already made clear that he intended to make a campaign issue out of the NEA’s federal grants for controversial arts projects. In a speech Thursday, he denounced the agency as “the upholstered playpen of the arts-and-crafts auxiliary of the Eastern liberal Establishment.”

In a television interview Saturday, Quayle continued to insist that Frohnmayer had told Bush late last year that he intended to resign, and White House officials said that explanation was technically true. But they said Skinner had decided to force Frohnmayer to depart after learning that Buchanan aides were beginning to compile lists of NEA grants.

“This guy was beginning to lean out the window,” one White House official said, “and Skinner basically decided to give him a push.” Another official said that after Buchanan’s show of political strength in last Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, the consensus among Bush aides was “basically, (Frohnmayer) has got to go.”

The officials and other Administration supporters described the move as a direct reaction to concern that Buchanan would try to use the issue in his campaign throughout the Southern Bible Belt during several primaries in early March.

“It was going to be a gigantic problem,” said conservative activist Gary Bauer, who added that its resolution was “one of the first signs” that Skinner “understands that politics are going to be front and center right now.”

The now-abandoned Treasury Department plan would have forced religious organizations to report to the Internal Revenue Service all contributions greater than $500 in an effort to cross-check such deductions claimed by individuals on their tax returns.

In explaining why the proposal had been reversed, a senior Administration official called the plan “not very politically astute.”

Buchanan, meanwhile, campaigned on Saturday in South Carolina and Florida. He continued to hammer away at an issue he has been stressing in the South--an attack on the 1991 Civil Rights Act.

At a rally in Tampa, Fla., he blasted Bush for signing the measure, contending it would lead to reverse discrimination and hiring quotas.

“We’ve got to get back to the test of excellence and merit” in job hiring, Buchanan said. “The most qualified man, or woman, should get the job.”

Responding to reports that GOP presidential candidate David Duke had urged his supporters in Georgia to vote for Buchanan in that state’s March 3 primary, the conservative commentator sought to disassociate himself from the former Ku Klux Klansman, saying that Duke, who is not on the Georgia ballot, is “irrelevant” to the Republican primary race.

Times staff writer Michael Ross contributed to this story.