George Bush: The Fight of His Life

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Playing singles, George Bush seldom won on the tennis courts of the Houston Country Club, even back in the early '60s, when he was young and fast. He had no backhand, and his serve was worse -- "the falling leaf," he called it. But Bush compensated. He chose as his partner a lawyer from a distinguished Texas family, who just happened to have been captain of the varsity team at Princeton. With the polished James Addison Baker III at his right side, the southpaw Bush was able to emphasize his strengths: his forehand, quick reflexes at the net and steadiness on the clutch points.

Together, Bush and Baker became men's doubles champions, and from that seed grew one of the most successful partnerships in American politics. As Bush observed last week, when he announced that Baker would resign as Secretary of State to replace Sam Skinner as his chief of staff, "He's the sort of man you want on your team." Make that running your team. Baker will direct not only the White House but also the Bush campaign, and will continue to oversee foreign policy, wielding such broad influence that some officials call him "Deputy President."

This week, as if replaying a Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis road movie, Bush and Baker return to the scene of their earliest defeats and triumphs: Houston, site of the Republican National Convention, where the two old friends will launch their last campaign together. But they will have little time for nostalgia. Arrayed against them are obstacles greater than any they have faced in their three decades as a team. The economy continues to sputter, with unemployment stuck near 10% in the major industrial states and consumer confidence in a funk. The President trails Democrat Bill Clinton by 25 points in national polls. Many Republican lawmakers, frightened by local surveys that show Bush dragging them down, are skipping the Houston convention. And the G.O.P. is ideologically riven -- over issues from abortion to supply-side economics -- as it has not been since 1976, when President Ford, weakened by a primary fight against Ronald Reagan, lost to Jimmy Carter.

Democrats naturally viewed Bush's yanking of Baker back to the White House as a spasm of desperation. Republicans, however, took heart at Baker's move, for they consider him the only man who might save Bush and their party. Ken Duberstein, who served as Ronald Reagan's last chief of staff, quipped that "Baker can't walk on water, but he knows where the rocks are." A highly organized and disciplined manager, Baker is expected to quickly shape up the White House and campaign staffs, which have piled up "counselors to the President" and "senior strategists" like layers on a compost heap. He is taking his own core staff of four seasoned political operatives from the State Department, and he will hack through tangled lines of authority by working with such trusted, longtime allies as campaign chairman Robert Teeter and Budget Director Richard Darman.