(FORTUNE Magazine) – SHAKEN BY RECESSION, scandal, and racial riots, Americans are clamoring for change. So guess who is pitching himself as a change maker? None other than George Bush, who sold himself as the continuity candidate in 1988. Is this for real? Could a newly elected Bush break the mold of do-nothing second terms? Or is this just the latest zig of the zagger who once told interviewer David Frost, ''I'll do what I have to do to be reelected''? Publicly, Bush strategists promise a gangbusters first 100 days filled with institution-rattling reforms on everything from the deficit and taxes to education and health care. First time around, they contend, the Democrats' control of Congress made pushing such initiatives quixotic. But in 1993 there could be as many as 150 new members of the House. Says a top White House official: ''Even if they are Democrats, they will be more antiestablishment. And Bush would move quickly to work with them to effect really radical change.'' Privately, skepticism runs deep, even among Republicans. If Bush wins in a three-way race with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, it will be by a narrow margin. In that case, new House members are not likely to feel much pressure to buy Bush's policy prescriptions, particularly if they haven't been clearly articulated during the campaign. Meanwhile, powerful players in both parties will already be gearing up for the 1996 presidential battle. Predicts one senior adviser to the White House: ''Bush will be a lame duck from day one. He'll be on a plane doing his foreign policy thing. Very little will get done at home. It will be afternoon in America.'' The President's problem is not a dearth of sound, even bold ideas. In his latest budget he proposes corralling the most sacred of sacred cows -- entitlements -- by capping the growth of all but Social Security, and doing so by, among other things, limiting the ability of well-off recipients to collect farm subsidies and some types of Medicare. He has threatened the education establishment with calls for national standards and school choice. He has taken on trial lawyers, environmentalists, and other special interests with proposals to limit legal liability and to ease regulations choking American business. And his plan for a North American free-trade zone beats protectionism by a mile. The problem is a lack of leadership. To have a chance of passage, these controversial proposals must be pushed with the kind of conviction, clarity, and coalition-building ability that Bush displayed during the Gulf crisis. But when the spotlight shifts homeward, he seems at best uninspired and at worst utterly confused about what he wants to accomplish. The bully pulpit has grown dusty from disuse. Even business leaders, who still back Bush by a large margin, are frustrated. Says Byron Wien, U.S. investment strategist for Morgan Stanley: ''On Wall Street you're beginning to hear people say, 'Anybody but Bush.' They just don't feel he stands for anything.'' They're not alone. When Bush campaign director Robert Teeter recently asked ten senior GOP strategists if they could articulate the President's message, only two said yes -- and even they couldn't do so quickly or easily. Laments one former Reagan White House official who still works closely with the Bush team: ''On a scale of one to ten, the President's rhetoric is an eight, his bills are fours, and his lobbying is zero. If you think about it too long, you end up wearing a Clinton or a Perot button.'' One who does, former Reagan campaign director Ed Rollins, now co-chairman of the Perot campaign, says, ''When you've been around as long as ((Bush)) has been, it's awfully difficult to be the change agent.'' For a long time, many Republican activists blamed the President's passivity on John Sununu, his abrasive former chief of staff. Sununu liked to boast that Bush didn't need a domestic policy and isolated anyone who dared suggest otherwise. Housing Secretary Jack Kemp was reduced to writing Bush plaintive letters urging a more forceful urban policy. Deborah Steelman, whom Bush appointed to head a commission on health care reform, says her attempts to engage the White House on the issue were repeatedly rebuffed. BUT IF SUNUNU abused his power, he also fit neatly into Bush's policy playbook, which emphasized working with Congress rather than confronting it with an activist domestic agenda. A former Reagan aide claims that when he tried to persuade Bush to fight, the President pointed to Sununu and replied: ''He's the only fighter I need.'' By finally swapping Sununu for a more open, collegial, and action-oriented team led by Chief of Staff Sam Skinner, domestic policy czar Clayton Yeutter, and Bob Teeter, Bush has at least acknowledged voters' demands that he take up arms against domestic troubles. But with the election looming, there has been little time to devise innovative strategies. One response has been to dust off many of Bush's long-ignored proposals and repackage them. Skinner & Co. started out calling this new, improved vision thing the five pillars of reform (because it was a blueprint for competitiveness that tackled education, health care, legal issues, trade, and government efficiency). But there's been talk of dropping the five pillars imagery recently because the ever cautious Bushmen fear blasphemous parallels with the five pillars of Islam. No joke. Criticism of the new team's shortcomings is legion. Aides complain Skinner is frenetic, unfocused, and at times