Bush on the Record

By MICHAEL KRAMER and HENRY MULLER George Bush

Q. A year ago, various Democratic heavyweights opted out of the race because you were so far ahead in the polls.

A. Hard to remember those days.

Q. And now you're headed for a convention that many of us, and you also probably, thought would be a kind of coronation. What happened?

A. The economy.

Q. That's the only thing?

A. I think so. If this economy were growing at 5%, we wouldn't have these problems. There'd still be enormous problems facing the country, but in terms of standing, we wouldn't be in this shape. I'm absolutely convinced of it.

Q. Do you find that the American people don't seem grateful enough for what you have accomplished?

A. No, I think they may be unaware of what we've accomplished, but I couldn't put it in terms of lack of gratitude.

Q. Do you think that in some kind of weird way Desert Storm hurt? You were perceived as doing so well over there that the nation expected you to handle domestic affairs equally well.

A. I think people don't recognize the difference in how you handle a foreign policy issue, where you can just take action on your own, and how you handle a domestic issue, where in almost every instance you have to get help from what has proved to be a very recalcitrant Congress.

Q. That would account for the assessments of people who aren't plugged in, but you've got a lot of Republican supporters who've said some really harsh things.

A. Well, they've said harsh things in terms of feeling pressure on the economy. I come back to the economy as the main problem -- not the only one, but the main problem.

Q. Vin Weber, co-chairman of your campaign, was quoted the other day as saying, "The President doesn't like the idea of doing battle with Congress and doesn't like the idea of mobilizing the country to get Congress to change."

A. Well, if that's his view, that's fixing to change real fast.

Q. How so?

A. Because I'm going to take the case to the American people about the new Congress. And there will be a new Congress anyway because of the numbers of seats ((being vacated)). I want it to be a newer than new Congress. So that | will be joined, much as Truman joined it in 1948. We want to move this country forward to solve the problems of health care, solve the problems of education, solve the problems of crime in the neighborhoods. And the way to do it is to give me a new Congress with which I can work.

I think the people know that I've held out my hand to Congress and it's been a very frustrating experience. One of the reasons that I think we're in perceived difficulty is that I kept trying to work with this Congress all year, when I've been getting bashed by the candidates on the other side, joined by a lot of editorial critique. I've left the field of combat to the opposition. That is going to change. Not only as it affects the man I'll be running against, but as it affects the Congress itself.

Q. Quayle has gone a little beyond what you have said about giving you a Republican Congress to say, "End divided government; either give Congress a Democratic President or give us a Republican Congress." Are things so stuck that you would second that view?

A. No, they're not that stuck. We tried the other formula not so many years ago -- a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress -- and out we came with a misery index, unemployment and inflation, the highest it's been in modern times. That formula has been tried. The other one has not been tried, and I would like to see that.

But even if we're not successful in getting control of the Congress, we're going to have a new Congress. And those people are going to have to be out listening carefully to the American people, and they will be more easy to work with. That's one thing. The other one is that the easiest time to move something is when the mandate of the people is ringing in the ears of the President and in the ears of Congress. That's in the first few months of the term.

Q. Do you think you would have got more done early on in this Administration if you had perceived the ((1988)) election more as a mandate? In your Inauguration you spoke of stewardship. You said President Reagan had set the thrust. It was kind of like Reagan Three. Is this going to be Bush One?

A. I hadn't thought about whether we might have accomplished more. I think somewhere along the line the Congress decided we're just going to have to go to battle with the President. And I'm criticized, perhaps justifiably so, by some -- you've mentioned Weber -- for trying too much to work with Congress. So maybe there's something to that, I don't know.

Q. You talk a lot about change. Do you have an agenda for the next four years that's really quite different from the agenda of the past four years?

A. We've got to be more competitive, for example, so how do you do that? You have a new approach to education. We've got to be more competitive, so you follow up on increasing your exports and thus your jobs at home through extraordinary movement in the world trade scene.

Some of it is a continuation of the good ideas that we have, but we've got to get them implemented where they require legislation. Where they don't, like some of our education goals, exhortation. And you can't legislate the kinds of changes necessary that will help in the family.

