The Mud Flies, but Bush Stays Clean

George W. Bush seems to have perfected a new campaign style: being negative without appearing negative.

Take last week. In a news conference, the Texas governor was responding to Vice President Gore's suggestion that Bush was too close to "Big Oil." As Bush played down his connections to the oil industry, he deflected the focus back to Gore--accusing him of reversing his long support for raising gas taxes.

"This is another example of when he doesn't know what the meaning of what 'raise' is," Bush said with a sly smile. When a reporter asked Bush to explain the reference, he responded innocently: "A reference to energy prices."

It was, of course, about much more than energy prices.

Bush was referring to Gore's deposition over his role in the Democratic National Committee's 1996 Buddhist temple fundraiser in which Gore quibbled with a prosecutor over the definition of the word "raise." It was a moment that recalled President Clinton's deposition in the Monica S. Lewinsky case two years ago, when he quibbled over what the "definition of 'is' is."

Bush was able to connect two White House scandals with what sounded like a punch line and raised questions about the character of both men. The exchange was a classic example of Bush's campaign style.

While Gore's critics have pilloried him as a political attack dog, Bush has been no slouch himself, relying heavily on attacks on Gore's character and integrity. But Bush has largely escaped criticism by employing a style that calls on ample doses of charm and humor and, when called for, folksy righteous indignation. Even many Democrats are expressing begrudging admiration for Bush's ability to fling mud without getting any on himself.

"Every time he opens his mouth, he has something critical to say, but he does it in sort of an amicable way," said Democratic media consultant Dane Strother, who is not working for Gore. "Perhaps [the media] lets him get away with it because he's not mean-spirited about it. He does it in a relatively clever way, so he gets a pass."

Where Gore pummels with a sledgehammer, calling Bush "arrogant" and "smug" and accusing him of plotting a "secret" plan to destroy Social Security, Bush slices with a scalpel, slyly raising questions about the vice president's moral fitness.

Bush "has a very folksy style, which helps a lot," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology politics professor Stephen Ansolabehere, whose 1996 book "Going Negative" studied the effects of negative campaigning. "Just like Clinton in '92 and '96, Bush has a way of connecting with people on their level. . . . I think it makes him more of a sympathetic character [than Gore] on a personal level."

A central aspect of Bush's campaign style is his ability to stay on message with simple, catchy phrases and themes. He has used the technique effectively since his first run for governor in 1994, when he relentlessly pounded then-Texas Gov. Ann Richards as soft on crime.

In the GOP primaries this year, Bush suggested Arizona Sen. John McCain was a hypocrite without ever using that word, with his repeated assertion that McCain "says one thing and does another." When rival Steve Forbes accused Bush of pursuing a tax increase in his first term as governor, Bush displayed the flip side of his campaign personality, expressing astonishment that an opponent would break Ronald Reagan's "11th Commandment" not to attack another Republican.

Since wrapping up the nomination in March, Bush has sought to portray Gore as a mean-spirited politician and a serial panderer who shapes policy solely on the basis of polls and focus groups.

Bush has sharpened his rhetoric in recent weeks, engaging the Gore campaign in a running debate over Social Security and gas policy. He generally avoids mentioning Gore in his speeches, instead saving his barbs for his frequent news conferences, where reporters are sure to ask him to respond to Gore's latest volley.

"I think I read where, you know, [the Gore campaign] was running a series of focus groups, and so he made a decision to expand his vision on tax cutting because of focus groups," Bush told reporters recently. "Surely, America doesn't want a focus group-driven presidency. America wants somebody that makes decisions based upon what's right."

Bush has made dozens of similar comments in recent months.

But his words are often carefully crafted to allude to--rather than outright accuse an opponent of--something nefarious. His efforts to stay on message can at times become almost surreal.

In January, for example, after Bush rolled out his line that McCain "says one thing and does another," reporters--asking rapid-fire questions phrased in slightly different ways--repeatedly tried to get him to acknowledge that he was calling McCain a hypocrite. "That's your word," Bush told a reporter. What then, another reporter asked, was his word for someone who says one thing and does another? Bush paused, looked up in the air, smiled and responded: "Washington."

In an interview in March, Bush was asked whether his repeated assertion that Gore had "a problem telling the truth" was another way of calling him a liar. "I'm not calling him that," Bush said. So what did he mean? "Let's let him then stand up and tell the truth," Bush said. "Let's let him make sure that we know exactly what the facts are."

Bush has aggressively responded to the gas controversy with the seemingly incongruous argument that Gore is in favor of both higher fuel taxes and tax breaks for industry.

Two weeks ago, Bush wandered to the back of his campaign plane brandishing a copy of Gore's environmental treatise, "Earth in the Balance." Reading from one page, Bush noted how "this is a man who advocated raising gasoline taxes." Bush ignored the fact that Gore's full proposal, as noted in later pages, called for a commensurate decrease in the income taxes that oil companies pay to offset the increase in fuel taxes.

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer deflected questions about that tactic by pointing out that Gore had supported congressional action to raise gas taxes in the early 1990s.

Last week, Bush criticized Gore's proposal to extend the 1995 Deep Water Royalty Relief Act, which provides a moratorium on the royalties that oil companies pay to the government for natural gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Although that particular proposal was a relatively minor one in Gore's $150 million energy plan, Bush homed in on it to argue that Gore was "giving major oil companies a huge tax break."

Bush demonstrated the alternate side of his campaign personality when Gore spokesman Chris Lehane accused the Texas governor two weeks ago of colluding with Senate leaders to leak potentially damaging information about Gore's role in the Buddhist fundraiser. Lehane likened the tactic to McCarthyism.

Bush, campaigning in Michigan, appeared stunned and said it sounded "like the man got a little carried away. That's the kind of politics that people are sick of." Then he added: "This is absurd what the man said."

Several campaign media strategists and political scientists said in interviews that Bush has been able to escape criticism because he appears merely to be repeating what critics in his own party have said for years. But some political observers caution that it's too soon to tell whether the strategy will remain effective as more people begin tuning in to the contest around the time of the party conventions next month.

"When he is focused, he is very disciplined and stays on message," said Fred Antczak, a professor of political rhetoric at the University of Iowa. "But it's too early now to make any kind of inferences about what is going to stick with the overall electorate."

Gore advisers have all but conceded defeat in the personality contest. But a presidential election, they argue, is about far more than that. "Ultimately, there's going to be debates, and side-by-side comparison is going to be made," said Gore media consultant Bill Knapp, who also worked for Richards in 1994. "His ability to 'aw shucks' the thing is going to be severely compromised."