Democratic Chairman Questions Bush’s Leadership Skills

Launching a preemptive strike against the Republican front-runner, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee is asserting that Texas Gov. George W. Bush lacks the experience and leadership skills to serve as president.

“He wouldn’t be in this race if his name were not Bush,” said Chairman Roy Romer in an interview that he requested with The Times. “He would be regarded as maybe one of the top 20 governors in the United States. But he wouldn’t be a leading candidate for president.”

Romer’s unusually early offensive against Bush, who has not even formally declared his candidacy, underscores the extent to which Democrats expect to be facing the Texas governor in next year’s presidential race.

Looking at Romer’s remarks through that lens, Karen Hughes, Bush’s communications director, dismissed them as a sign of Democratic anxiety. “The chairman of the DNC is very worried that Gov. Bush will be the next Republican nominee, because he knows that if he [is], Gov. Bush will be the next president.”

Romer acknowledged that he made his comments now because Bush has emerged as “such a clear front-runner” and is poised for his first campaign swings next month, first to Iowa and New Hampshire, then to a wider list of states, including California.

“I just think everybody in Iowa and New Hampshire and New York and California need to begin to focus on the real questions,” said Romer, a former governor of Colorado. “The real question is having the name George W. Bush isn’t going to get you there; it is do you have the leadership, the experience, the issues.”

For months, national polls have shown Bush, 52, holding a commanding lead in the Republican presidential primary and a double-digit advantage over Vice President Al Gore in early tests of sentiment for next year’s general election. But Bush has remained in Texas, and has kept a low profile in most national debates, while focusing on the state legislative session that is scheduled to conclude today.

Previewing what are likely to become Democratic refrains as Bush finally steps onto the campaign trail, Romer criticized the Texas governor along two principal lines.

First, he questioned whether Bush, whose sole service in public office has been his five years as Texas governor, has sufficient experience to serve as “leader of the free world,” as Romer put it.

“Somebody who has just been a governor for five years, you have to ask some tough questions: Is this the kind of experience that qualifies you to run and occupy [the presidency] and lead?” he said.

Second, Romer accused Bush of ducking a series of controversial issues. Romer cited Bush’s ambiguous initial comments on Kosovo and his refusal to support legislation in the Texas House to punish hate crimes and require background checks at gun shows--even though, on both bills, he has said he has supported the concept.

“Time and time again, he has just stood back and said, ‘I’ll let others decide, I don’t have a position,’ ” Romer charged. “That’s not a very reassuring record.”

On Kosovo, Bush initially supported military action only in heavily qualified terms, although he later endorsed the use of ground troops if necessary to win the conflict.

On hate crimes, Bush’s position was oblique. He said he opposed including homosexuals as a protected category under hate crime legislation, but he never took a public position on the actual bill. After passing the state House with gays included, the hate crime bill died in the state Senate two weeks ago in a dispute over the gay issue.

On guns, Bush endorsed the concept of requiring background checks for purchases at gun shows only after a state House committee killed a bill to require them in Texas. Later, he refused to try to resuscitate the bill, saying he objected to the way it implemented the checks.

Romer acknowledged that he “has not had a chance to look in a detailed way at [Bush’s] record in Texas.” Rather, he said, he was observing “those things that jump out of that to a national scale.”

But Bush’s aides said the overall record shows the governor has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to lead his state and move his priorities through the Legislature.

“He outlines his agenda and doesn’t get distracted by the issue du jour,” Hughes said. “If Gov. Bush had not pushed a bold agenda of tax cuts in 1997 and 1999, the money would all have been spent on new government programs. Had he not campaigned on specific welfare reforms in 1994, they never would have been enacted; had he not campaigned on tort reform, it would not have happened.”

This weekend, Bush added more entries to his achievement list as he reached agreement with state House and Senate negotiators on a $3.8-billion package to fund schools and cut taxes.

That agreement won final legislative approval late Sunday, giving Bush a tax cut he valued at $1.9 billion (compared with the $2.6 billion he proposed in January) and providing Democrats a pay hike for teachers. In the package, Bush also won approval of his plan to end “social promotion” for students statewide, moving Texas in line behind California as one of the first states to implement that reform.

If nothing else, Romer’s pointed comments eliminate any doubt that Bush’s record as governor will be a major focus as rivals in both parties look for vulnerabilities.

Romer opened a new front by charging that Bush displayed the wrong priorities when he pushed for a larger tax cut in final state budget negotiations last weekend, whereas Democrats wanted to increase funds for kindergarten programs.

That latter criticism foreshadows a likely Democratic effort to argue that Bush’s budget priorities in Texas undercut his claim to be a “compassionate conservative.” From the other side, Bush’s more conservative rivals for the GOP nomination may argue he didn’t hold out for a large enough tax cut.