The Man Who Would Be President

By Jacob V. Lamar

Whether his post was U.N. Ambassador, CIA director or Vice President, George Bush has always found himself taking orders rather than taking charge. Though Bush has spent two decades in public service, many who know him find it difficult to imagine what he would do if he finally stepped into the Oval Office as Commander in Chief. One charitable forecaster says Bush's leadership would be "pragmatic, noncharismatic." But a blunter G.O.P. policy expert predicts that a Bush presidency would be "mediocre."

There is sound reason for that harsh assessment. Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Bush's career has been his consistent failure to fashion an agenda of his own, to display a broad set of principles, to show imagination or initiative. It is an unsettling trait for a man who would be leader of the free world.

Yet many an unlikely candidate -- Vice President Harry Truman, in particular -- has grown in office and developed into a strong leader. Bush's supporters have already noticed a new authority and self-assurance in their man. As a candidate, he has delighted in exceeding low expectations. As President, he would relish the chance to make his critics eat their words once again. "I suspect that George Bush might surprise people by being bolder than expected," says Mitchell Daniels, a former head of the White House political- liaison office and current chief of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. "He might break out of the mold."

Bush's posture throughout his political career reflects his natural modesty, but it can also be seen as a deliberate strategy. The Vice President made one of his most revealing statements when he declared his candidacy last October. "I am a practical man. I like what's real," he said. "I like what works . . . I do not yearn to lead a crusade."

As President, then, this practical man would probably cool the right-wing fervor that propelled Ronald Reagan to the White House. Ultraconservatives suspect that the Vice President might be a lamb in lion's clothing, particularly on social issues. Take abortion. "My position," said Bush in 1984, "is exactly the same as Ronald Reagan's." But last week, while explaining that Reagan would permit abortion only when the mother's life is at stake, Bush modified that stand. "I would add rape and incest," he said. Overall, it marked the fourth time he has changed his position on the sensitive subject.

The Vice President talks about returning moral values to the classroom, but only recently has he advocated specific, contentious proposals like restoring prayer in school. "I wouldn't be surprised if Bush treated social issues exactly as Reagan learned to do," says a Bush aide. "Reagan paid them plenty of lip service but didn't do too much to actually promote them."

On civil rights, Bush would undoubtedly do far better than the Reagan Administration's backhanded treatment of black concerns. As a Republican Congressman from Texas in the 1960s, Bush broke ranks with fellow Southerners to vote for a controversial open-housing bill. His Administration would be unlikely to continue the fight against affirmative action and fair-housing suits or commit such gaffes as offering tax exemptions to segregated schools.

Bush's management style would be radically different from that of his present boss. While Reagan likes to have a strong chief of staff filtering the information that reaches him, Bush prefers to hash out issues with his advisers. Moreover, he would not hesitate to solicit opinions outside his inner circle. "I believe in talking to as many people as I can. I always have," Bush told TIME last week. "If we had a problem on a certain matter involving the Soviet Union, for example, I wouldn't hesitate to call in a particular CIA expert and talk to him. I know I'm not an expert on, say, long- term health care. But I'll do a good job of finding people who are."

Right-wing true believers like Attorney General Edwin Meese and former Interior Secretary James Watt would get the brush-off in a Bush Administration. "There are no ideologues around George Bush," says a prominent aide. "He can't abide people who know they have all the answers." Bush's Cabinet would be a model of old-fashioned Republican moderation. It would surely include his longtime confidant James Baker, who would probably give up his stewardship of the Treasury to take over as Secretary of State. Nicholas Brady, chairman of the investment banking firm Dillon Read & Co. and a former Republican Senator from New Jersey, is a longtime Bush adviser; he might succeed Baker at the Treasury.

How would Bush's White House staff function? "Look at the campaign," says Brady. "It's a peek behind the veil. You'd have many strong personalities, but they'd work as a team." The most likely choice for White House chief of staff is Craig Fuller, Bush's current chief of staff, rather than the leaders of Bush's crack campaign team, Lee Atwater and Rich Bond. Communications Director Peter Teeley might be tapped for the same position in a Bush White House. Brady marvels at how Bush has kept that potentially combustible group of strong-minded aides from blowing up. "He wants a lot of different and disparate people doing different things for the common purpose," says Brady. "He keeps articulating that idea."

Like Reagan, Bush is unswervingly loyal to the people around him, and like Reagan, he could be hurt by that double-edged trait. Bush shied away from getting rid of a divisive member of his vice-presidential staff until Fuller came along as his new chief and forced the issue in 1985. For the past 20 months, Donald Gregg, Bush's national security adviser, has been under fire for allegedly facilitating covert support for the contras, yet Bush has refused to dismiss him, even as his candidacy has been tainted by the Iran- contra scandal.

Although Bush differs from Reagan in management style, he has been an attentive student of Reagan's negotiating technique. "There's no doubt in my mind that I would be a better President now than I would have been in 1980," he told TIME. "I've learned a lot." Aides say the Vice President, a compromiser by nature, has been most impressed by Reagan's ability to hold firm to a staked-out position for as long as possible. Though Bush worried about the 16-month halt in substantive arms-control talks with the Soviet Union, he lauds Reagan's boldness in deploying intermediate-range missiles in Europe until Moscow finally accepted the President's original proposal to ban all INF weapons.

On arms control, Bush would probably pick up where Reagan left off; he would be well positioned to push ahead on a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Soviets. His first order of domestic business would be to confront the Government's financial tangle. Bush insists repeatedly that he would not raise taxes to cut the deficit, and whether he believes that or not, he could be boxed in by his own rhetoric. Yet a newly appointed bipartisan National Economic Commission is studying ways to reduce the deficit. If the commission recommends a tax increase, Bush will have to decide whether to stick by his campaign rhetoric.

In a Chicago speech last week, the Vice President said he would call together another "summit" on the deficit crisis: "I am personally going to head the Executive Branch negotiating effort. Hands on, personal." Says a Bush aide: "There you have Bush's style in a nutshell. He would never send out a team and have contact with them only once or twice." That was what Reagan did during last December's budget negotiations.

Yet if the nation fell into crisis, could Bush show the decisiveness, the moral authority and necessary sense of command to guide the country through the dilemma? "After Ronald Reagan, people may be looking for another John Wayne," says Bush's media adviser Roger Ailes. "Well, George Bush isn't John Wayne. He's Gary Cooper in High Noon. He doesn't want to fight; he'd rather sit and talk things out. But if provoked, he'll fight. And he'll whip you." If the prospective Republican nominee can convince more people that he has that kind of gumption, then the title "President Bush" might seem a little more fitting than it does now.

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With reporting by David Beckwith with Bush