Proving He’s Right : BUSH WILL DO JUST ABOUT ANYTHING TO WIN THE CONSERVATIVE VOTE

John E. Frohnmayer’s abrupt and reluctant departure as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts signals a decision by George Bush to move to the right and shore up his conservative flank. Frohnmayer was no hero to the left, but he was even more unpopular with the far right, which has insistently tried to turn the content of government-supported art into a political hot-button issue that could work for them in the way flag burning or school prayer did in 1988.

So the President, who years ago heeded the conservatives’ call and flip-flopped on abortion, axed Frohnmayer--giving conservatives, in general, and Patrick J. Buchanan, in particular, one fewer thing to complain about. It was a tactical move, not a principled one, and that is why it is doomed to fail.

Bush is not moving right because that is where his heart is. He did not ax Frohnmayer because he was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. He did not look into himself and say this is who I am and this is what I stand for and what I am willing to lose for. He is no Ronald Reagan--or Harry S. Truman. He made a tactical decision that smacks of expediency and politics, in a year when the voters have had it up to here with expediency and politics. Rather than solving his problems, he has only underlined them.

As a tactical matter, it is far from clear that the far right is the place for Bush to be moving these days. Buchanan certainly won’t be satisfied by anything the President says or does now--he’s still running ads attacking the art funded by the endowment. To true believers on the right, there will be no letting go of the compromise on civil rights, or the tax increase, or the budget deal.

But the real problem Bush faces is not losing the Republican nomination because of conservative defections--no one, of any ideological stripe, thinks that’s in the cards--but losing the general election. The noisy ideologues on the right may be unhappy with Bush now, but they will, ultimately, be no happier with the Democratic nominee: He may or may not be pro-business, but he will certainly be pro-choice and pro-civil rights, and a better friend to the arts than Frohnmayer.

No one savors the prospect of ideological warfare inside his party as a warm-up for the general election. Just ask former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford, who share that experience--along with the experience of losing the White House. That is why the last two Democratic nominees tried to reach common ground with Jesse Jackson and his supporters on the left--rather than relying on the fact that these voters would like Reagan and Bush even less. A bloody battle leaves even the victor bloodied. But compromise also has its costs--particularly when it alienates the majority and is taken as a sign of weakness--as was the case with both Walter F. Mondale and Michael S. Dukakis, and surely will be with Bush.

This campaign, like all presidential elections, will ultimately be a fight for the middle, wherever that happens to be. After moving rightward in the last few elections, there is reason to believe the middle may be headed back to the middle again. Voters are angry about the economy, pessimistic about their own futures and insistent on change. While liberalism may not be in vogue, middle-class populism increasingly is. As for social issues--if the economy leaves any room--the main topic will be abortion: The belated recognition that women are on the verge of losing their reproductive rights only adds to the sense many voters already have that their lives are out of their control.

Ideologically, the Bush most in tune with the 1992 electorate might well be the pre-1980 version, who was pro-choice and equated Reaganomics with voodoo economics. The farther to the right Bush moves now, the farther back he’ll have to move in the fall--and the greater the risk of alienating the majority to placate a minority that is his, however unhappy they may be.

But this is the least of it. In a recent interview, Bush said he would do whatever it takes to get reelected. Firing Frohnmayer is plainly one of those things. Yet that is the larger problem with the decision.

In a recent CNN-Time poll, voters by a 3-1 margin ascribed Buchanan’s strong showing to a desire to send the President a message rather than to support Buchanan’s conservative principles. The message is not about the arts endowment. It is about a President who doesn’t seem to realize that points of light won’t do when the problem hits home--that it’s now no longer somebody else who’s suffering but the people who voted for him.

To win, Bush needs to listen to these people, not the ideologues. If he loses, it will be because they deserted him, not the far right. But listening isn’t going to be enough, at least not anymore. The ideologues think they know who Bush is, which is why they’ll always vote for him reluctantly, Frohnmayer or no Frohnmayer. Maybe they know something the rest of us don’t. Because the problem, for most non-ideological voters, is not simply that the President doesn’t understand the voters, but that the voters don’t understand him.

Bush’s most famous 1988 campaign lines are now his best-known broken promises. His decision to raise taxes after pledging not to fits into a pattern. He has been for and against abortion, for and against civil rights and for and against extended unemployment benefits. He denied there was any recession, then decried the nation’s economic “free fall.” He compared Saddam Hussein to Hitler only months after approving economic aid he now says he was “glad” to provide.

Last week, Ronald Reagan was quoted as saying Bush is in trouble because he “doesn’t seem to stand for anything.” Though Reagan later denied saying this, it happens to be true. And the tactical ballet involving the NEA only highlights this. Whether it’s good tactics or bad tactics is almost beside the point: The last thing a man perceived as not standing for anything needs is another tactical debate.

The Democratic candidates have had their share of problems this year. But those problems look different inside the Beltway than they do to people across the country who are hurting. The Pledge of Allegiance wouldn’t work as well this time around; the captive of “special interests,” the label pinned on Mondale, is more likely to stick to the President than to his Democratic opponent. The people who are drowning, and the ones afraid they’ll be next, are ready to vote for a Democrat. They’re certainly not losing sleep about what kind of art the government funds. They’ve got bigger things to keep them awake. Frohnmayer wasn’t their problem, and his departure won’t solve Bush’s.