Waiting For Baker

By MICHAEL DUFFY WASHINGTON

If anyone at the White House had doubts that George Bush was in trouble, the President's visit to last week's All-Star Game must have dispelled them. The event was designed to showcase the President as a normal, red-blooded American just when the Democrats were listening to Jesse Jackson and AIDS activists in Madison Square Garden. Instead it turned into another Bush public relations fiasco. Showing uncommon disrespect for the man as well as the office, the crowd at San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium booed Bush as he strode to the pitcher's mound with the legendary slugger Ted Williams -- not exactly the image he wished to convey to roughly 22 million television viewers.

It was only the latest in a series of mishaps that have sent Bush tumbling in the polls and fueled speculation that Secretary of State James Baker, the engineer of Bush's 1988 election victory, would have to put aside his diplomatic portfolio and bail out his old friend once again. During a fishing trip at the Secretary's Wyoming ranch last week, Bush seemed to leave the door open to such a move, saying he hadn't "yet" discussed Baker's return. But it is a foregone conclusion inside the Administration -- especially in the wake of Ross Perot's exit and Bill Clinton's surge in the polls. "There are two truths this week," said a top White House official. "First, it's better to have Perot out than to have him in. Second, we're in horrible shape."

Baker's return to the White House staff is expected to take place around the time of the Republican Convention, in mid-August. The Secretary of State wants to avoid leaving government for a job in the campaign, in part because ethics laws would make it impossible for him to exert control over the Administration as a private citizen. Nor does Baker want to go through the confirmation process again in order to rejoin the Cabinet in the event of a Bush victory. Last week Bush's legal advisers were studying ways to allow Baker to remain as Secretary of State and simply append himself to the White House staff as a kind of supercounselor who would oversee both the White House and the campaign. To avoid excess publicity, Bush may skip a big takeover announcement. "Baker will come over," said an adviser, "and that will be it."

But the actual mechanism is less important than the reasons for what White House aides are already calling "the big switch." Chief among the problems is Bush himself: the President is an undisciplined campaigner who is prone to sloppy mistakes without a full-time minder. He continues to insist, for example, that Americans are wrong to think the economy is sputtering, even though his own Administration's statistics prove them right and him wrong. "Bob Teeter, Fred Malek and Sam Skinner are all too nice," said an official, referring respectively to Bush's campaign managers and chief of staff. "We need somebody who has the guts to go into the Oval Office, slam his hand down on the desk and say, 'George, shut up.' "

Baker alone has provided that service through much of Bush's political career. But the Texas lawyer's return is even more likely now that Perot's departure has made G.O.P. campaign officials believe that it will be easier to re-elect Bush. After months of struggling to grasp the dynamics of a three-way race, the Bush team finds itself back on familiar ground in the middle of a good old-fashioned two-man fight. With a speed and coordination not seen since their 1988 campaign against Michael Dukakis, Bush aides fanned out last week after Perot's withdrawal, armed with talking points labeling Clinton and Gore as tax-and-spend liberals. "We've pulled out all the old maps, all the old playbooks," said a campaign official. Added Republican pollster Bill McInturff: "They're back on familiar terrain. This is the first shot of good news they've had in months."

Perot's exit should lend Bush the upper hand in such Republican strongholds as Florida, Texas, Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi. Clinton might be able to make up for losses with improved footing in California, Oregon and Washington, the border states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, plus his home state of Arkansas. Bush can count on a natural advantage in the West, but the industrial Midwest remains up for grabs.

The big question facing the Bush campaign is whether the President will make a positive case for a second term or rely solely on negative tactics to defeat his opponent. Baker is the one man who can force Bush to lay out a plan for another term and force the President to stop viewing his re-election as a reward for past performance. Already, Republican pollsters say, focus groups for statewide candidates reveal that more and more voters believe that the economy will not improve unless Bush is defeated. "If the President's people think they have to do nothing more than bash Clinton to win," said the G.O.P.'s McInturff, "they are sadly misreading the American public."

With reporting by Dan Goodgame/Washington