Reading Between The Lines

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Bushed. In content if not in tone, that single word best describes the President's performance during his interview with TIME last Wednesday morning. As the polls regularly probe the magnitude of his problem, the President demonstrated again that the problem is he. Seated behind a bare desk in the Oval Office, Bush appeared tense and frosty. A combative, feisty session was telegraphed, but the President seemed intellectually spent. Especially during a high-stakes election campaign, a politician on top of his game pursues his own agenda. Old grudges are stowed. Interviews are perceived as opportunities. A case is made as inconvenient questions are ignored. Ask about marital infidelity, for example, and one expects to hear "I'm glad you asked about adultery. It reminds me of my health-care proposals." From Bush, though, it was mostly familiar stuff: a dose of Congress bashing and a litany of old bromides, platitudes and topic sentences devoid of the specificity that undergirds Bill Clinton's appeal.

I have known George Bush for 15 years. He is smart and sharp, a quick study. I have seen him dazzle by sheer force of intellect. But not last week. He spoke coherently, but a close read of his comments considered alongside his record suggests too little defense and only a halfhearted offense. At the end of our session the President invoked his mother's advice: "Do your best, try your hardest." Sadly -- and inexplicably, since there is much he can legitimately trumpet -- for 40 minutes Bush did neither.

The President explained his political misfortunes with a two-word answer: "The economy." Missing were Bush's now standard insistence that "we're poised for an outstanding recovery" and his usual slam at the media for focusing on "only bad news." The diagnosis was honest, but once again there was no prescription. "I think you've got to look very carefully at where you go from here," said Bush. "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." The last time the President told the nation to "stay tuned" was last fall. In the midst of Pat Buchanan's G.O.P. primary challenge, Bush's aides promised "new approaches" in his State of the Union address. The country waited and then yawned. Little new was offered. Another yawn this fall will send the President to retirement. If he really has "new approaches" up his sleeve, they had better be compelling.

With a glance at a note card, Bush hit the need to compete globally and once again identified education and safe streets as requisites. But once again, no specifics of note. In fact, a brief discussion of drug policy illustrated the President's casual attitude toward domestic issues and the degree to which politics drives policy. During the 1988 campaign, hardly a day passed without Bush decrying the evils of drugs. He knew how to end "this scourge," he said repeatedly; he'd learned "a lot" about the problem at the cia and as the head of President Reagan's drug-policy task force. What exactly he had learned he reiterated after only five days in office: "The elimination of drugs is going . . . to be successful only if our education is successful. The answer to the problem lies more on solving the demand side of the equation than it does on the supply side -- on interdiction or sealing the borders."