NEWS ANALYSIS : Baker Can Help but Maybe Not Enough to Solve Bush Problems : Politics: President’s campaign operatives have new hope but know the savvy secretary of state may not succeed this time.

With the return of James A. Baker III to the White House helm now only a matter of time, a sense of Republican relief is mixed with concern that even the savvy secretary of state cannot right a badly listing George Bush reelection campaign.

In the craft of politics, Baker is a recognized master: an organizer, a decisive leader, a trusted confidant able to speak frankly to the President--and to speak authoritatively on his behalf. To a White House drifting in indecision, Baker will fill a long list of voids.

But if the impending shake-up has stirred nostalgia for a 1988-style Bush comeback--when he overcame a 17-point deficit in the polls--officials close to the White House were unusually frank in warning that this time the President’s problems may not be solved simply by bringing Baker aboard.

“What the American people sense is a President who doesn’t have real convictions about the country’s concerns,” an influential Republican official said. “They want leadership. And that’s hard for anyone else to impart.”

On a day when Bush refused to confirm that Baker would move to the White House--and dressed down his senior staff for alleged leaks about an impending transfer--Republican officials were unusually reticent when asked to talk for the record about what the shake-up would mean.

But the close-knit world of Republican operatives involved in the Bush campaign was charged Wednesday with a renewed sense of hope and with the glum resignation that comes when a wish is fulfilled and then found to be less valuable than it had been perceived.

One ranking GOP operative eagerly praised Baker’s “discipline and coherence” and suggested that his close bond to Bush and his service at the helm of four previous presidential campaigns might at last help the White House team “figure out how to get through with voters.”

But the official worried aloud that the force of the current political storm might be too much for even the seasoned captain to weather. “It’s pretty hard to talk about change when you’re a 12-year incumbent,” the source said.

Susan Estrich, a Democrat who went head-to-head with Baker in managing then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis’ 1988 presidential campaign against Bush, said: “I think Jim Baker is the most talented person I’ve ever run across in politics. But George Bush’s problem four years ago was style, not substance. This time it’s the other way around.”

If there was a single consensus about the course Baker was most likely to chart, political professionals said, it was that he would embark on a more aggressive bid to question the record and character of Democratic nominee Bill Clinton.

Baker was said by knowledgeable sources to have told associates several weeks ago that Bush could win reelection only by attacking his rivals. “Voters are never going to like Bush much more,” one source paraphrased Baker as saying, “but they can like Clinton a lot less.”

At the Clinton campaign, a senior official said the arrival of Baker would bring to the Bush team a strategist “a lot smarter and savvier and (more) experienced” than “the rest of that crew put together.” But the Clinton aide said he believed that Baker might be inclined to wage the current campaign on the basis of “last year’s playbook.”

While dodging questions about Baker’s status, Bush appeared careful Wednesday at the morning senior staff meeting and in answering reporters’ questions to leave the door open for such a move, which is expected to be announced next month.

In preparing to turn again to Baker, Bush would be putting his campaign in the hands of a onetime Houston lawyer who not only is one of his closest friends, but also may be uniquely experienced in politics and government.

With ties to the President that go back to the early 1960s, Baker ran Bush’s 1968 congressional campaign and later ran for Texas state attorney general himself. He has been at or near the helm of every Republican presidential campaign since 1976 and managed Bush’s unsuccessful 1980 quest. He has served as White House chief of staff, Treasury secretary and secretary of state.

And almost exactly four years ago, it was Baker to whom Bush appealed--as he has appealed now--to help rescue a presidential campaign from a disastrous defeat.

Administration officials said Wednesday that it remained unclear exactly when Baker would return to the White House, but that the change would likely take place after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin visits Washington in early August. They said Baker would be asked to relinquish his post at the State Department, rather than take a leave of absence, as he had once hoped.

In his new job at the White House, Baker is expected to take the title of senior counselor charged with coordinating Bush’s agenda for the next four years. But no one in the Bush camp expressed any doubt Wednesday that Baker would be the man in charge of the White House staff and the troubled Bush campaign.

In both settings, Republicans said, Baker will bring an authoritative voice to institutions recently troubled by excessive timidity. Bush campaign chairman Robert M. Teeter has frustrated associates with what they see as a penchant for charting the reelection-bid course according to public opinion polls.

And at the White House, Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner has been increasingly scorned even by close aides as an indecisive leader who holds little sway with Bush.

“They say the Oval Office has the coldest floor in the world, and that everyone who goes in there gets cold feet,” former Education Secretary William J. Bennett said. “You can be sure that Jim Baker won’t.”

Baker’s task may be much the same as it was in 1978, before Bush made his first attempt to win the Republican nomination, when--according to the newly published book “What It Takes,” by Richard Ben Cramer--he told Bush that if he wanted to be President he needed to “define himself” and give voters a clearer idea of his beliefs.

“I don’t know,” Bush is reported to have replied. “I don’t get the feeling people want that.”

One Bush campaign aide suggested that the addition of Baker’s stature and managerial skills would at minimum improve the performance of a White House that “heretofore has not been either managed or effective.”

But other senior officials questioned whether even a Baker takeover could overcome what is criticized in Republican circles as an unusually weak White House staff.

“If he doesn’t fire those people at the White House, he’s gained nothing,” an Administration official said. “I don’t care if he’s Jesus Christ, you can’t make a campaign out of a staff like that.”

Times staff writers David Lauter and Doyle McManus contributed to this story.

The Republicans’ Right-Hand Man

Here are some of the key positions held by James A. Baker III: Campaign chairman for George Bush: 1979-80 Senior adviser to Reagan-Bush campaign: 1980-81 Member of Reagan transition team: 1980-81 White House chief of staff: 1981-85 Secretary of the Treasury: 1985-88 Bush campaign chairman: 1988 Secretary of state: 1989- Source: Who’s Who in America