By Dan Goodgame
Jan. 2, 1990

During the heady days after his Inauguration, George Bush delighted in leading guests on private tours of the White House. He often paused in the hideaway office beside his bedroom before a favorite painting of Abraham Lincoln conferring with his generals during the Civil War. "He was tested by fire," Bush would muse, "and showed his greatness." And to one friend, Bush wondered aloud how he might be tested, whether he too might be one of the handful of Presidents destined to change the course of history.

On Aug. 1 he found out.

Moved Permanently

It was about 8 p.m. in Washington and Bush had gone upstairs for the evening, when an aide brought an urgent message from the White House Situation Room. Iraq had invaded Kuwait. At first, most diplomatic and intelligence analysts believed Saddam Hussein would confine his thrust to long-disputed border areas. But as Bush followed the latest reports--from the CIA and CNN--Iraqi tanks churned into the Kuwaiti capital, forcing the royal family to flee. It was a full-blown takeover.

Next morning the world was waiting to hear what Bush had to say about that blatant act of aggression. At 8, just before an emergency session of the National Security Council, he invited reporters in for a brief exchange. "We're not discussing intervention," Bush insisted. "I'm not contemplating such action." He stammered a bit, as he often does when he is tired--or when he does not believe what he is saying. This time it was both.

As Bush would later recall, he had made an "almost instantaneous" judgment that the U.S. must intervene. In fact, even before sunup on Aug. 2, he had begun to move against Iraq. When Bush awoke shortly after 5, his National Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft, was at the President's bedroom door. He immediately got Bush's signature on a pair of executive orders freezing the assets of Iraq and Kuwait in the U.S. and prohibiting trade. The two men then resumed the discussions they had begun the night before, talking through their options: Let's get the allies to follow us on the asset freeze. Buck up the other Arabs to condemn Iraq. Keep Israel quiet. Get the Soviets on board. Work the U.N. Go for economic sanctions.

Both men were determined to do more--much more. But Bush--obsessed with secrecy as always--would mask his inclinations, at least initially, even at his first NSC meeting on the crisis.

At that session, once the reporters had been herded out and fresh coffee had been poured, the atmosphere was relaxed and matter-of-fact. One by one, Bush's top generals and diplomats, spymasters and energy experts reeled off their analyses. The prevailing attitude among the group, recalled one White House official, was "Hey, too bad about Kuwait, but it's just a gas station, and who cares whether the sign says Sinclair or Exxon?" Anyway, what can we do? Doesn't Iraq have the Middle East's largest army, and aren't we a long way from the scene?

There was little sense that big U.S. interests were at stake--until the President spoke. He asked a simple question that decisively shifted the debate: "What happens if we do nothing?"

A Dog That Would Bite

That question could have been Bush's graven motto, at least before 1990, and it still could be in all but foreign affairs. During the first 18 months of his presidency, communism collapsed, the cold war ended, freedom spread across the Soviet empire, and Nelson Mandela's release after 27 years in South African prisons raised the prospect that apartheid might soon come tumbling down. Except when Bush invaded Panama to remove an irritating dictator, he had mostly sat and applauded politely as these momentous events unfolded. His rationale was sound enough: when things are going your way, don't get in the way.

Bush's instincts were entirely different in the gulf crisis. This time, letting events take their course would not suffice. This was the moment for which he had spent a lifetime preparing, the epochal event that would bear out his campaign slogan, "Ready to be a great President from Day 1." And Bush's instincts were only confirmed as the consequences of allowing Iraq to swallow Kuwait became clear.

If Iraq's aggression succeeded, an emboldened Saddam might send his troops into Saudi Arabia or intimidate the lightly defended petrokingdom, as well as its neighbors, into obeying his dictates. Fifty-six percent of the world's oil supplies would come under the sway of a ruthless dictator who is trying to amass a force of long-range missiles that could hit every state in the region, including Israel, with chemical, biological and--in a few years--nuclear weapons. Every petty tyrant who wanted to redraw the map of the world by force, who hated a neighbor or coveted that neighbor's goods, would have learned a lesson: in the post-cold war world, aggression pays.

Bush knew that only one power, the U.S., could thwart Saddam. The U.N. might pass a sheaf of resolutions, just as it has over the decades in trying to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, and with no more effect. As the Arabs and Israelis both like to say, dogs bark but the caravan passes.

