Bush’s Words Win Some Voters--and Raise Doubts

With his acceptance speech Thursday night, President Bush solidified his support among Republicans and conservatives and deepened doubts about Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, but he did not fully erase voters’ concerns about his own economic performance and his plans for creating jobs, interviews with swing voters around the country suggest.

And in a potentially ominous note for the GOP, the convention’s stress on family values proved extremely polarizing, attracting some conservatives but intensely alienating at least as many moderates, according to voters who spoke to the Los Angeles Times after watching Bush’s speech Thursday night.

By loudly banging the gong on conservative economic issues--cutting taxes, limiting government regulation, balancing the budget--Bush clearly solidified his ties to Republicans and right-of-center independents who had been disenchanted with his handling of the economy, the interviews indicate.

“He basically apologized that he had made a mistake on taxes and he interspersed it with some very interesting new initiatives,” said Ed Naylor, a biochemical geneticist who lives in the Pittsburgh, Pa., suburb of Mt. Lebanon.

Naylor was one of 19 registered voters in 10 states who spoke with Times reporters after Bush’s convention address. Some were visited in their homes; most talked with a reporter by telephone after the speech. All had identified themselves in a Times Poll last week as having an equivocal view of Bush, either slightly positive or somewhat negative.

Bush made only limited gains among moderate independents and Democrats who were listening to the speech. Some saw him as too caustic in his attacks on Clinton, and most expressed concern about the conservative social agenda stressed here this week. Several of those interviewed still questioned whether Bush has an effective plan to reduce unemployment, or a personal commitment to improving the lives of middle-class families.

“All this talk about cutting taxes--like the capital gains tax cut--I’m sorry, that’s not going to help me and my husband one little bit,” said Cecilia Cook, 32, a resident of the Detroit suburb of Royal Oak who voted for Bush four years ago. “I have two children and my husband makes $30,000 a year as an accountant. I don’t think Bush would have any idea of how to live on $30,000 a year.”

She added: “The speech did nothing to show me he was in touch with the reality of people like us. A week ago, I was teetering on the edge, but the speech just pushed me over the line the other way to Clinton.”

Overall, Bush appeared to have had more success convincing swing voters to give him a second look--and Clinton a closer inspection--than actually closing the sale.

Virginia Watson, a 55-year-old bank trust officer living in the Boston suburb of Pembroke, Mass., went into the speech planning to vote for Clinton, and came out leaning that way, too--but less strongly. After listening to Bush’s remarks, she said she was “not as definitely against the President” and plans to “listen to them both again.”

Added Stephen Glines, a 40-year-old author who lives in Belmont, Mass., another Boston suburb: “The speech . . . outlined every conceivable flaw in Bill Clinton. It raised my doubts about him. But it didn’t do much for my appreciation of George Bush.”

Heading into the convention, Bush strategists faced a multi-front challenge as they attempted to reassemble the coalition that dominated national politics through the 1980s. In a Times Poll conducted last weekend, Bush faced significant defections from both culturally conservative ethnic Northerners--the so-called Reagan Democrats--and from younger and more socially liberal Republicans and independents.

Balancing those diverse constituencies during the week proved difficult, the interviews suggest. For many listeners, Bush’s economic proposals--and the convention’s attempt to portray Clinton as an irresponsible liberal--were overshadowed by the week’s focus on family values, which proved enormously polarizing.

For some, the sharply worded discussion of values and such issues as gay rights from Patrick J. Buchanan, Vice President Dan Quayle and religious broadcaster Pat Robertson was long overdue. “I’m for traditional family values, so I was impressed,” said Coradean Naylor, a high school teacher from Marshall, Mo. “I liked Bush’s statement about families and how they need to stick together and teach their children right from wrong.”

But others found the repeated references to family values either irrelevant or offensive--or both. Danny Boone, a 36-year-old Dallas Republican who voted for Ronald Reagan twice and backed Bush in 1988, said the convention’s conservative social tone confirmed his decision to vote for Clinton.

“Family values,” he said derisively. “If I hear that one more time I’m going to get sick. If the economy was good, if everybody had a job or didn’t have to work two jobs, families would be a lot better off. If family values are suffering, it is more a symptom of the economy than anything else.”

Gayle Hyslop, an independent 47-year-old farmer in Fulton, Mo., who typically votes for Republicans in presidential elections, liked Bush’s speech and agreed with the President on cutting government spending and the capital gains tax, as well as granting the chief executive line-item veto authority.

Even so, she said, the proceedings in Houston “made me lean more toward Clinton. All week the convention insulted me. I’m insulted by their intolerance. The radical people--the positions of Buchanan, Phyllis Schlafly, Robertson--they made me so angry!

“I can’t believe they are so strongly against abortion and gays. I wonder who they will be against next. Whose rights are they going to take away?”

More successful, the interviews suggest, were the convention’s attempts to challenge Clinton’s portrayal of himself as a moderate and to raise doubts about his experience and temperament.

