Here Come the Big Guns

A George Bush operative told a group of reporters at the G.O.P. convention four years ago that "a presidential campaign is just like a war." The take- no-prisoners Bush juggernaut rolled out of New Orleans and three months later routed opponent Michael Dukakis. Fair warning to Bill Clinton: if you heard a faint rumble in the background at last week's Republican Convention, it was the sound of Bush's heavy artillery moving into place. Stand by for incoming.

Despite Bush's adroit acceptance speech, his handlers know that to elevate Bush in the polls, they need to bring down Clinton -- and fast. With James Baker directing the campaign, Bush will now begin trying to flush Clinton out of his comfortable moderate's nest and portray his opponent as just another tax-and-spend liberal Democrat with neither the experience nor the ability to deal with the nation's problems. The Bush team is sure to run a fine-tooth comb over Clinton's 12-year record as what Republicans are calling "the failed Governor of a small Southern state." And they will revive questions about his Vietnam War draft status by claiming, as Pat Buchanan did last week, that Clinton lacks the moral authority to make military decisions.

The Republicans won't stop there. Ironically, though Clinton has been praised for laying out a detailed economic plan, its very proposals provide some of the ammunition Bush needs for his late-summer assault on Little Rock. But the problem with these Republican bombshells is that while many of them are on target, the arguments tend to be aggressively hyperbolic and are occasionally contradicted by their own supporting documents. For one thing, the President faults Clinton for not favoring a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution -- though it was the Reagan and Bush Administrations that are mainly responsible for the enormous amounts of red ink in the federal budget.

Even as Republican speechmakers were taking aim at Clinton from the podium last week, aides were crisscrossing the sprawl of Houston to underscore their points over breakfast, lunch, coffee and cocktails with reporters. Meanwhile, Democratic fax machines were churning out rebuttals -- including a two-page reply to Bush's acceptance speech before he had even finished delivering it. As the volley of stats and cost estimates flying between both camps increases, the campaign is likely to be fought in four major policy arenas as well as on the "family values" front. The key lines of attack:

SPENDING. Given the Democrats' belief in an activist government, Clinton is vulnerable on this front. Bush correctly charged in his Thursday night speech that the Democrats' budget proposals would add $220 billion in federal spending, not counting the cost of Clinton's health-reform package. But that number is spread over four years, and it would go for potentially politically salable projects such as investing $80 billion to rebuild America's infrastructure or helping to finance bridges, roads, an intercity rail system and a nationwide information network.