Bush also knew, however, that Saddam had good reason for anticipating an ineffectual response. Only eight days before Saddam's army rumbled into Kuwait, U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie had told him, on instructions from the State Department, that Iraq's "border differences" with the tiny sheikdom were of no concern to the U.S. An outright takeover was another matter--but no U.S. official made that point to Saddam until after the fact. The American dog, Saddam assumed, would bark but never bite.

Bush, however, would prove him wrong. Against the initial judgment of many advisers, Bush was convinced that Saddam must be stopped now, before he became even more dangerous. Bush had been leafing through Martin Gilbert's The Second World War, and he cited Winston Churchill's view that World War II need not have been fought if Hitler had been thwarted in his 1936 push into the Rhineland, when he was weak enough to be deterred at relatively low cost.

Bush resolved that he, not Saddam, would shape the new world order emerging in the aftermath of the cold war. In this new order, the U.S. and the Soviet Union would work together through the U.N. to finally achieve the collective security promised by the organization's founders in 1945. Bush thus found the "vision," at least in foreign policy, that he has long lacked.

Bush recognized that the U.S., as the last remaining superpower, must continue to lead, but with a different style. It must accommodate the rise of the economic giants Germany and Japan, and of various regional powers, while coaxing the Soviet Union, despite its retrenchment, to play a constructive role. America, Bush reasoned, must lead through painstaking and often frustrating coalition building--precisely the sort of personal diplomacy and horse trading at which he has excelled in the gulf crisis.

At first, Bush turned to the U.N. mainly to provide diplomatic cover for the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia, as well as other Arab states reluctant to ally themselves with the "U.S. imperialists." But as the U.N. showed surprising backbone--first condemning Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, then imposing a stifling trade embargo and authorizing the use of military force to back it up--Bush grew ever more respectful of the organization.

As he implemented his developing vision, Bush, unlike Ronald Reagan, was no lone cowboy singlehandedly dispensing rough justice but a sheriff rounding up a posse of law-abiding nations. If his style is multilateral, however, it is anything but open. In the gulf crisis, as elsewhere, he zealously guarded his real intentions and game plan. All along he has retained tight control of virtually every detail of U.S. action, revealing as little as possible about his plans to the American people and to Congress.

That approach, however, could ultimately undermine Bush's policy in the gulf. The President's penchant for secrecy, his cunning stratagems, his willingness to commit the world's most powerful nation to a course that he alone determines, helped him assemble the alliance. But those very qualities engender doubts in the mind of many Americans, who have learned from Watergate and Vietnam not to invest too much faith in any one man.

Focus on the Saudis

In Paul Theroux's novella Doctor Slaughter, a young scholar at a dinner party observes that China's population has recently reached 1 billion. "Wrong," tut-tuts another guest, an international banker. "There are two people in China. And I know both of them."

George Bush could make the same claim. After the invasion, the intimate knowledge of world leaders and world politics that he had acquired during his years as ambassador to the U.N., envoy to Beijing and CIA director helped him forge an unprecedented international alliance. Throughout, Bush has displayed an exquisite sensitivity to diplomatic nuance and the need for subtle compromise--and sometimes outright bribes--required to bring together such mutually suspicious bedfellows as Syria, Israel, Iran and the Soviet Union. His performance went beyond competence to sheer mastery.

The initial focus of Bush's diplomatic offensive was Saudi Arabia. Though the kingdom feared it might be next to fall to Saddam's rapacious army, King Fahd had grave reservations about seeking U.S. protection. The King, Bush knew, was leery of accepting non-Muslim troops, whose presence might provoke unrest among deeply xenophobic elements of the Saudi clergy and people. He also could not afford to have the conflict portrayed as Iraq and the Arab masses vs. the wealthy monarchs of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and their "Western imperialist defenders."

From the earliest hours of the crisis, Bush worked to overcome those qualms. After his initial NSC meeting, he tried to phone King Fahd but failed to reach him. Bush then flew to Aspen, Colo., for a long-scheduled rendezvous with Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who urged him to counter Iraq strongly. As the two leaders talked, Fahd returned Bush's call. The President told him, we think you are in danger. We are willing to offer air support and more. Fahd, in this and later conversations, expressed three concerns. If the U.S. sent troops to protect his kingdom, would the force remain until there was no longer a threat from Iraq? Once the threat was removed, would the U.S. withdraw its troops immediately? Finally, would the U.S. sell Saudi Arabia the advanced warplanes and other weapons it would need to defend itself? Bush's reply: yes, yes and yes.