Q. One of the things you learned while running that drug-policy task force as Vice President was that education and treatment were more important than interdiction and law enforcement. You've doubled expenditures during your term overall, but the ratio is basically two-thirds for law enforcement and interdiction and one-third for treatment and education. Are you going to reverse that?

A. Well, we're having a debate on that right now. Jim Burke, who heads our private-sector task force, believes -- and I think he's right -- that in the second term we ought to put more emphasis on the demand side, on treatment and education and prevention. I'm not sure how much, whether it will be flipped two-thirds, one-third. But I think the more we do in that the better.

Q. Michael Duffy and Dan Goodgame have written a book, the central thesis of which is that you never really had an agenda in the first term, which is one of the reasons you're running into problems now. They quote John Sununu at the end of 1990 saying Congress can go home now because they've accomplished everything we wanted to accomplish in this term. What is your reaction to this thesis?

A. If that's what the book says, it is wrong. I haven't read the book. I hate to say that, but I have read story after story attributed to them to that effect. I remember coming down here with a group of TIME editors ((in 1990)), and the story, I'm afraid, had already been written. They asked me the same question. I said, Here's what we're trying to do on the domestic side. So I cannot be persuaded by a treatise like this. I just don't think that's a fair shot.

Q. Were you aware that Sununu was saying things like that?

A. No. I don't believe he'd say that, either. For him to suggest that we had nothing more to do on the domestic agenda, I don't believe he'd say that. John Sununu wouldn't say that. I mean, come on. He was here trying to help get a lot of things done in the Congress.*

Q. Is adulterous conduct relevant to the public performance of the President of the United States?

A. I think private lives basically should be off the agenda, and I think public trust should be on the agenda. So if you flaunt -- if you conduct yourself in such a way as to cause diminution, for example, of this office on a character question, yes, that should be fair game.

Q. So there are instances in which it is O.K. to ask people who either are President or running for President about . . .

A. My view is to leave it off the record. I don't think that's right. If there's evidence that someone has betrayed the public trust, well, then ask him about it. But I just think there's too much sleaze. I think you've gone too far in your profession. I think the magazines have gone too far. So I would leave it where I've said it.

Q. So we have no business going after Clinton on this score, is that correct?

A. That's the way I'd see it. And I said that before too.

Q. Isn't that kind of conduct, even if it's private and even if it's pre- presidential, the ultimate test of family values -- whether you can be faithful to your wife?

A. I think that's a very good question, and the answer is that people's lives are just destroyed by sleaze and it's not worth the candle. I think for years there were better guidelines on that whole question of sleaziness. It's yellow journalism, people waiting to jump on something -- oh, well, I had to write this because somebody else did. That's sick. And I don't like it.

Q. These rumors don't start with journalists. They may be spread by journalists.

Marlin Fitzwater ((the President's press secretary)): This ((rumor about Bush)) started with journalists, and it's only been journalists involved at every step. Not one person outside the world of journalism has had anything to do with this from start to finish.

A. I don't want to talk about it anymore. If you want to do the interview on something else, fine, but that's all I want to say about it.

Q. You know that these specific rumors have had a basis in people who have had better reason to speculate than reporters -- who were close to you in the past or still are, whether they had any evidence or anything like that. Isn't that true?

A. I'm not going to say any more about this subject, I've told you.

Q. Not on the family-values relationship?

A. All the stuff ((is)) a sleazy lie, a sleazy lie. And for you to have to spend 10 minutes talking about this and perpetuating something that's a lie, one way or another, I don't like it. You can ask the question, but I'm not going to answer it.

Q. If you catch anybody working for you raising those same issues about your opponent, how will you deal with that?

A. I've told them not to do it, and I would hope nobody would do it.

Q. Will you fire someone who does it?

A. Yes, I think I would. I'm ashamed -- do you guys feel comfortable asking these questions?

Q. We did not ask one personal question of you. We are asking whether it is ever appropriate to raise these things.

A. Why didn't you want my view on it a few weeks ago? Why didn't you want my view on it a few years ago?

Q. A lot of your predecessors have had these "problems," and it didn't seem to impact at all on their public performance.

