Bush, After Hiatus, Expected to Focus on Issues

Short on cash, searching for a running mate, George Bush is running a nearly invisible campaign these days barely two weeks before the start of the Republican National Convention that will nominate him for the presidency.

His disappearing act is not unexpected--the period was planned as a time to prepare for the convention and the rest of the campaign, as well as to focus on his choice of a vice presidential nominee.

To some extent the void is being filled by three Republican National Committee television advertisements seeking to remind nationwide audiences of the drop in inflation and unemployment over the last seven years.

And one former White House official involved in the Bush campaign predicted that the pace of the vice president’s activities will soon pick up in a way that will draw attention to issues he believes will be favorable to his candidate.

“The press hasn’t focused on Bush since March and they’ve underestimated him,” this source said. “It will make it a lot easier for him to recoup.”

Bush Allies Complain

But some Bush allies fear the vice president’s hiatus from the campaign trail is allowing Michael S. Dukakis to take advantage of the lift from the Democratic nominating convention and are quietly complaining that Bush has not done enough in the last two months to counter the attention paid to Dukakis.

Bush will try to seize the political initiative next week, with a speech concentrating on foreign policy in which he will seek to contrast his own experience with that of Dukakis and to deliver his agenda for meeting the challenges that changes in global politics present to the United States.

But, said one Bush staff member: “There’s some concern here that Dukakis is running away with the economic issues. We’ve got to do something to make sure we get them back. The convention will be the first big hit on that.”

The Bush campaign has projected a low-key image ever since Bush locked up the Republican nomination with quick, early spring victories over his rivals for the party’s nomination. But the low visibility has been enforced in recent weeks because the Bush organization ran through all but about $1.5 million of the money it is allowed by federal law to spend during the primary campaign season. It is awaiting an infusion of $46.1 million in federal funds for his post-convention campaign.

‘Troubled’ by Hiatus

“We’re in kind of a difficult problem,” Bush said last week. “But the convention is just around the corner. I am troubled because there’s a little hiatus in here.”

Meanwhile, one Republican source with extensive experience in political image-building expressed concern that the Bush organization will allow the choice of a vice presidential candidate, and the expected appointment of Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III as the campaign’s chairman, to draw attention away from Bush and the messages he seeks to convey in coming weeks. Letting such personnel matters, regardless of their importance, take on such a dominant position creates a risk: If the announcements fail to jump-start the campaign, Bush may be pushed farther into a hole.

“It tells you the campaign is not going the way it ought to,” the Republican said.

Choice of Running Mate

Indeed, the search for a vice presidential nominee has come to dominate the focus of the Bush campaign. Bush, said campaign Press Secretary Sheila Tate, “is immersed in the vice presidential selection process.”

Bush, visiting a corporate-run child care center Friday in Tysons Corner, Va., just outside of Washington, said of his campaign: “It’s going on schedule. We have an orderly process.” He said he hopes to make a decision before he goes to New Orleans for the Republican National Convention, although he has also said he has no plans to make his choice known before then.

Robert M. Kimmitt, a Washington lawyer and a friend of Baker who served on the National Security Council staff and at the Treasury Department, has taken on the task of overseeing the gathering of information on the more than a dozen Republicans said to be on Bush’s “long list” of candidates, all of whom the vice president has spoken to by telephone. Kimmitt is distributing questionnaires seeking personal and financial information about the potential candidates.

Rival Dole Included

They include former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee; Sen. William L. Armstrong of Colorado; Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. of South Carolina; Sen. John C. Danforth of Missouri; Gov. George Deukmejian of California; Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, Bush’s final rival for the presidential nomination; former Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole and Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico.

Also, Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum of Kansas; Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey; Rep. Jack Kemp of New York; Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana; Sen. Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming; Gov. John H. Sununu of New Hampshire, and former Gov. Richard L. Thornburgh of Pennsylvania, recently nominated by President Reagan to be attorney general.

The visit to the child-care center was typical of those Bush is making these days. Earlier in the week, he crossed the Potomac River to Virginia to speak about education, and helped honor a few dozen children as young inventors.

Meanwhile, press releases are electronically dispatched denouncing Dukakis on a variety of issues--most recently on taxes and crime.

These “Datafax days,” however, seem to make little impact.

“I can’t believe we’ll go on like this. If we do, I don’t feel too good about things,” said one Bush campaign staff member.

Full-Court Press

But another, Press Secretary Tate, said the vice president has spent recent weeks preparing for the full-court press of the campaign.

“He’s done a lot of issue and policy development work that will stand him in good stead” in pointing to the directions a Bush Administration would take the country, Tate said. So, she added, in coming weeks, “the distinctions and differences (between Dukakis and Bush) are going to become very clear.”

The vice president is also granting a number of interviews to reporters, she said, “to show some of the human side of George Bush and acquaint some of the voters with the source of his strength and confidence--his terrific family, that whole parade of grandchildren . . . the fact that Tabasco sauce will replace jellybeans” as the condiment of choice in a Bush White House.

“He came to the realization himself that he needs to be more open about sharing his family and his private existence with the people so they have a better sense of what, as he said, his ‘heartbeat’ is. Tabasco. Horseshoes. Speedboats,” she said, ticking off Bush’s favorite flavoring and forms of entertainment. But so far, that view of the vice president “is not out there,” she said.

Loose and Relaxed

Throughout the nearly two weeks since the Democrats’ convention opened in Atlanta, Bush, at least in public, has been loose and relaxed, despite the dip in public opinion polls, some of which have shown Dukakis leading by as much as 18 percentage points. Not even the pressure of finding a running mate--perhaps the most sensitive political decision of the campaign--has soured his mood.

One day last week, he dropped his customary refusal to entertain any names of potential candidates and allowed that Dole “would be on any list” he would draw. Later, he parried with reporters on other names:

Kemp? “Sure. There’s another one for you.”

Deukmejian? Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson? “There’s four,” he said, keeping a running total.

Staff writer Cathleen Decker contributed to this story.