In the capital on Aug. 3, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put the hard sell on Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the brash, 41-year-old Saudi ambassador to Washington. Bandar, a U.S.-trained fighter pilot, was shown satellite photos of Iraqi armored divisions massing along the Saudi border as though poised for an assault on the oil fields near Dhahran, 175 miles away. Bandar called his uncle the King, and assured Bush that U.S. forces would be welcome in Saudi Arabia.

Within weeks, it was the Saudis who were putting a hard sell on the U.S. They were so alarmed by the growing Iraqi threat just over their border that Bandar and Prince Saud al Faisal, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister, urged the U.S. to kill Saddam, using any necessary means. The astonished Bush politely declined, then observed to aides afterward, "It sure is easy for other people to say what the U.S. ought to be doing to Iraq."

Bush recognized from the first that the Saudis would not accept U.S. troops unless other Arab states, the U.N. and the Soviet Union also supported action against Iraq, and he and his aides were working overtime to arrange that. They helped pass a U.N. resolution condemning Iraq within hours of the invasion. Secretary of State James Baker, who was traveling in the Soviet Union, stood with his counterpart in Moscow and issued a joint declaration demanding Iraq's withdrawal. Algeria, Egypt and Morocco publicly condemned Iraq for the invasion. And the Arab League, in an unprecedented show of resolve, followed suit.

Bush called a second NSC meeting for Friday, Aug. 3, and made clear that he had decided to dispatch forces to deter any attack on Saudi Arabia. Two days later, however, Bush expanded his goals to include the liberation of Kuwait, declaring, "This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait."

Over the next 30 days, Bush would place 62 phone calls to government leaders and heads of state. He pressed Japan, Germany and wealthy Arab states to provide emergency assistance for Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, nations hit hard by the embargo on trading with Iraq. He called on Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to pump more oil to make up for the 4 million bbl. daily shortfall resulting from the blockade on Iraqi and Kuwaiti shipments.

But this whirlwind of diplomacy represented only half of Bush's strategy. The other half was to present Saddam with a stark choice: quit Kuwait or be driven out by military force. To that end, Bush set in motion the largest U.S. military deployment since Vietnam. It began five days after Saddam's invasion with the dispatch of 210,000 troops to Saudi Arabia, enough to deter an Iraqi onslaught.

Once Bush had vowed to liberate Kuwait, General Powell urged him to deploy a force so massive that if war became necessary, it could be fought all out and won quickly, unlike Vietnam. By November, Bush had authorized a doubling of the force to 430,000, giving him the capacity to go on the offensive if Saddam refused to meet the Jan. 15 deadline set by the U.N. for Iraq to quit Kuwait.

Bush also learned a valuable lesson from Jimmy Carter's obsession with the U.S. hostages seized by Iranian students in 1979. Determined not to repeat that mistake, Bush deliberately downplayed Saddam's holding of 3,000 Americans, some of whom were placed at key military installations as "human shields" against American attack. Bush repeatedly insisted that he would not be deterred from military action by the hostages' fate. In early December his stern stance produced results. Saddam released his captives, apparently convinced that his "foreign guests" would not forestall a U.S. offensive and that releasing them might reap a propaganda benefit.

Muddling the Message

Despite his virtuosity in welding the international alliance, Bush has stumbled in explaining his strategy to his countrymen. He has consistently and clearly spelled out four goals: complete Iraqi withdrawal, restoration of Kuwait's government, protection of American citizens abroad and creation of regional stability. But in explaining his strategy and tactics for attaining those goals, Bush has been halting, ineffective and less than candid. He has particularly left doubts about why the wealthiest allies are contributing so little to this crusade, about his sudden rush to use force if Iraq does not comply with the U.N.'s demands by Jan. 15, and about what sort of peaceful settlement, if any, the U.S. would accept with Iraq.

At times, Bush has likened Saddam to Hitler and claimed Iraq is on the brink of obtaining nuclear weapons. (The consensus of Bush's intelligence experts is that an Iraqi nuclear weapon is about five years away.) Such belligerent talk suggests that Bush, despite his public statements, would not be satisfied with an Iraqi retreat but would seek to destroy Saddam's ability to threaten his neighbors by obliterating his arsenal.