frazzled by presidential outbursts of dissatisfaction. Says one White House adviser: ''His problem is that he is too interested in being First Friend to stand up to the President.'' Yeutter is charming, calm, and smart, but unaccustomed to the role of support staff. The Washington rumor mill has recently begun grinding out the notion that Secretary of State Jim Baker might be drafted to again take charge of the White House and the campaign. The biggest change, however -- and the key to ending the disarray among his staff -- would be for Bush himself to set a course and stick to it. For now, he's still drifting. Consider his response to the Los Angeles riots. First, he came on like a law-and-order man, then as a Kemp-style reformer, then as a me- too big spender. Some ideas he offered were good, even if most were old proposals that had languished until the inner cities seized the headlines. They include expanding urban enterprise zones and school choice, increasing spending on Head Start and crime prevention, and fostering more tenant ownership and management of public housing. Meanwhile, Bush's actions belied his rhetoric. He and his advisers excluded Kemp from policy discussions until four days after the riots. Instead of surrounding himself with new-thinking black activists like Polly Williams, who brought public school choice to Milwaukee, or Robert Woodson, who has made tenant managers of public housing a force in Washington, Bush turned to the usual suspects, aging civil rights leaders who helped build the Great Society and who have little interest in backing structural reforms. Frets Stuart Butler, vice president of the conservative Heritage Foundation: ''I had high hopes that the President's L.A. visit would be a radicalizing experience, that like Paul on the road to Damascus, his eyes would be opened to the need to fight for change. But now that he's back in the White House, he's beginning to revert to type.'' This three-step pattern -- passivity, broken by a politically inspired call to action and followed by renewed passivity -- also typifies Bush's approach to health care. Skyrocketing costs could ruin individuals, businesses, and government. Yet the White House kept silent on the issue until last November, when Pennsylvania Democrat Harris Wofford won a Senate race against former Bush Attorney General Richard Thornburgh largely by calling for national health insurance. IN FEBRUARY, Bush announced a market-based health plan that included credits to help the working poor buy insurance, limits on malpractice liability, and incentives for Medicare and Medicaid recipients to use managed care. ''We were all celebrating,'' says a leader of the Health Equity Action League (HEAL), a coalition of business, labor, and health care providers who back Bush's proposal. ''Then nothing happened.'' No presidential speeches, no events, not even any legislation until mid-May, when Congress was about to proceed with its own bill. Why the delay? Says Bush campaign chairman Robert Mosbacher: ''Health is not a first-tier issue for us like education.'' To fight that kind of un- leadership, HEAL organized 25 people to phone White House officials daily to spur action. Gripes one frustrated lobbyist: ''It's the same pattern over and over. They propose legislation, and we have to spend all of our time bugging them to do what they said they'd do in the first place.'' Even on first-tier issues like education, this syndrome recurs. Reformers $ give Bush top grades for making education a priority, and more recently for pushing proposals for national standards, testing, and choice. But he flunks marketing because he refuses to crystallize the issue by confronting opponents in Congress and the teachers' unions. Activists ask: Why not veto the upcoming education bill because it excludes funding for choice? Why not campaign for the choice initiative in California? Why not give a speech to the National Education Association advocating radical reform? Not Bush's style, aides explain, often sadly. The President hears the alarms. But burned by his assertion and then recantation of his one bold domestic policy stance -- his no-new-taxes pledge -- he remains cool to those who counsel a strategy of courageous confrontation. As his spokesman Marlin Fitzwater puts it, ''Brave is for losers.'' Isn't brave exactly what angry voters want this year? Not necessarily. Argues a senior Administration official: ''Americans are focused on the NBA finals, the baseball season, and the Triple Crown. They won't think about presidential politics until the fall when the kids are back to school.'' By then, Administration officials believe, the economy will clearly be recovering. Growth will be averaging 2.5% to 3.5% a year, and interest rates and inflation will be low. The President will hold the foreign policy cards. Clinton and Perot will have self-destructed. And Bush will be the only one left that voters can trust. It's a victory-by-default strategy. Even if such a risk-averse strategy wins Bush the election, it will lose him the battle for change. Only when we see the President vetoing education, housing, and spending bills that exclude his well-conceived reforms, only when we hear him speaking out Harry Truman-like on their behalf, only then will we know there is a new George Bush, one who just might shake things up. Otherwise, get set for four more years of presidential globe-trotting, legislative gridlock, and mounting social unrest.

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