The charges leveled against Clinton this week made Lee Swanson, a Republican in Glendale, Ariz., more likely to pull the lever for Bush again. “I couldn’t bring myself to vote for Clinton,” said Swanson, a 49-year-old general manager for an auto dealership. “Like they said tonight, if he’s a moderate, I’m an Alaskan astronaut. He’s basically just a liberal in lamb’s clothing.”

Even among some still disposed toward Clinton, the repeated attacks on his proposals to increase domestic spending left some doubts. “One thing that scares me about Clinton,” says Hyslop, “is that he has all the right answers for everything--but where will the money come from?”

This week’s proceedings may have been most successful at contrasting the two contenders personally. By stressing Bush’s experience--and for that matter, his age through repeated references to his service in World War II--the GOP appeared to enlarge the “stature gap” in the minds of some swing voters.

“There is quite a difference between being governor of a state and President of the United States,” said Madge LeMaster, a Republican in Sedona, Ariz., who said the convention, while leaving her still uncertain, had pushed her closer to Bush.

The emphasis on character--crystallized in Labor Secretary Lynn Martin’s assertion Wednesday night that “you can’t be one kind of man and another kind of President”--left an impression on Melody Haygood, who recently moved to Roswell, Ga., from California.

“To me what Lynn Martin said means a lot,” said Haygood, who formerly managed medical offices but is now unemployed. “If I met Clinton at a cocktail party, I would not like him.”

Still, some thought Bush went over the line in his acceptance speech with his stinging personal jabs at Clinton. Watson, the still-undecided Boston bank officer, said she was offended by the President’s “cruel remarks about Clinton.” Lee Swanson agreed: “I think when Bush sits back and looks back on the speech, I think he’ll realize he could have done without that.”

Others were irritated by the attacks on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee’s wife. “I wasn’t aware the First Lady was an elected office,” said Dennis Costlow, a 46-year-old chemical sales representative in Grand Junction, Colo.

In the end, senior Bush strategists believe, the President’s fate will depend on convincing voters that he has a better plan to revive the economy than does Clinton. Bush made some measurable progress on that front Thursday, particularly among voters skeptical of government action. In Arizona, LeMaster liked Bush’s ideas about vetoing spending bills he considered excessive and allowing taxpayers to apply some of their tax dollars directly toward reducing the deficit.

“I always wanted to be able to tell them how to spend my money,” she said.

That idea also appealed to Ed Naylor: “It gives the individual taxpayer the opportunity to feel they’re actually doing something to reduce the deficit and to reduce government expenditures.”

Likewise, Bush’s calls for restraints on spending and regulation struck the right note for David Johnstone, a 49-year-old Republican in Waltham, Mass., who is now confirmed in his decision to back Bush: “If you leave business alone, they’ll make more money. And making money creates jobs.”

But others wondered if the plan Bush outlined Thursday would do enough to create more opportunity. “He did have a plan for reducing the deficit,” said Alfredo de la Pena, a retired Navy officer living in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., who voted for Bush in 1988. “But he really did not have a real well-defined plan for creating more jobs. I was really hoping he would have a plan for retaining jobs in this country.”

Other doubts clouded impressions of Bush’s speech. Bush’s violation of his no-new-taxes pledge left some skeptical that he would follow through on any of the initiatives he promised Thursday. “He has not been honest,” said Irving Spratt, a 66-year-old lifelong registered Republican and physician in Highland, Calif., who voted against Bush four years ago and is leaning toward Clinton now. “He runs his election to win and not in relationship to anything he can do. He’s saying what he thinks should be said to get elected.”

Alice Skinger, a retired bank employee in Marathon, Fla., doubts that Bush will devote more energy to domestic problems in a second term than he did in his first: “Anything that happens in the next 70 days is orchestrated; if it didn’t happen in the last four years, it’s too late.”

In Michigan, Cook thought Bush’s long discussion of foreign policy at the speech’s start showed his true priorities: “When he started off in how great he has done in foreign affairs, I almost turned the TV off. It’s what he is going to have to do that is really important; not what he has done already.”

Still others questioned Bush’s repeated insistence that an obdurate Congress had frustrated his attempts to revive the economy.

“Reagan had a Democratic Congress and he was able to get things pushed through,” said Danny Boone, the Dallas Republican. “Bush is no Reagan. Maybe he had some good ideas, but he is not going to be able to change Congress.”

In Ft. Lauderdale, De la Pena spoke for many of those interviewed when he said he was glad that Bush looked “confident and really in command of the situation”--but he remains uncertain about whether the President deserves a chance to prove that the next four years could be better than the last.

“I think Bush narrowed the gap; he gained some territory there,” said De la Pena, an accountant who has been leaning toward Clinton. “But he will still have to work real hard to convince people that he is the man.”

Times staff writers Amy Harmon, Ron Russell, Tracy Shryer, Edith Stanley and Ann Rovin and special correspondents Mike Clary, Jim Henderson, Laura Laughlin, John Laidler, Bill Steigerwald and Iris Yokoi contributed to this story.