The goals of American strategy were probably debated most thoroughly last Aug. 23 in an unlikely setting: aboard Fidelity, Bush's speedboat, bobbing off Kennebunkport. While Bush and National Security Adviser Scowcroft trolled for bluefish, they reviewed the U.S. experience four decades earlier in Korea, another "police action" fought with U.N. authorization. Scowcroft reminded Bush that soon after General Douglas MacArthur's bold victory at Inchon in September 1950, the U.S. succeeded in restoring the situation that existed before the outbreak of war by pushing Kim Il Sung's invading army back to the 38th Parallel, the boundary dividing North and South Korea. The U.S., however, tried to unify Korea by driving all the way to the border with China. The result: Beijing intervened and drove American forces back almost as far as the old border. The conflict lasted nearly three more years, cost tens of thousands of additional U.S. and civilian casualties and poisoned U.S.-Chinese relations for 20 years. All to end up back at the status quo ante.

In the gulf crisis, Scowcroft warned, a war fought not only to liberate Kuwait but also to cripple Iraq could splinter the coalition that Bush had so masterfully assembled. It could trigger violent resentment by the Arab masses against the U.S. and the Arab regimes allied with it. And it could create a power vacuum that Syria and Iran might rush to fill.

Iraq's massive conventional and chemical arsenals and its fast-track nuclear-weapons program, Scowcroft argued, had to be contained. But that could best be done through a continuing embargo on weapons and weapons technology and by a security arrangement among the U.N., the U.S. and the Arab states. "The world was not willing to make war on Iraq for these reasons before the invasion of Kuwait," said Scowcroft, "and it is not clear why the U.S. and its allies should continue a war against Iraq after the liberation of Kuwait."

Shortly after this discussion, Bush and his top advisers decided to make clear to Saddam that he could withdraw from Kuwait and still save both his skin and his face. He could tell his people that the invasion had got the attention of Kuwait and forced it to negotiate Iraq's demands for access to ports and control of the Rumaila oil field, which runs under both Iraq and Kuwait. Once a decent interval had passed after Iraq's withdrawal, the U.S. would not object if Kuwait made concessions to Iraq. Also, the U.S. would press for progress on the Palestinian issue, and Saddam could claim whatever credit he liked.

This message was delivered both privately--through the diplomatic channels of the U.S. and its Arab allies--and publicly, most notably in Bush's Oct. 1 speech before the U.N. General Assembly.

Down to the Wire

With the Jan. 15 U.N. deadline only two weeks away, both Saddam and Bush face fateful decisions. So far, Saddam has shown no real interest in a peaceful withdrawal. He has reinforced the 100,000 Iraqi soldiers and 350 tanks deployed in Kuwait and southern Iraq in the days just after the invasion with 410,000 more troops and 4,100 tanks. Bush's attempt to "go the last mile" for a peaceful settlement by inviting Iraq's Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to the White House and dispatching Baker to Baghdad for a face-to-face talk with Saddam has degenerated into a dispute over when these meetings could take place.

Pressures are mounting on Bush to bring the crisis to a speedy conclusion. Not least of these are the economic hardships the crisis has exacted on Iraq's neighbors. And high oil prices are dragging down the economies of every country save the few that supply oil.

The calendar exerts a grim logic. In March, gulf temperatures begin to rise as high as 100 degrees F, threatening both soldiers and weapons. On March 17 the world's Muslims begin observing Ramadan; in mid-June the annual pilgrimage to Mecca begins. The Saudi government, already uneasy about the army of infidels on its soil, is unlikely to approve the launching of an offensive at either time.

Even domestic politics has become a factor. Democrats on Capitol Hill have grown increasingly critical of what they view as an ill-considered rush to war. Many are angered by the President's stubborn refusal to consult with them in advance of his most momentous decisions. Bush's doubling of the U.S. force stunned lawmakers, military and diplomatic experts and a large slice of the public. Georgia's Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, held public hearings at which a parade of former high-ranking intelligence, defense and foreign policy experts from both parties counseled a more patient course.

But the Administration has many reasons for not waiting to see if sanctions can wear down Saddam's resolve. One is the difficulty of holding the alliance together for the year or more it might take for the blockade to pinch harder. That will become even more difficult if, as Bush fears, Saddam announces a partial withdrawal from Kuwait that would leave him in possession of Bubiyan and Warba islands and the Rumaila oil field. With so little at stake, some allies--and some Americans--might no longer believe a war was worth fighting.

