Bush TV Ads to Spotlight the Positive : Republicans: The commercials will show the President discussing foreign policy and leadership, instead of attacking Clinton.

After debating whether to go on the offensive or the defensive, the Bush reelection campaign plans to begin airing a series of positive television commercials next week that offer a personal look at the President and his accomplishments on the eve of the GOP convention.

A campaign spokeswoman said the plan to launch the two-week long, $5-million ad campaign reflected concern about the difficulty Bush has encountered in striking a chord with voters.

“It’s a rough year,” campaign press secretary Torie Clarke said. “Everybody, including us, is having a tough time getting our message across. We want to make sure that the American people know about our accomplishments so far and what is a very good agenda for the future.”

The White House on Tuesday also announced that Bush would travel this week to Southern California, where campaign aides have become increasingly worried that he is falling critically behind Democrat Bill Clinton.

Bush is to visit an Anaheim robotics factory, Odetics Inc., on Thursday to make a pitch for his efforts to convert defense spending to peaceful pursuits. That night, he is to attend a private Republican fund-raising dinner in Los Angeles. On Friday, he is to campaign in Riverside, addressing community service groups over breakfast and stopping at a local job-training facility to spotlight his welfare-reform agenda.

The trips to Orange County and the Inland Empire will be closely watched by the Bush campaign as important gauges of the President’s popularity in regions where he needs to run strong if he is to win California’s 54 electoral votes.

Bush’s political problems in California were vividly illustrated Tuesday by a new poll showing him trailing Clinton among state voters by 34 percentage points. Clinton had 62%, Bush 28% in the survey, conducted by San Francisco pollster Mervin Field.

The new Bush ads, the maiden effort of the Madison Avenue advertising group put together for his fall campaign, are to run mostly on local television stations and will be shown most frequently in such key swing states as Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Wisconsin.

The ads by the November Company are expected to show Bush, in tight close-up shots, discussing his accomplishments in foreign policy and his leadership skills and blaming Congress for not enacting his domestic policy proposals.

The ads were filmed as an interviewer asked the President to talk openly about his strengths and his hopes for a second term. The ads aim to capitalize on one of Bush’s perceived strengths--that people like and trust him.

“The rough idea is the man is the message,” one Bush adviser said.

The Bush camp has struggled over the theme and tone of a pre-convention ad effort as it has watched Clinton surge far ahead in several national polls since the Democratic convention.

The Bush camp has roughly $7 million in surplus primary campaign funds that cannot legally be spent after the GOP convention, and some advisers argued that the money should finance a blitz of negative ads attacking Clinton’s gubernatorial record in Arkansas on economic and environmental issues.

This might have forced Clinton to use some of the $55 million in general election funds that both he and Bush receive to respond, perhaps leaving him short of funds.

But the negative ad plan was rejected--at least for now--in part because of fear that the President needed to more firmly re-establish a positive reason for voters to support him before he could go on the attack. Current polls suggest that roughly 60% of the public disapproves of Bush’s job performance.

Another idea had such popular personalities as former President Ronald Reagan and actor Kevin Costner offering testimonials for Bush. Scripts were written, but these ads were never shot.

Officials from Blair Television, an ad placement firm representing 140 stations nationwide, said the Bush campaign had inquired about buying time on local stations in St. Louis, Detroit, Columbus, Ohio, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Wausau, Wis.