Comeback Bid Gaining Speed, President Says

Insisting that his comeback bid had begun to gain momentum, President Bush campaigned across Middle America on Wednesday with a sudden vigor, even taunting Democrats whose hopes for victory he said were quickly “slipping away.”

Assisted by vast clouds of confetti that infused a celebratory air into a downtown rally here, Bush’s aides hurried to add to the impression that the Republican ticket was on the move, embracing one poll as evidence that the President has dramatically closed the gap between himself and Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the Democratic nominee.

Bush was still exulting in other good news, boasting throughout the day that a new government report showing stronger than expected economic growth had “cast fear into the hearts” of a Democratic rival whose bid for the White House he said remained dependent upon an attitude of despair about the country.

“All these critics and all these naysayers and all the people telling you we have no chance are going to be proved wrong,” he shouted at the Columbus rally.

At a small-town rally earlier in Strongsville, Ohio, he vowed to overcome Clinton and “annoy the media” by winning the election.

Political campaigns are adept at creating illusions, and it was far from clear that the presidential race was narrowing to the degree trumpeted by the GOP, if at all. A new USA Today/CNN poll of respondents it defined as likely voters showed Bush closing to within 2 percentage points of Clinton, but other surveys found Clinton holding a wider lead, with little movement toward the President.

The USA Today/CNN poll taken Monday and Tuesday showed Clinton leading Bush by 40% to 38%, with independent candidate Ross Perot at 16%, among 1,217 likely voters. Clinton’s lead was less than the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3 points.

In contrast, an NBC-Wall Street Journal poll of 576 likely voters taken Tuesday night gave Clinton 43%, Bush 36% and Perot 15%, with a 5-point margin of error. And an ABC News poll of 898 likely voters taken Monday and Tuesday showed Clinton backed by 41%, Bush 34% and Perot 21%, with a 4-point margin of error.

In all three polls, Clinton held a wider lead in the broader sample of registered voters.

Also, a new poll of 1,837 likely voters taken between Friday and Tuesday for the Washington Post gave Clinton a 10-point lead over Bush--44% to 34%--with Perot at 19%. The survey’s margin of error is 3 points. Those results are almost identical to findings of a Los Angeles Times Poll conducted between Saturday and Monday, which among likely voters showed Clinton backed by 44%, Bush 34% and Perot 18%. The Times survey also had a 3-point margin of error.

Meanwhile, a source at the Republican National Committee in Washington said that, although officials there were pleased to hear about the USA Today/CNN poll results, the group’s own polling did not reflect such a significant shift.

Bush campaign officials, though, spoke with new openness about a comeback strategy aimed at perhaps a dozen crucial states. And Bush seemed to have gained a new swagger a day after the Commerce Department reported that the economy grew by a 2.7% annual rate between July and September.

In Strongsville, where perhaps 15,000 people thronged the commons and spilled into adjacent streets, the President quieted a small band of Clinton supporters.

“Desperation,” he scoffed as his own partisans roared in approval under sunny autumn skies. “You know what’s happening? These guys feel it slipping away from them. They know we’re on the move.”

As Bush devoted a full campaign day to Ohio, whose 21 electoral votes are crucial to his hopes, aides acknowledged privately that Clinton still held a substantial lead in the state-by-state races that determine the White House winner.

But they claimed to be confident of their standing in about 14 states providing 140 of the 270 electoral votes required for election. And they sketched plans to aim their efforts in the campaign’s final five days at an equivalent number of tossup states that must land in the Bush column if the President is to eke out a victory.

The strategists acknowledged that considerable good fortune would be required for their victory scenario to occur. But on a day when the Bush camp wanted to project optimism about itself and disdain for critics, the President paid no public heed to the prospect that he might fall short.

“Things are really improving across the country,” he shouted near dusk in Dayton, where many thousands of local residents thronged into a downtown rally and cheered their support. “It’s going to happen. It is going to happen.”

With flocks of balloons, the choking shower of confetti and stirring introductions by actors Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican campaign covered the event in an air of celebration.

Still hoping to draw benefit from Tuesday’s Commerce Department report on third-quarter economic growth, Bush contended throughout the day that the news, like his presidency, was being greeted with reserve.

In an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” he complained bitterly that newspapers had made “bad news out of good news” by calling attention to economists who reacted skeptically to the government report.

Clinton has dismissed the third-quarter growth figure as only a superficial sign of progress, but Bush contended that the news had “put the lie” to Democrats’ talk of the nation’s enduring economic difficulties. “We’re not in a recession,” he said. “We’re growing.”

With so little time remaining before Election Day, Bush’s daylong tour of Ohio was likely to be his last of the campaign, and that pressure brought a new air of urgency to his final appeals.

Citing a new Associated Press report, he charged that newfound budget shortfalls in Arkansas’ Medicaid program reflected mismanagement that his rival might be forced to resolve with a post-election increase in state taxes. “It sounds like Gov. Clinton better clean up his mess in Arkansas before fooling around with the United States of America,” he said.

In a state whose dependence on the automobile industry invites disdain for environmentalism, Bush also referred with derisive familiarity to Tennessee Sen. Al Gore, the Democratic vice presidential nominee. He labeled the pro-environment senator simply “Ozone.”

But the President ran into persistent skepticism Wednesday night as he answered often-pointed questions from voters during an hourlong session in Columbus.

Asked why he had decided to delegate second-term domestic affairs to White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, Bush said, “Make no mistake about it. Nobody’s handing off anything . . . . I’m the captain of the ship.

He also defended Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas by saying that new polls show growing numbers of people believe that the woman who last year accused Thomas of sexual harassment, law professor Anita Faye Hill, reflected sentiments “drummed in . . . by the woman’s movement and all these people.”