In addition, a showdown postponed for a year or more would complicate Bush's 1992 campaign for re-election. Says an adviser to Bush: "We could have the economy in the toilet and the body bags coming home. If you're George Bush, you don't like that scenario."

Thus far, the greatest threat to the President's gulf policy has been posed not by Saddam but by one of Bush's long-standing weaknesses. He has found no voice to match his vision in the gulf.

While lavishing personal attention upon the foreign leaders in the anti-Iraq coalition, Bush has turned almost as an afterthought to the equally crucial task of convincing his countrymen that his course is just, his timing and strategy sound. He has brushed aside Congress's insistence that the Constitution empowers it alone to declare war. In private, Bush disdainfully insists he can ignore Congress as long as there is no consensus for or against his gulf policy.

History Lessons

In recent weeks Bush has spoken often of the "lessons of Vietnam." He means the military lessons: that if the U.S. goes to war, it must go to win, with overwhelming force instead of gradual escalation. A quick knockout would deprive critics of time to organize opposition, and the cheers of victory would drown out their protests. But the President has not digested an equally salient message from Vietnam: that the U.S. should not go to war without solid support from Congress and the people.

According to Scowcroft, the gulf crisis poses a crucial question: "Can the U.S. use force--even go to war--for carefully defined national interests, or do we have to have a moral crusade or a galvanizing event like Pearl Harbor?" Polls indicate that a majority of Americans support the use of force if Iraq will not leave Kuwait peacefully. But a large minority retain serious doubts. If war is necessary, there is little doubt that the U.S. and its allies will prevail. But it could prove a Pyrrhic victory if the cost in American lives is so high that it provokes a new wave of isolationism.

Bush's answer to the question he posed at the outset of the crisis--"What happens if we do nothing?"--was not to sit back and watch how events played out, as he had done so often before. It was to move, quickly and with great skill, to confront an act of aggression that might have set a disastrous precedent for the fragmented world that is emerging. His next moves could determine what future Presidents say when they gaze at his portrait on the White House wall.

AT HOME: A CASE OF DOING NOTHING

Bush's feckless approach to America's ills is no accident, but a conscious strategy for defending the status quo

By MICHAEL DUFFY

George Bush has always been more a man of action than introspection. When faced with a complicated problem, he often plunges headlong into physical activity--gunning his speedboat, pitching horseshoes, flailing away on the golf course. It is Bush's way, says an aide, to "drive those demons of indecision out of his mind."

So it was fitting that the hollow center of the President's domestic policy collapsed last Oct. 10 while he was jogging in Florida. Five days earlier, an unlikely coalition of right-wing Republicans and liberal Democrats had revolted in the House of Representatives, scuttling the deficit-cutting budget plan crafted during four months of tortuous negotiations between the Administration and congressional leaders. Only a stopgap continuing resolution kept the government afloat while frenzied efforts to devise a new deal bogged down. The sticking point: Would Bush agree to a Democrat-backed rise in income tax rates for the affluent in exchange for his cherished cut in taxes on capital gains?

For 24 hours, Bush had sown confusion by flipping and flopping on the issue like a beached bluefish. First he signaled that he would accept the swap. Then, under pressure from Republicans who argued that Bush's change of heart would only trigger further Democratic demands, his top aides announced that the deal was no longer acceptable. Now, as he jogged a few laps in St. Petersburg, the time had come for the Commander in Chief to explain himself. Asked by reporters to clarify his stand, Bush opted instead for a snide play on the campaign slogan that had helped get him the job in the first place. "Read my hips," Bush said with a smirk, and jogged on.

Read my hips. Was this any way to lead the most powerful nation on earth?

No, but neither was what the President did during the next 24 hours. Bush reversed himself twice more on the tax issue, completing a quadruple somersault that twisted members of his own party into knots, sent Democrats into orbit and helped cut more than 20 points from his approval ratings in the space of six weeks. That was the most precipitous dive in popularity, absent a major scandal, for any 20th century President.

