It’s High Noon as Bush Loads Up for Debate

Facing their best remaining chance for turning the tide of the election, President Bush’s strategists plan to mount a new assault on Bill Clinton’s character in tonight’s final campaign debate.

Advisers to Clinton, while braced for the attack, are hoping the Democratic standard-bearer will be able to focus the 90-minute session at East Lansing, Mich., on his plans for lifting the nation out of the prolonged economic slump.

As for independent contender Ross Perot, his main goal remains what it has been since he announced his candidacy Oct. 1: to restore the damage done to his credibility when he abruptly canceled initial plans for his candidacy in July. But if Perot follows past form, and the President sticks with the plan to target Clinton’s character, the Texas tycoon could help the Democratic nominee weather the storm.

The Bush attack strategy, still being formulated, is said to be based on surveys of audience reactions to discussion of the character issue during the first two presidential debates and during last week’s vice presidential debate.

“We’ve analyzed the three debates very closely, and we know where Clinton is very weak, and we’re going to hone in on that Monday night,” Bush campaign pollster Fred Steeper said in a telephone interview.

Steeper declined to be more specific because he said he did not want to alert the Clinton forces. But in the previous two debates, Bush contended that Clinton’s participation in protests against the Vietnam War when he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University in England signified a defect in his character that “deeply troubled” Bush.

In the second presidential debate last Thursday, Bush also accused Clinton of “waffling” by shifting his positions on controversial issues such as the North American Free Trade Agreement. Vice President Dan Quayle made similar charges throughout last week’s vice presidential debate.

In a speech at a campaign rally in New Jersey Saturday, Bush raised another aspect of what Republicans consider to be the character issue by flatly accusing Clinton of draft evasion during the Vietnam War.

Steeper said Bush has no “new revelation” about Clinton’s behavior. Rather, the pollster said, plans called for the President to focus on “a part of Clinton’s routine that the public is not buying.” Bush intended to “push on it,” he added.

The Bush team intends to press its assault not only in the debate but also in a final two-week flurry of television advertisements due to begin airing on Tuesday.

“It’s going to be ‘Hit ‘em again, hit ‘em again, harder, harder,’ ” campaign spokeswoman Torie Clarke said Sunday.

Some analysts believe that given the widespread anxiety over the economy and impatience with the President’s perceived failure to cope with it more effectively, Bush has no other choice but to attack Clinton’s character.

“Bush has to convince the American people that Bill Clinton cannot be trusted with the presidency,” said G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics at Pennsylvania’s Millersville University. “And he has to convince them that this is more important than their deep-rooted fears for their economic future.”

Some Bush aides claim that the President has already made a start toward this goal, during the three televised debates that began Oct. 11, by boosting negative reactions to Clinton--reflected by a tightening of the race in some public surveys.

“I think the momentum is moving our way,” said Charles Black, senior adviser to the Bush campaign.

Bush campaign manager Frederic V. Malek echoed the theme on CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday”: “I think the American people need to focus on who really does have the character to sit in the Oval Office. That is the prime consideration.”

But Clinton’s pollster, Stanley Greenberg, says there has been no significant increase in Clinton’s negative ratings for the last several weeks.

Clinton himself, in comments after attending services at a black church in Detroit on Sunday, said he expects character assaults from Bush. “He can’t run on his record or his own program for the future, so all he can do is tear me down,” Clinton said. “But I don’t think the American people believe that four more years of that is what we need.

“What he has done is to drive up his own negative numbers, you know, and to invite people to talk about his own character.”

But Bush aides claim to be encouraged by recollections of their success in Bush’s 1988 campaign against Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis. “The more people learned about Dukakis, the less they liked him,” Bush adviser Black recalled. “And with Clinton, there’s a whole lot more bad to learn than there was about Dukakis, and people are just beginning to learn about it.”

Not all Republicans think that emphasizing the character issue is the key to Bush’s reelection. “I think character is an issue, certainly, and trust is an issue,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp said on CNN’s “Evans and Novak Show” last week. “But ultimately the vote will go to the man and the party that lays out the clearest agenda of where we want to take America in the next four years.”

Bush’s advisers are themselves uncertain about how vigorously Bush can attack Clinton without diminishing his own stature as President. “If you tried to get Bush to go on the attack in a sustained way, he would look contrived and forced and he would look the worse for it,” Black said. “So we wouldn’t ask for it.”

Bush will be “forceful,” predicted pollster Steeper. “But he won’t be a bantam rooster like Quayle,” who made denunciation of Clinton’s character the main feature of his presentation in the vice presidential debate last week.

“That’s not his style,” said Steeper, who has worked on every GOP presidential campaign since 1972.

Whatever course Bush takes tonight, Clinton’s advisers are determined to make sure their candidate is ready. They prepared several scenarios for the encounter on the Michigan State University campus, including one in which Clinton responded to attacks much as his running mate, Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee, did in the vice presidential debate.

When Quayle charged that “Bill Clinton has trouble telling the truth,” Gore shot back: “George Bush, in case you’ve forgotten, Dan, said: ‘Read my lips: No new taxes.’ ”

Most of all, though, Clinton will try to stick to the economic message that has helped to put him in front in the 1992 drive for the White House with only two weeks to go before Election Day.

“He wants to hammer home the idea that he has an economic plan, that he understands what real people are going through and that he not only promises change but can deliver on it,” said George Stephanopolous, the campaign’s communications director.

As for Perot, whose skill at melding folksy humor with hard-boiled economics in the first debate boosted his standing in the polls, associates expect him to stress the themes of austerity and reform that he delineated in a 30-minute “infomercial” on fiscal policy that he aired twice last week.

James Squires, Perot’s former communications director, who is still an unofficial adviser, expects that Perot’s performance will help answer criticism that he has dwelt on the nation’s economic ills without spelling out cures.

“He’ll probably move the level of his discussion up to where his commercials are,” said Squires. “He’s been dealing with the problems; now he’ll deal more with the solutions.”

Though Bush advisers hope that Perot’s candidacy ultimately will help their beleaguered campaign by taking away from Clinton some of the voters who want change, Squires believes that Perot’s presence in the debate will do Bush more harm than good.

“First, his message smashes Bush,” said Squires, referring to Perot’s sweeping criticism of current economic conditions and policies. Second, Squires contends, Perot’s proposed remedies are so rigorous that discontented voters will find Clinton more palatable because he represents “an easier route to change.”

So far as the character issue is concerned, Perot has already made clear he views most such discussion as a wasteful distraction from the need to debate fundamental economic and political reforms.

“He looks upon personal attacks with disdain,” Perot’s national volunteer coordinator, Orson Swindle, said on CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday.”

During the first debate, when he was asked to comment on Bush’s criticism of Clinton’s character, Perot deftly turned the issue against Bush. He said voters should consider the difference between the mistakes made “by a young person in his formative years,” like Clinton, and those made by “a senior official in the federal government,” like the President, suggesting that mature mistakes are worse.

A revival of the character issue tonight would give Perot another opportunity to needle Bush, which would seem hard for him to pass up. As Squires pointed out: “Ross Perot has never made it a secret that he doesn’t want George Bush to get reelected.”

Times staff writers David Lauter and Douglas Jehl in Washington and James Gerstenzang in Michigan contributed to this story.

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in East Lansing and Ypsilanti, Mich.

President Bush campaigns in Lansing, Mich.

Ross Perot has no public events scheduled.

TELEVISION

President Bush, Gov. Clinton and Ross Perot participate in final presidential debate in East Lansing, Mich. The debate airs at 4 p.m. PDT on all four networks and CNN, C-SPAN and PBS.