A. You ought to put the emphasis on the public trust. How one conducts oneself.

Q. Moving to foreign policy: When you lie awake at night thinking about the crises that have perhaps not yet occurred in this new world order, what worries you most?

A. Unpredictability. You can't see very clearly where everything's going to come out. You see great problems, economic problems in the former Soviet Union, and you see ancient ethnic rivalries impacting over all that. I worry about the Middle East still, though I'm very pleased with the great progress that's been made. But you have some very bad actors, Saddam Hussein being one.

I worry about some terrorist act or proliferation. But all those worries are more than offset by the progress that's been made. I mean, it's dramatic progress, with democracy in this hemisphere, ancient enemies talking peace in the Middle East, the fall of the Soviet Union, the unification of Germany. I really believe that what's happening in nuclear disarmament is worth a little more time than the sleaze questions.

Q. Do you think democracy is going to make it in Russia?

A. Yes, I do. I think once unleashed, it's going to be hard to put that genie back in the bottle. They've got some real rough problems in Russia. Yeltsin is a determined man, and there may be bumps in the road, but I think they're going to make it.

Q. At the U.N. yesterday they were talking about the possibility of establishing some protective zone for Shi'ites in Iraq. Is this the beginning of something the new world order has to take seriously now that America is the sole remaining superpower -- the idea of intervening in the internal affairs of a state because of the way its rulers treat its people?

A. If we're successful in seeing that Iraq lives up to this resolution in its entirety, then I think it decreases the likelihood of other rulers doing things that would be condemned by the international community and where they would find themselves compelled to cease and desist. That doesn't mean that every uprising or every manifestation of discontent inside a country is going to be subjected to United Nations action.

Q. I guess you were involved, or somebody in the campaign was involved, in excising the word "mistake" from the Republican platform's reference to the 1990 budget compromise -- and yet that's what you called it. Why not continue saying it was a mistake?

A. Well, my personal view is that the agreement, which did accomplish some good things, was a mistake, and I've said so. But I'm not familiar with what's going to be in the platform.

Q. Was it an economic mistake or a political mistake?

A. Probably both. Because the pluses did not outweigh the minuses on the economic side -- the pluses being caps on discretionary spending. And when you look back, the hope that this would have a stimulatory effect on the economy did not materialize. That's an economic argument.

Q. So should those tax increases be repealed?

A. I think you've got to look very carefully at where you go from here. I'll be making some proposals regarding the economy that I'm not going to discuss now that I think will take care of it.

Q. Mr. President, why don't you just send a balanced budget to Congress?

A. We have, four years in a row. You mean, over one year?

Q. Yes.

A. It's impossible. The deficit is so big you can't do it in one year. And anyone who says you can is setting up a formula for disaster and destruction. It just can't be done.

Q. Can you do anything meaningful without getting into Social Security in a serious way?

A. You can do it by getting into mandatory spending other than Social Security.

Q. Well, why should ((Treasury Secretary)) Nick Brady, for example, or David Rockefeller get the same retirement benefits Marlin Fitzwater gets?

A. We're not talking about substantial sums of money on that, and you redefine the program if you start means-testing it.

Q. Do you worry about losing?

A. No. Because I'm going to win. Nobody believes that, but it's the truth. I'm very confident I'm going to win, not overconfident. And the reason is I think what I've done and what I want to do for this country will prevail. And I think also I've demonstrated I can make tough decisions. And the people are going to say, Who do you trust to do those things? That's why I have this rather quiet confidence in the face of some of the darndest criticism I've ever seen.

The other thing I decided not to do is wring my hands about this being the loneliest job in the world. I've not done that, and I don't plan to start now.

I think I've upheld the honor of this office. We've had a good, clean Administration. Our ethical standards are high. Also, I've learned I can take the heat. It goes back to what your mother taught you: Do your best, try your hardest.

FOOTNOTE: *Sununu made the statement in a speech to the Conservative Leadership Conference in Washington on Nov. 9, 1990.