Two Faces of George Bush

By DAN GOODGAME

Some Democratic Congressmen like to sip martinis with the President; others would rather play racquetball with him or fly on Air Force One. For most of his 17 months in the White House, George Bush has hosted and humored them all. He knows he must court their support if he is to accomplish anything, especially on the explosive issues of taxes and spending.

Occasionally, though, a different Bush shows up for work. He visibly clenches and unclenches his jaw, as if chewing bullets. He sees a conspiracy anytime two Congressmen voice similar criticisms of him. His speeches bristle with darts for "liberal tax-and-spend Democrats" who want to cripple the military while coddling drug pushers and flag burners. This is the Bush that Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau calls Skippy, the gentleman President's "evil twin," who pops up whenever harsh partisanship is deemed necessary.

Skippy made several appearances last week, as Bush energetically stumped for Republican political candidates, aggressively wielded his veto and blasted back at his critics:

-- In response to what Bush described as "shots across my bow" by prominent Democrats, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater fired back on the savings-and-loan issue. "I see disturbing signs of Democrats wanting to make this political against Republicans, and I just want to put them on notice that it plays both ways," Fitzwater said. "The Democrats have a big role" in the S&L crisis, he added, citing three former leaders of the House who left under ethical clouds and two current Senators facing ethics investigations. Fair enough so far. But Fitzwater then overreached in seeking to implicate Senator Robert Kerrey of Nebraska, a trenchant critic of Bush. Fitzwater offered no evidence of any wrongdoing by Kerrey, and neither has anyone else.

-- The President persisted in his crusade for a constitutional amendment to prohibit defacement of the American flag, despite the measure's failure last week to win the required two-thirds majority in the House. During a fund- raising speech for Senator Jesse Helms in Charlotte, N.C., Bush uncharacteristically thumped the lectern and vowed, "I will fight for that amendment!" Republican strategists concede that public interest in the two- year-old flag issue is fading, yet they promise to hook it to a life- support system: negative TV ads in the election campaign.

-- In his speech for the conservative Helms (who frequently snaps at Bush's right ankle), the President warned that "the liberal Democrats want us to make reckless defense cuts." On their pet domestic programs, however, the same liberals "measure progress by dollars spent."

This rhetoric, while tame by the standards of the 1988 campaign, comes at an odd moment: two new reports last week showed the budget deficit widening to as much as $200 billion. Only last month, Bush invited leaders of both parties on Capitol Hill to join him in budget talks, in which all participants could propose necessary but unpopular tax increases and spending cuts without fear of political attack. Bush wants a bipartisan budget agreement to get himself off the hook of his most famous campaign pledge: to cut the deficit without raising taxes. Yet his renewed donkey bashing makes some Democrats wonder whether they may be blamed for the bitter medicine that could emerge from any budget accord.

To be sure, the Democrats in recent weeks have escalated their own attacks, which Republicans fear are finding the mark and pushing down the President's precious approval ratings on the handling of the economy, especially the S&L crisis. Although Democrats deserve as much blame as Republicans for the S&L crisis, Kerrey and others have taken to calling Bush "the S&L President." Congress also sent Bush a bill last week that would have allowed wider political activity by federal employees, but Bush rejected it: his twelfth veto and the twelfth that Congress failed to override. Congress then sent Bush a popular family-leave bill, despite his threat to veto it too, because of its costs to business.

The danger in all this bickering is that it might obstruct urgently needed progress in the budget talks. If Bush and the Congress do not agree on more than $60 billion in spending cuts and tax increases by mid-October -- and perhaps by as early as August -- automatic and unprecedented cuts will force the layoff of hundreds of prison guards and the furlough of thousands of convicted criminals. Layoffs will spread to FBI agents and air-traffic controllers. Many college students will go without loans, and poor elementary students may go without lunch. But not to worry: Republicans and Democrats alike remain confident that the other party can be blamed for whatever goes wrong during the long election season that has only just begun.