A Formula for Ruling Forever

At that moment, many Americans concluded that in George Bush they had elected two Presidents: a highly capable captain of foreign policy and a dawdling, disengaged caretaker of domestic affairs. That impression was understandable but by no means complete. The shilly-shallying performance on domestic issues that has marked Bush's first two years in office is not the result of ineptitude. It is the consequence of a shrewd calculation made soon after Bush, one of the most ambitious and pragmatic men ever to reach the White House, assumed the presidency.

Shortly after his Inauguration, Bush and his top advisers figured that if the economic and domestic conditions that existed then could be frozen in time, Republicans could hold the White House indefinitely. That led to an obvious conclusion: do as little as possible. "We inherited a situation that was basically A-O.K.," says a senior official. "People were happy with the status quo. No domestic revolution was about to take place. With a few changes here and there, the G.O.P. could rule forever."

It is no coincidence, then, that Bush's highest domestic priority has been to preserve the situation he inherited from Ronald Reagan. Hemmed in, as are Democrats, by budgetary constraints, he has initiated only a handful of new domestic programs. He can claim some genuine progress--passage of the first clean-air legislation since 1977, a new law protecting the rights of the handicapped, and a five-year budget deal that may finally force Washington to start living within its means. But most of these were long overdue or inevitable or were launched out of necessity more than conviction. Bush has devoted far more energy to thwarting Democratic initiatives or amending them in such a way that the Administration could share in the credit. As an official explains, "The key around here has always been stopping the Democrats. If we couldn't stop them, we tried the next best thing: turning the Democratic drive for reforms into G.O.P. alternatives. We wanted to try to turn an apparent political liability into something we could claim credit for."

In Bush's mind, the real business of Presidents is the conduct of foreign policy. He regards the management of domestic affairs merely as an extension of politics, the unpleasant, even silly, things one must do to win an office or keep it. When he delves into homegrown problems, Bush cares less about the issues themselves than their political implications. In foreign affairs the opposite is true: Bush resists pressure to view world events through a political prism, believing that the nation's long-term interests are often better served by sitting quietly instead of rushing to the ramparts.

So though Bush bravely trumpets the promises of a new world order abroad and takes bold steps to bring it about, his top aides blithely admit they have no agenda at home for the next two years. While Bush retains a tight grip on foreign policy decisions, he has virtually abdicated responsibility for domestic affairs to his pugnacious chief of staff, John Sununu, whose attitude toward Congress is marked by contempt. Asked recently what Bush has left to do at home, Sununu replied with a smile, "Not that much."

Even the President concedes that he finds handling foreign policy more "fun" than domestic issues. As he put it the day before his swivel-hips remark, "People really basically want to support the President on foreign affairs, and partisanship does, in a sense, stop at the water's edge. Whereas on domestic policy, here I am with Democratic majorities in the Senate and Democratic majorities in the House, trying to persuade them to do what I think is best. It's complicated."

It is not only complicated but dangerous as well. The U.S. faces a mountain of nagging domestic needs and an abyss of debt. On most of these problems, Bush has been inactive, if not silent. At best, he has tinkered at the margins of America's domestic ills. Rather than battle a national decline that some fear has already begun, Bush is trying only to manage it. Read my hips.

Officials in the Bush Administration offer various rationales for their boss's disdain for domestic affairs: historic developments abroad; divided government at home; truculent Democrats on Capitol Hill; a $3 trillion national debt; unending deficits; constitutional powers that, by allowing the President to brush off Congress, make operating in the foreign policy arena easier and more rewarding.

Good reasons all. But the real explanations may be found in Bush's past. One is his almost pathological fear of the G.O.P.'s right wing, a phobia that dates from his start in politics. The other is a lack of conviction that renders him directionless at home. From his earliest days in politics, he has risen by loyally associating himself with powerful patrons, recasting his views to suit those of the man at the top. As a candidate, he has at one time or another positioned himself as a Goldwater conservative, a moderate mainstream Republican, an effective critic and then staunch supporter of Reaganomics--whatever it took to advance. And all along he has demonstrated a willingness to compromise or jettison his positions to ensure conservative support.

Two weeks ago, Bush stepped back from a 42-year commitment to support for black colleges when he allowed a mid-level Education Department lawyer to challenge the legality of public support for minority scholarships. Many of Bush's aides despaired at their boss's unnecessary capitulation to conservative notions. Says one: "This is one of those few areas where we actually have some convictions, and now it looks like we don't have the courage to stand by them."

