Bush Outlines Part of Legacy He Hopes to Leave Behind : Republicans: Speech begins to spell out his vision for nation’s future. He pledges a vigorous reelection campaign.

Free at last from intra-Republican distraction, President Bush began Tuesday to labor at what senior advisers describe as the most pressing task in his reelection campaign--spelling out a compelling vision for the nation’s future.

In a speech before a business audience here, Bush vowed to “fight as never before” to win victory in November as he outlined the legacy he hoped to leave behind if elected to a second term in office.

He described himself as an agent of change who would undertake reforms of education, health care, government and the legal system. And he pledged to serve as an agent of prosperity able to open new markets and create more American jobs.

“We are helping solidify a legacy of peace,” he told the crowd, “but I cannot rest and you cannot rest until we help this country win another legacy: productive jobs for our citizens with strong families, secure in a more peaceful world.”

Advisers described the address as a first draft in an overdue effort at “defining Bush” that was delayed in large part by the unexpected strength of Patrick J. Buchanan’s challenge.

But they conceded that its still-unfinished shape reflected worries that the campaign is still confronted with the need to teach voters about their candidate and his fundamental beliefs, even after four years in office.

“Here it is the spring of 1992 and we are faced with the same problem that George Bush faced in 1988,” one senior adviser said. “I find that mind-boggling.”

The still-myopic nature of what aides call the “vision thing” has emerged as the biggest worry of a Bush campaign that has set its sights on the general election but has yet to define its course with any clarity.

Only in the last 10 days, advisers say, was the White House able to shake its preoccupation with Buchanan and begin to map out the themes Bush is likely to emphasize as he makes a public case for a second term.

“For better or worse, later rather than sooner,” another senior campaign official said, “you are starting to see the outline of the goals and dreams.”

Senior campaign adviser Charles Black said the Buchanan challenge “kept us tied down for a couple of months with sort of day-to-day tactical concerns instead of taking the long-range view.”

But other Republicans blame Bush and his top advisers for charting a first-term course that gave little hint of a longer-term vision. “It was a matter of them finally responding to the nagging and complaining and prodding,” said one Bush associate who declined to be identified.

Bush’s speech before the National American Wholesale Grocer’s Assn.--a sympathetic audience--was billed as nonpolitical, but in its style and in its reception bore all the trademarks of a campaign event.

A video produced by the grocers’ group and presented as an introduction to Bush offered an admiring look at the President’s performance as wartime leader, showing him clad in khaki as he visited with American troops in Saudi Arabia.

The video also showed victorious GIs marching up Pennsylvania Avenue as Bush reviewed the parade, congratulated Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and later sang “God Bless the USA” with country-music star Lee Greenwood at a black-tie banquet.

“I want to have us keep our sights on the next American century,” Bush said, outlining five “strategic concerns” that he said were at the top of his agenda.

He said if reelected he would “change and renew our schools,” make health care “more affordable and more available,” embark on “fundamental legal reform,” limit and “reform” government and expand markets abroad.

Bush aides said that the themes would be improved and polished in coming weeks and that speech writer Peggy Noonan, who drafted the Republican National Convention address that gave texture to Bush’s 1988 campaign, had been asked to assist in the drafting of another “vision speech” to be delivered early next month.

But in a campaign whose principal slogan already claims that if Bush “can change the world, he can change America,” top officials said the President was determined to cast his reelection bid as a quest for domestic reform.

“It is change, it is reform, it is reinvention--all with one purpose, which is the future,” one top campaign official involved in its shaping said of the emerging Bush vision.

The official acknowledged that the attempt to cast Bush as a reformer was intended in part to strike chords at a time of national discontent with the status quo. “You have to frame the debate,” the official said, “and you try to drive the agenda to match what people are thinking and feeling and want.”