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                                                                                U.S. POLITICS, Page 28

Tricky George vs. Inspector Perot

The campaign heats up big-time as Bush and Perot start calling
each other some nasty names

By MICHAEL DUFFY/WASHINGTON


    George Bush hates to attack his political rivals. Character
assassination is so unseemly a business that the courtly
President relies on others to do it for him. "How come nobody
is taking on Ross Perot?" he asked in frustration at a White
House meeting in early June. Informed that a frontal attack on
the Texas billionaire could backfire with the resentful public,
Bush replied, "Well, dammit, if no one else is gonna do it, I
will."

    But not without a sympathetic pretext to protect him. So,
when the Washington Post detailed Perot's considerable record of
investigating people, including Bush himself, the President
jumped at the opportunity. Seizing on reporters' misinformed
suggestions that Perot had investigated Bush's children, the
President described Perot's habit as not "particularly
American." In an interview with ABC's 20/20 taped later, Bush
inflated the charge: "If he was having my children
investigated, that is beyond the pale. Leave my kids alone, I
say."

    Never mind that the Post story did not suggest any such
thing. Never mind, too, that Perot received a thank-you note
from Bush in late 1986 after he passed along some harmless
gossip about the Bush kids. What mattered was that Bush had
found a way to throw the wily Perot on the defensive. "The
public found out," said Robert Teeter, Bush's campaign
chairman, that Perot "is not the kind of person who has the
character, the judgment and the temperament to be President."

    The public also learned once more what Bush meant when he
said he would "do what he had to do" to win re-election. Perot
released the handwritten Christmas Eve note from Bush a day
later and said he had intervened only "as one father to
another." Perot then charged, "There has been a 90-day effort to
redefine my personality by a group called Opposition Research of
the Republican Party . . .They're generally known as the
dirty-tricks crowd . . . This was a carefully thought-out and
carefully executed effort to try to damage my candidacy." And
that, said Perot, "is what's wrong with American politics."

    In the first real mudslinging match between the two, the
Bush campaign nearly pressed the attack too far. Rich Bond, the
Republican Party chairman, was everywhere last week, accusing
Perot of being too dangerous to trust with "the CIA, the FBI
and the IRS." This alarming charge oozed hypocrisy, coming on
the heels of news that Bush had asked Perot as recently as
January 1990 to underwrite the rebuilding of Panama after the
U.S. invasion. Bond nonetheless barreled on, even dialing up
Larry King Live to engage Perot in a lengthy argument about the
definition of a "dirty trick."

    Bush's network of family and family retainers also piled on.
Presidential press secretary Marlin Fitzwater said Perot's
"paranoia knows no bounds," while drug czar Bob Martinez
labeled Perot "not fit to be President." Casting off her
grandmotherly pose, Barbara Bush called Perot's behavior
"bizarre" and traced his ire at her husband to the fact that
Bush had spurned a job offer from Perot 25 years ago. By the end
of the week, Vice President Dan Quayle was referring to the
diminutive Texan as "Inspector Perot."

    If the doubts about Perot were deepened by the Bush
onslaught, it is because the undeclared candidate does have a
bit of Sam Spade in him. There is no evidence that Perot ever
investigated Bush's children or his own, apart from asking a
private eye to track down a family heirloom that was stolen
from his son while in college. But Perot admitted that on "two
or three occasions" he employed detectives to investigate
business associates who were suspected of financial impropriety.
He also admitted paying a Washington law firm $10,000 to find
out why the Pennzoil Co., chaired by a onetime business partner
of Bush's, was able to deduct $48 million in federal taxes over
several years for donating 100,000 acres of a New Mexico ranch
to the U.S. Forest Service in 1982.

    To hear Perot tell it, he is merely the coincidental
repository of dirt on his enemies dredged up by others. He
insisted that he poked into two Bush real estate transactions
only at the request of the Washington Post. But the Post
maintains that Perot "volunteered" to do the digging.

    Either way, by raising such doubts, the Bush camp has found
a way to slow down, temporarily at least, Perot's runaway train.
"It's done," said a senior adviser to the Bush campaign. "Perot
is now defined, and he is more than just quirky and eccentric.
What we have to do now is drive a wedge in there and cleave away
from Perot's core support those voters who are independents and
Republicans."

    Perot's advisers concede that he must erase the doubts soon.
His challenge is to prove that whatever risks he poses as
President are outweighed by the grease he can bring to bear on
the gridlock in Washington. Perot's counterpunching was for the
most part effective. But the result of the name-calling was no
net gain for either Bush or Perot. Meanwhile, as his opponents
pummeled away at each other, Democrat Bill Clinton chortled,
hoping, perhaps, that the two front runners would diminish
themselves enough to give him a slim chance in the fall.