Bush is under pressure from the right again, this time to adopt its new "reform" agenda, a campaign for tax cuts and term limits on members of Congress and against affirmative action. While the wisdom of this approach is under intense debate at the White House, there are indications that Bush may try to mollify the right for two more years, even if that means returning to the racially divisive themes that helped elect him in 1988.

A Yalie Goes To Texas

Old habits die hard. In 1948, when Bush, then 24, moved his family into the heart of the oil-rich Permian Basin, Texas was a two-party state: liberal Democrats and conservative "Tory" Democrats. Republicans just weren't in the picture. "If you were a Texas Republican in the 1950s," recalls Don Rhodes, an old Bush friend who now works as a personal aide to the President, "you didn't let anybody know it." When Bush organized his first Republican precinct primary, in Midland in the early '50s, only three people showed up during 12 hours of voting--the future President, his wife Barbara and a lone Democrat who, Bush later wrote, "stumbled into the wrong polling place."

For a budding Republican politician, this was a discouraging situation. And if being in so tiny a minority wasn't embarrassing enough, the minority itself was. The nascent Texas G.O.P. was made up of farmers and ranchers and a group of newer city dwellers whose numbers and affluence were growing along with the Lone Star State's gas and oil interests. And then there were "the crazies," a small but noisy claque of John Birch Society regulars who never controlled the party but kept it off balance for years with their ultra-right stands and defeatist tactics. Though they were gradually eclipsed during the 1960s, the crazies didn't go quietly. In 1960 one group roughed up Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson in a celebrated incident at Dallas' Adolphus Hotel. In 1968 another group criticized a Republican candidate for appearing with his arm around a black football player.

Accommodating this faction was bound to be tricky, particularly for the son of an aristocratic Republican Senator from Connecticut to whom moderate Republicanism was a kind of birthright. Despite his 14 years in Texas, there was no mistaking Bush's Eastern Establishment roots. His views on foreign policy matched those of the locals well enough--everyone, even Texas Democrats, was staunchly anticommunist. But on domestic affairs, Andover-Yale was not Midland-Odessa. Bush's moderate Republican views on states' rights, civil rights and most social issues clashed with those of the Birchites. As an old friend notes, "Bush was not sitting there asking himself, `How do we impeach Earl Warren?'"

In 1964, a terrible year for Republicans, Bush lunged for a seat in the U.S. Senate, challenging liberal Democrat Ralph Yarborough. For Bush just to lose respectably required a shift to the right. He called himself a "100%" Goldwater man and lashed out at the 1964 Civil Rights Act, labor unions and the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. He lost but garnered more votes than any Republican in Texas history. That won him the notice of Richard Nixon, who campaigned for him in 1966.

Bush later confessed to an Episcopal minister, John Stevens, that he was ashamed of his pandering to the right in 1964. "I took some of the far-right positions I thought I needed to get elected," Stevens recollects Bush saying. "And I regret it. And hope I never do it again."

A Schizophrenic Straitjacket

Of course he did do it again, although not immediately. In 1966 Bush ran for Congress from Houston as a moderate, attacking "extremists" in his own party. "I want conservatism to be sensitive and dynamic," he said, "not scared and reactionary." That led some Republican groups to tag Bush as a liberal and endorse his conservative Democratic opponent, Frank Briscoe. But Bush prevailed, in part because Texas' Seventh District was then one of the state's few Republican strongholds.

Bush nonetheless kept an eye on the right. In 1970, when he gave up his safe seat to run for the Senate against Democrat Lloyd Bentsen, he endured boos and catcalls at nearly every campaign stop because he had supported a fair-housing law in 1968. Bush had indeed said aye to the bill, but only after voting for a procedural amendment that could have killed it. Paul Eggers, who campaigned with Bush that year as the G.O.P. gubernatorial candidate, remembers his teammate's favorite stump-speech line: "If you don't want to vote for me because of open housing, then don't vote for me."

Most didn't. Bentsen won, and Bush spent the next six years working for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in a variety of positions in which his future did not depend on the whims of voters. By 1980 Bush was running for the presidency, at first criticizing his rival Ronald Reagan on economic and foreign policy and then adopting most of Reagan's views once the Californian put him on the G.O.P. ticket. Bush deep-sixed his lament of "voodoo economics" and his support for the Equal Rights Amendment. "Please do not try to keep reminding me of differences I had" with Reagan, Bush pleaded with reporters.

