A Tidy Yard, a Suspicious Eye : Character: Bush reminds us of the cranky neighbor who kids love to torment.

If you didn’t have a Mrs. Trutch in your neighborhood, you had someone like her.

Mrs. Trutch had the neatest yard and the prettiest flowers, but she hardly ever came out of her house. About the most you ever saw of her was her head when she’d thrust it out the front door to tell you to get away from her flowers or get out of her yard. If your ball ever landed behind her fence you knew it would take an act of Congress to get it back, so you didn’t bother. About all you could do in revenge was ring her doorbell and run. Or you’d steal some plums from her tree. It was always a great test of nerves: You never knew if she was watching or not, so sometimes you’d make a plum run and get away scot-free and be hero for the day among your friends. Sometimes you’d get caught, and there would be hell to pay. Mrs. Trutch always made good on her threats and always phoned your parents if she caught you running afoul. Mrs. Trutch knew everyone’s parents.

George Bush managed to beat the Wimp Factor because it never really fit him. Bush is not a wimp. But he shares a lot with Mrs. Trutch. Secure within his perfect house and garden, he savors the righteous moral high ground of a person who has never known want, never been in trouble, never espoused an unpopular belief, never felt any need or desire to walk a mile in the other guy’s shoes. If you fall off your bike in front of his house, he’ll just say you had no business riding there in the first place. Whatever happens to you is your own fault.

A recent poll showed Bush running neck-and-neck with Bill Clinton. The numbers may have changed since then, but what’s interesting is that an overwhelming percentage of the same sampling believe that Bush will be reelected. The operative word here is believe: Nearly half of the people polled would rather have somebody else as President, but appear to be resigned to having Mrs. Trutch living on their street forever. Well, why not? She keeps her house up, keeps the neighborhood kids in line.

The Mrs. Trutch factor goes a long way in explaining Bush’s character. Haitian refugees appear on our shores, begging for asylum, but Bush shrugs and sends them back, saying that nobody invited them here in the first place. It explains why he has never shown much interest in the democratic process, or in democracies in general: Witness his coddling of China, El Salvador, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and brutal regimes in general. As much as he struggled to scoop up some credit for the fall of the Soviet Union, it’s obvious that he hasn’t much interest in the new independent republics. No, indeed: All those popular uprisings, all those kids scampering and whooping and making noise in the street make him nervous.

The Mrs. Trutch factor also explains why Clinton and Jerry Brown and the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate are floundering. Sure, they’d all like to run up on her porch and ring the bell, but they don’t have any help from the neighbors--the American electorate--who rate stability and property values just slightly ahead of human rights and meaningful change. Nobody quite has the nerve to ring the bell, stand on that porch and wait for her to answer, then tell her to her face to move out.

Whether or not we like to admit it, we sense a place in America for the meanies in our lives. If Mrs. Trutch were to move away, the new people might run the neighborhood down.