Bush Vows Late-Inning Comeback : Politics: He gets warm welcomes on Southern train trip. He points to Atlanta Braves' last-minute win as metaphor for campaign.

Bush Vows Late-Inning Comeback : Politics: He gets warm welcomes on Southern train trip. He points to Atlanta Braves’ last-minute win as metaphor for campaign.

By DOUGLAS JEHL

Oct. 21, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SPARTANBURG, S.C. — With fireworks, balloons and repeated invocations of the come-from-behind Atlanta Braves, President Bush on Tuesday rolled by train across the South in search of the post-debate momentum his campaign so desperately needs.

At an enormous final rally here, blazing Roman candles greeted the President as his wood-paneled rail car rolled into a downtown station. Red, white and blue flares sizzled on a scaffolding to spell out the slogan: “We Trust Bush.”

As thousands of Southerners flocked to greet him at small-town stops along his route across Georga and into South Carolina, Bush time and again avowed his determination to overcome the odds that have left him facing political peril.

After drawing little political sustenance from his performance in three presidential debates, he was clearly moved by the acclaim with which the cheerleaders, marching bands and crowds greeted him as they gathered along little-used railroad tracks.

“I can’t tell you what you’ve done for my spirits,” he shouted from the rear platform of his campaign train in Cordelia, Ga., as a crowd spilled down the tracks and packed the sidings. Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr. of South Carolina described his friend as “jacked-up sky-high.”

In World Series-mad Georgia, Bush took baseball as a metaphor to invoke both hope and heroism. He donned a Braves jacket, jokingly threatened his rivals with the team’s tomahawk chop and claimed inspiration from the Atlanta pinch-hitter whose last-minute heroics last week drove the team into the Series.

“On Election Day,” he told at least 7,000 people in tiny Norcross, Ga., as he began the two-day rail trip, “we’re going to show America that it ain’t over until (Francisco) Cabrera swings.”

With just two weeks to go before Election Day, however, and little sign that Bush is closing on Democrat Bill Clinton in the polls, the example served as one more reminder of the odds the President must overcome.

An announcer in small-town Gainesville, Ga., took Bush’s invocation to heart and introduced him as if he were a slugger heading for a final at-bat. “Two outs,” he said, “bottom of the ninth: the President of the United States!”

And at the head of Bush’s 18-car “Spirit of America,” one of two locomotives bore a sign particularly appropriate for a three-state voyage the White House hopes will serve as stimulus for a political rebound. “Operation Lifesaver,” it proclaimed, a leftover from a rail-safety campaign.

The journey, marking Bush’s return to real-world campaigning after an intensive series of debates, also offered a first clear glimpse of the message with which Republicans hope to sway voters in a final 14-day blitz.

Seeming newly conscious of the threat posed by Ross Perot, he spoke darkly of the tax increases the independent candidate has proposed. Twice, he chided the Texas maverick as his “feisty little friend from Dallas.”

Of the Democratic duo that remains his main threat, he mocked the environmental activism of vice presidential nominee Al Gore, referring to the Tennessee senator as “Mr. Ozone,” and adding in Spartanburg: “The guy is strange.”

In a dozen different ways, he told voters that where Clinton’s past conduct was concerned, they should remember that “character counts.”

“You cannot lead by misleading,” Bush said.

Bush waved from his train’s rear deck at the hundreds who waited patiently at crossroads to greet him. He also conducted a series of televised interviews with local journalists in hopes of leaving lasting impressions of the informal images the White House believes portrays Bush in the best light.

The tour is the second of four train trips now planned by the Bush campaign, with the next journey scheduled through the battleground state of Wisconsin sometime next week.

That Bush is being forced to turn his attention back to this once near-solid Republican South, however, reflected the dilemma facing a campaign trailing in so many regions that spokesman Marlin Fitzwater conceded: “We’ve got a lot of places to go.”