As Vice President, Bush continued to swallow his many objections to Reagan's policies. By 1986, when he began his own race for the White House, Bush had shuffled to the right at the suggestion of his campaign advisers. "He took a lot of heat for it," says one who backed the strategy, "and he didn't like it. But it had the effect of putting enough deposits in those accounts so that we didn't have to worry about them anymore." And in 1988 Bush based his campaign on "no new taxes" and the furlough of convicted murderer Willie Horton, wrapping the whole unsavory package in the American flag. The campaign was so inflammatory that Bush's old hero Barry Goldwater came out of retirement and told him to knock off the foolishness and "start talking about the issues." When he took office, Bush sought to appease conservatives further by selecting a top domestic adviser who could act as a kind of ambassador, fluent in the language, totems and rituals of his party's suspicious right wing. So he chose John Sununu.

The constant care and feeding of the right, says a senior aide, "has given Bush not only an uncertainty about domestic affairs but an alienation from them as well." Body language--often Bush's most candid form of communication--betrays his discomfort with his predicament. Capable of approaching eloquence when he speaks of a "Europe whole and free," Bush delivers domestic speeches that are perfunctory and marred by disingenuous gestures. When he held aloft a bag of crack cocaine obtained after an intricate sting in Lafayette Square across from the White House last year, he broke into an awkward smile, as if to say, "Can you believe I'm doing this?" Says a former adviser: "He's basically embarrassed to be a politician. It's tacky. He has to do these horribly embarrassing things, and he finds it distasteful, except as a competitive exercise."

Catering to the right has also turned the President into something of a political contortionist. Even as he sought to convince Americans that he was a kinder, gentler incarnation of his predecessor, he was straining to appease conservatives by opposing most gun-control efforts and proposing a constitutional amendment against flag burning. By trying to walk simultaneously in opposite directions, he put his presidency in a schizophrenic straitjacket.

From the outset of his Administration, Bush calculated that he could keep his poll numbers up merely by reminding voters that he was aware of America's domestic problems. The White House based this strategy on pollster Robert Teeter's surveys and focus groups, which showed that while Americans were concerned about drugs, education and the environment, they were also deeply suspicious of any federal attempts to solve the problems. Thus Bush promised to be the "education President" and announced some badly needed educational goals last year. But for nearly two years he retained in his Cabinet an Education Secretary, Lauro Cavazos, who, by his own staff's admission, was ineffective. He postponed politically painful choices on energy, housing and transportation policy but has flown to the West Coast twice in 14 months to plant a single tree in the name of environmentalism. Midway through his term, some of his own aides seem weary of the shell game. "You see a lot of blue-ribbon panels and commissions around here," says a staff member. "It's so much easier to do something innocuous than something real."

Even where Bush has made improvements in the American condition, he has worked hard to keep them secret. Though Bush privately regards the budget pact as his greatest domestic achievement to date, he declared in public two months ago that the deal made him "gag." Though Sununu rightly claims that the clean-air legislation "will change America," the chief of staff tried to cancel a public bill-signing ceremony for the landmark measure. When old friends press Bush on this refusal to trumpet his accomplishments, he responds by saying he will ultimately be judged "by deeds, not words." But they suspect that Bush is leery of calling attention to anything that might upset conservatives.

Despite the President's constant wooing, the hard right never seems satisfied. In the aftermath of the budget debacle, a variety of conservative luminaries began clamoring about a possible challenge to Bush in 1992. Though they stand no chance of ousting Bush alone, the right-wingers could help Democrats by sitting on their hands in 1992, narrowing G.O.P. margins in key states. In an attempt to co-opt this volatile faction, Bush will spend the next two years being "against" things conservatives loathe: quotas, taxes, mandated government benefits, anything that can be termed liberal or Democratic. The idea isn't to get anything accomplished; it is to burnish Bush's conservative credentials as he prepares for re-election. Says an official: "There are some things you want to have a fight on."

Quite a few things are worth fighting over, in fact, but all too often Bush has found himself in the wrong corner. On issues like extending opportunities to minorities and cutting the deficit, for example, the President has permitted his indecision and fear of the right to overrule his better instincts. It is a pattern that, in the short term, may get him re-elected in 1992. It is not one that will, as Bush promised in his nomination speech of 1988, "build a better America."