Bush Concentrates Attacks on Clinton’s Experience

President Bush, playing the endgame in his struggle for reelection, said Saturday the United States cannot risk electing a leader “completely without experience, completely untested, a leader about whom we know very, very little.”

Crossing the state of Wisconsin by train in hopes of pinning down its 11 electoral votes, the President hammered away at Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton, seeking in the campaign’s waning hours to instill doubts about his opponent’s ability to handle a foreign policy crisis. At the same time, Bush told track-side throngs that the nation’s economy--the issue that drove many voters throughout the spring and summer to seek other leaders--was now on the upswing in this autumn of uncertainty.

As the day wound down and the skies grew more sodden, Bush slugged relentlessly away, his message growing more pointed as he refined his attacks on Clinton’s trustworthiness.

Referring to barbs directed at him by the Arkansas governor based on new evidence concerning Bush’s knowledge of the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages deal, the President told a cheering crowd in Oshkosh that “being attacked on character by Gov. Clinton is like being called ugly by a frog. Don’t worry about it.”

And continuing his effort to depict Clinton as a waffler, Bush said, “The pumpkin in Arkansas has two faces: Whichever side you’re on, he’s right there. You can’t do that as President of the United States.”

Later, his voice growing hoarse in the cold air, Bush said in Stevens Point that as the campaign winds down, Clinton was “frantically flopping around like a bass on the side of the Arkansas River.” He added, in a reference to the controversy that has surrounded the Democrat’s effort to avoid military service during the Vietnam War, “Here’s a guy who has waffled and weaseled about the draft.”

Winding up his day in Chippewa Falls, the President drew on a Halloween image to re-package some of his favorite criticisms of the Democratic ticket--that Clinton, despite his protests to the contrary, is a traditional tax-and-spend liberal, and that his running mate, Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee, is an environmental extremist.

“If a couple of yuppies dressed as moderates come to your door, give them some candy, but hold onto your wallets,” Bush said. “It’s a trick, not a treat--Governor Taxes and the Ozone Man.”

But as Bush’s 18-car train eased slowly through the rich, dark fields of Wisconsin, past cornstalks turned the color of straw and crossroads where knots of townspeople gathered, his campaign found itself dogged by the renewed questions about the Iran-Contra deal.

The issue was thrust into the campaign’s forefront Friday by the release of a note written by former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger. And, on Halloween the issue’s presence was symbolized by a single-engine airplane towing a sign over a Bush rally: “Iran-Contra Haunts You.”

The Weinberger note asserted that at a meeting in January, 1986, Bush--then vice president--supported the proposal to sell weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages in Lebanon. Bush has long acknowledged that he supported the arms sale, but that he did not realize the deal amounted to a swap of weapons for hostages.

In responding to Clinton attacks on him stemming from the Weinberger note, Bush said that his foe “has become panicked” by recent national polls that showed his lead over Bush narrowing, in some cases dramatically. Clinton, Bush said, is afraid that “the power he has lusted for . . . is going to slip away from him.”

“He’s begun a series of personal attacks on my character, and he’s basically called me a liar,” Bush said. “He’s latched onto the silly little charges and accusations in a desperate attempt to stop his free fall in the polls.”

And, turning an end-of-the-campaign spotlight on an issue that arose in the spring--Clinton’s admission, after he had spent months dodging the question, that he had smoked marijuana while a college student in England--Bush said: “He smoked a little but he didn’t inhale? Sure. Who believes that?”

Despite Bush’s efforts to scoff at Clinton, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater conceded that the flurry of attention to Weinberger’s note cost the GOP campaign a precious day of keeping attention focused on the issues as Bush sees them.

Bush, at one stop after another, tried to persuade his listeners that Clinton would not be up to the task of being President.

“I ask you to close your eyes and imagine in a crisis situation an American leader totally without experience, completely untested, a leader about whom we know very, very little, if you get down to it,” he said. “And what we know is a troubling pattern of being on one side and then another, an ingrained habit of trying to lead by misleading and not coming clean.

“I don’t believe we can take this kind of risk,” the President continued, adding that although “the Soviet bear is dead, there are a lot of wolves out there in the woods.”

In between towns, the train rolled across a 279.5-mile vista of rural--and sparsely populated--America. Children getting ready for trick-or-treating stood by the rails in costumes, their parents waved small American flags, hunters paused near ponds and in one town, the young players in a high school football game halted their combat, removed their helmets and acknowledged the passing train.

With the covers of satellite dishes on a communications car decorated as pumpkins and ghosts, and two of the President’s grandchildren parading in costumes through the aisles of the passenger cars collecting candy, the President made the most of the Halloween theme.

To his audiences he asked, “You want to go the Clinton route? Every day will seem like Halloween. Fright and terror. Fright and terror. Witches and devils everywhere.”

Clinton and Gore “are literally trying to scare America,” Bush said. “The only way that the Clinton-Gore ticket can win is if they convince us that we’re a nation in decline . . . or if they can convince the hard-working families in this country that we’re in a deep recession.

“Neither is true,” he continued. “We are the most respected nation in the world. And our economy, thank God, is moving forward.”

Even as Bush pronounced himself “elated” that the campaign was near its end, top-ranking campaign aides worked in a nearby car, and in Washington, furiously trying to figure out where the President would spend the final hours of the race. They pored over polling data to make the crucial decisions about where his appearances could be most effective.

“The numbers look pretty good,” said White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III. But he refused to engage in a state-by-state rundown of Bush’s prospects.

Campaign director Robert M. Teeter told reporters that by the campaign’s count, there was a pool of 320 likely electoral votes from which Bush could draw the 270 needed for victory on Tuesday--200 in the South and Mountain West, 70 in the Northern industrial states, and 50 in the so-called battleground states, among them Wisconsin, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

A senior Bush campaign official, however, acknowledged that the GOP ticket was encountering unexpected difficulties in Michigan, where polls pointing two days ago to a possible Bush victory led them to schedule a campaign stop today.

The official said Michigan, which has 18 electoral votes, “continues to perplex us because just as the gap started going down, it shot back up again.”

Bush campaign officials also said they believe the race is tightening in Pennsylvania and that the President now has a solid shot at winning that state’s 23 electoral votes.

As of Saturday, officials said, Bush planned to campaign in New Jersey; Philadelphia, Pa.; Akron, Ohio, and in one or two more locations, still undetermined, before winding up Monday at an election-eve rally in Texas--where the President maintains his voting residence and which is one of the many major states viewed as crucial to his hopes.

Vice President Dan Quayle, meanwhile, stumped in Illinois, a state where GOP aides say a once-huge Clinton lead is shrinking.

Quayle drew attention to a story published in the Washington Times Saturday which quoted two sources as saying that in 1974, Clinton’s Reserve Officer Training Corps files at the University of Arkansas were removed by two men who said they worked for him. In 1969, Clinton had agreed to join the ROTC unit as part of his effort to avoid the draft, although ultimately he did not do so.

Betsey Wright, Clinton’s research director, called the allegations “hogwash,” according to the newspaper story.

But Quayle contended the incident amounted to “another part of Bill Clinton’s pattern of deception.”

Times staff writers Douglas Jehl in Washington and Art Pine in Chicago contributed to this story.