Bush Disavows Acid Fax Aimed at Clinton Campaign

Just as President Bush’s reelection campaign had begun to find a forceful new voice, it stumbled badly Monday as Bush disavowed a hard-hitting attack on Bill Clinton issued over the weekend by one of his senior political aides.

Bush aides said deputy campaign manager Mary Matalin had acted on her own in faxing a three-page press statement to news organizations Sunday that disparaged Clinton in extraordinarily personal terms. It began, “Sniveling Hypocritical Democrats: Stand up and be counted--On second thought, shut up and sit down!” Among other things, it alluded to allegations of womanizing and Clinton’s admission that he smoked marijuana in his youth.

The White House said bluntly that Matalin’s statement had failed to uphold Bush’s standards.

“The President is determined to keep this campaign out of the sleaze business,” deputy press secretary Judy Smith said in a terse statement issued aboard Air Force One. She said Matalin had apologized, and “the President has accepted her apology and has full confidence in her.”

Matalin issued a statement in Washington, but she seemed less than contrite. She never used the word “apology” and vowed to continue her efforts to expose Democratic “hypocrisy.”

And before Smith issued her statement, campaign press secretary Torie Clarke had defended Matalin’s controversial press release.

The episode exposed some of the tensions and frustrations that have come to divide a GOP camp in which many strategists fear that Bush has not been aggressive enough in challenging his Democratic rival.

Matalin had won praise for leading a new daily offensive designed to raise questions about Clinton and his character. Every day since Thursday, it has issued a statement questioning some aspect of Clinton’s record. Some Bush campaign officials also praised her latest attack.

But their spirit was punctured as word spread that Bush had been upset upon learning for the first time of the attack as he read morning newspapers aboard Air Force One. A White House official said the President had immediately telephoned Chief of Staff Samuel K. Skinner and Bush campaign chairman Robert M. Teeter to make clear “that he wasn’t pleased about it.”

In Little Rock, Ark., Clinton shrugged off the incident and sought instead to take the political high road as he used an afternoon news conference to accuse Bush of failing to deal with the health-care crisis.

“I can’t afford to be preoccupied by that sort of nickel-and-dime stuff,” he said. “I just blow it off. It doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.”

But Clinton strategist James Carville--who, ironically, is romantically linked to Matalin--made clear that the campaign was braced for more personal attacks.

“They are going to run 1988’s campaign,” Carville said, referring to the slashing tactics Bush used four years ago in his triumph over Michael S. Dukakis. “They’re running 1980s’ government, (so) why shouldn’t they run 1988’s campaign. They’re yesterday, man.”

Carville called on Bush to release the statement the President says he issued to his staff barring negative campaigning. “Where is the written statement? . . . What did it say? Who did it apply to?”

Despite the furor, the White House and the Bush campaign voiced solidarity in vowing that the incident would not cause them to abandon a strategy calling for the GOP team to draw distinctions between Clinton and Bush.

Indeed, the latest edition of the campaign’s “attack fax” on Monday labeled Clinton a “puppet” manipulated by trade unions and other interests to support protectionism and oppose free trade. “Bill Clinton: He calls himself Elvis--but on free trade, he’s the great pretender,” it began.

But the flap cast a pall over a campaign day that--for its vigor and theater alike--should have been one of Bush’s most successful outings in weeks.

At a steamy noontime rally at a riverfront mall here, a crowd of 5,000 roared its approval as Bush yanked off his tie, rolled up his sleeves and seemed to find his rhetorical rhythm. His shirt dampened by sweat, Bush responded with more than usual zeal by wading into a crowd and reaching out with both hands to grasp the extended hands of well-wishers.

Bush denounced Clinton in all but name as he portrayed the Democratic nominee as someone who would add to middle-class burdens through a $150-billion tax increase. The proposal might represent change, he said in Jacksonville--”but change is all you’re going to have left in your pocket if you listen to them.”

And earlier, at a carpet factory in Dalton, Ga., Bush heaped scorn on a “certain Southern governor” who suggested recently that “this country was being ridiculed around the world.”

“They simply don’t understand the greatness of the United States of America,” he said.

The disarray also seemed likely, at least for the day, to distract attention from new Bush television commercials that were to begin airing around the nation Monday night. The two TV spots are part of a $5-million blitz in advance of the Aug. 17 kickoff of the Republican Convention.

Both ads feature Bush speaking earnestly on behalf of a reformist campaign agenda in a tactic designed to boost his popularity in the polls among voters who regard him as part of the status quo.

In one ad, the President reiterates his support for a balanced-budget constitutional amendment and describes it as a crucial step toward reducing the federal deficit. In the other, Bush describes his advocacy of family values, anti-crime programs and cuts in government spending as “the kind of change America needs.”

But the flurry over the Matalin statement so preoccupied Bush aides that they abandoned plans to distribute texts of the advertisements to reporters traveling with the President on his trip to Georgia and Florida.

Campaign officials said the incident had grown out of a deep frustration at the ability of Clinton and his lieutenants to aim political blows at Bush while warning all the while of the evils of the Republican attack machine.

Spokeswoman Clarke and others insisted that the statement Matalin issued Sunday afternoon had been intended only to hold Democrats responsible for the charges they had already leveled.

But the acerbic statement used the strongest language to ask in a rhetorical final question: “Which campaign has had to spend thousands of taxpayer dollars on private investigators to fend off a ‘bimbo eruption’?”

Early Monday morning, Clarke insisted that there was no problem. “I don’t accept your assumption that this was an attack,” she said in Dalton. “It’s the truth, pal.”

But White House spokeswoman Smith indicated only an hour later that Bush was less than pleased.

After Bush arrived in Jacksonville, Smith said he had been particularly troubled by the implicit allegation of marital misconduct. “The White House wants to run a good, clear campaign,” she said, adding that Matalin’s linking of Clinton to the word ‘bimbo’ was “below those kinds of standards.”

Times staff writers Sam Fulwood III and Thomas B. Rosenstiel contributed to this story.