Burning Bush

FOUR YEARS ago, George Bush won the presidency despite himself.

He won because his campaign brain trust--Lee Atwater, James Baker, Roger Ailes And Robert Teeter--discovered the political might of Willie Horton, the pledge of allegiance and the American flag. Armed with nothing mightier than symbols or slogans, Bush's campaign handlers played the electorate like Atwater used to play blues guitar.

But Atwater died last year at the age of 40 from a brain tumor. Ailes has retired from politics. Baker is busy running the State Department. Of the Big Four behind Bush's 1988 campaign, Teeter is the only one who is involved in Bush's re-election effort.

And it's a re-election effort that's going badly and only getting worse. Why? The answer, surprisingly, can be found in the Bible.

GEORGE MAY BE the most famous Bush in today's world, but in a world-historical sense he runs a distance second.

Number one, of course, is the bush that burned in the Sinai desert some 3500 years ago, an event that was recorded in the Bible and has been ever since the subject of an inordinate amount of religious interpretation.

But the burning bush has been largely ignored as a subject of political interpretation, especially in contemporary American politics. That's a sin, because the Biblical bush can provide great insight into the presidential Bush, and specifically into his re-election campaign this year.

We all know the story. Moses is out doing the shepherd thing near Mt. Sinai when he happens upon a bush that is burning but not being consumed by fire. His interest aroused, Moses approaches the shrub. God then announces his presence to the prophet.

In the ensuing conversation, God commands Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. The shepherd, however, isn't too keen on the job. He's not sure that he could convince even the Israelites, let alone Pharaoh, that he has truly been sent by the Lord to deliver Israel from the house of bondage. What should he tell the people, Moses asks, when they question him and ask him the name of God?

God's famous reply: "I am who I am." That, God says, is his name for all eternity. That's what Moses should tell the Israelites.

Moses finally agrees to do God's bidding and ultimately leads the Israelites out of Egypt. The Israelites settle in the Land of Israel, build a couple of temples and are expelled from Israel after the Romans sack the second one in 70 A.D. Nearly 2000 years later, Zionists return to the Land and begin building houses in the West Bank, which really pisses off George Bush, 42nd president of the United States.

But that's not the point of the story.

THE POINT IS that the presidential Bush could never utter the same worlds that came forth from the burning bush: "I am who I am."

That's because, politically, George Bush is nothing. Once an advocate of Planned Parenthood and a critic of "voodoo economics," he's now an anti-choice basher and a supply side disciple. He's a champion of political expedience and ambition--and not much else.

While the shallowness of Bush's political views has been recognized by political pundits for years, the "vision thing" has a potential for hurting Bush in '92 like never before.

It's one thing to get Moses to believe you when he's out tending his sheep. But it's a different story when Moses has no sheep to tend, when he can't find a job, when his wife is laid off, when his family has no medical insurance and when his kids don't have enough food to eat, let alone money to pay for a college education. When times are bad--like they are these days in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, California and across the nation--the American electorate is a much harder audience to please.

It is possible, of course, that the same sort of divinely-inspired political wizardry offered by the Bush campaign in '88 would be enough to do the job again this November.

With three-quarters of the Baker-Atwater-Ailes-Teeter team gone, though, and no one with comparable experience running campaigns in his re-election staff, Bush probably can't do it. The president needed a thousand points of political brilliance to win in 1988. Then, he was dangerously behind in New Hampshire until attacking front-runner Bob Dole with "Senator Straddle" ads and in the general election attacking Dukakis with Willie Horton pieces. And back then, the economy was in much better shape.

The other option, of course, is to present Americans with a real, well-articulated political agenda for a second term. That means ideas, principles, a domestic agenda--in short, the "vision thing." But that route is of no use for a politician like Bush, for whom saying "I am who I am" is meaningless.

RONALD REAGAN was a natural burning bush, a candidate with a core of deep-set political belief and a particularly effective way of articulating them. So was John F. Kennedy '40. So, perhaps, is Pat Buchanan.

When they're elected, substantive politicians like Reagan and JFK are able to ascend to the presidency with clear mandates for governance. Such was the case for Reagan in 1980 (though not in 1984) and for JFK in 1960. But Bush's vapid 1988 campaign left him with a mandate only for no new taxes, no furloughs for Black criminals, more flags and pork rinds for all.

Fortunately for Bush, there have been plenty of big-ticket items to deal with in the foreign policy arena--his forte--which helped buoy his popularity ratings over the past three years.

Unfortunately for Bush, the country is now deep in a recession. People in America (the only country, it seems, whose problems he's ignored for the past four years) are hurting and angry. The president's response has been pathetic. First he denied the problem, then offered too little, too late in his overlyhyped State of the Union address. His jobs, jobs, jobs" trip to Japan was a political fiasco that accomplished nothing. He campaigned in New Hampshire with the fuzziest of messages and without attacking Buchanan's upstart, highly-ideological campaign.

The results of last week's New Hampshire primary show that Bush is paying the price for his past political expediency and present political ineptitude. The incumbent president garnered only 53 percent of the vote, while-Buchanan got 37 percent. Those aren't strong numbers for a sitting president.

Even after the New Hampshire debacle, though, status quo politics still rule at the White House.

STILL, BUSH is heavily favored to win the Republican nomination. And many of his would-be Democratic challengers face similar problems in defining the substance and style of their messages.

But unless the economy improves soon in a significant way (which it may), the president will face an uphill battle to November's general election. This time around, Bush will have to convince voters that he'll make it easier for them to pay the bills, put food on the table and have access to affordable medical care. And he'll have to do it without the talents of Lee Atwater, James Baker and Roger Ailes.

That will take a true miracle.