A Key but Not a Lock for Gov. Bush

PHILADELPHIA —  After a Republican convention targeted squarely at moderates and independents, George W. Bush has strengthened his position with those voters but has still not closed the sale with Americans torn between him and Vice President Al Gore, a Times analysis of voter reaction suggests.

National opinion polls released Thursday and Friday showed Bush receiving the traditional “bounce” that candidates gain at their convention and widening his lead over Gore to double digits. An NBC poll taken Thursday night gave Bush an 11-percentage-point lead over Gore; the Battleground 2000 poll, which tracked voter reaction all week, put the Texan’s advantage at a towering 19 points.

But conversations Thursday night with uncommitted voters who watched Bush’s acceptance speech suggest it’s an open question whether he can solidify that lead into a lasting commitment.

While the speech inspired some to see Bush as more presidential and committed to an aggressive policy agenda, others continued to doubt his readiness for the presidency and were skeptical that he could achieve the ambitious reform goals he presented in education, Social Security and the military.

Hovering over all of these assessments were continued doubts about Gore among many of these same voters. That combustible mix of attitudes suggests this race could remain volatile for some time, as voters sort out their assessments of the two first-time nominees, each of whose flaws seem as obvious to many Americans as their virtues.

“I really don’t know who I’ll vote for,” said Delores Capocasa, an undecided voter from St. Paul, Minn., after watching the speech. “I’m really not too excited about what the Democrats have to offer, but Bush hasn’t convinced me.”

To assess voter reactions to the convention and Bush’s speech, the Times interviewed about a dozen voters who described themselves as either undecided or loosely committed to Gore or Bush in a Times Poll late last week. (That survey showed Bush holding a 5-percentage-point lead over Gore.)

In addition, the Times monitored the results of focus groups held with undecided voters during the speech by MSNBC and online reactions gathered on the political Web site https://www.speakout.com.

Both of those sessions provided viewers with tools so they could record their impressions of each line in the speech.

All of the measures point toward similar conclusions: Bush made a positive impression on many voters but not an overwhelmingly positive impression. That was most vividly displayed in the SpeakOut.com numbers tracking reaction through the address.

While Republican viewers reacted with great enthusiasm to the speech and Democrats were cool, independents gave Bush resolutely average marks for virtually everything he said.

“Independents were favorable but not overly enthusiastic,” said Will Feltus, a Republican pollster who now directs the polling operation at SpeakOut.com.

That equivocal verdict was largely mirrored in The Times interviews with undecided and loosely committed voters.

On the one hand, the interviews suggested that with some voters Bush met his campaign’s top goal for the speech: portraying himself as a strong leader ready for the presidency.

“He seemed presidential for the first time,” said homemaker Suzanne Kozloskie, an undecided voter from Metuchen, N.J., after watching the address. “I always thought of him as kind of cocky, and that didn’t surface tonight. He was sincere and thoughtful, and that was a side of him I hadn’t seen.”

Likewise, Arthur Parrish, a retired country club manager in Hollywood, Fla., liked Bush’s “charisma” and ability to sell his ideas. Parrish, who’s been leaning toward Bush but has been unsure, says the speech solidified his belief that the Texas governor is ready for the presidency.

“The people in the audience had tears in their eyes,” Parrish said. “He’s a leader. Gore is a follower.”

In The Times interviews and the MSNBC focus group, Bush also drew praise for his repeated promises to work across party lines and calm the partisan wars in Washington.

Barbara, an undecided voter from Long Island, N.Y., who refused to give her last name, was struck by Bush’s discussion of his close relationship with the late Texas Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, a Democrat. “It’s an unusual circumstance to have your second-in-command be from the opposition party and to work very well with him,” she said.

After three nights in which the convention devoted little time to Bush’s agenda, the candidate also drew positive marks for providing a much clearer sense of his policy priorities. Mary Bess Kincaid, an undecided voter in Lawrence, Kan., said she liked that Bush “approached the problems that he thought were important to the nation.”

She added: “This seems to be a more wholesome type of agenda and better in character than the current administration, and perhaps an improvement over many of the past administrations. He seems sincerely to want moral meaning and a moral agenda. I think that’s important.”

Yet on both of these central measures--leadership and agenda--Bush fell short for some in his target audience, the interviews found.

The most common complaint from those critical of the speech was that Bush laid out an impressive list of goals--reforming education and Social Security, strengthening the military, helping the poor--without providing enough details on how he would accomplish them.

Rosemary Pritchard, a teacher at a Roman Catholic school in Manhattan, Ill., said she was undecided before the speech and undecided after. “It didn’t change my mind at all. I like people to be honest. The speech came off as very staged. I dislike him more because he’s promising so much that he can’t deliver on. All through the speech I kept thinking: ‘How is he going to do that?’ ”

Robert Vachon, a retired vocational counselor in South Bend, Ind., had been leaning toward Gore before the speech and still was when he turned it off. “I got about 15 minutes into it and gave up. It’s the same old thing, with no real plans.”

Struck by an Image of Privilege, Wealth

Pritchard expressed another complaint common among the critics: continued uncertainty about whether Bush is up to the job. Thursday night’s speech, she said, was the first time she had heard Bush at length, and she thought he lacked “presence.” She added: “He came off as a privileged rich kid. . . . I see him as somebody who would let [vice presidential nominee] Dick Cheney do all the deep thinking. I don’t think he’s ready to lead the country.”

Yet Pritchard, like most of those who criticized Bush, wasn’t ready to sign up with Gore either.

“I was not impressed with Bush,” Pritchard said. “But then again, I can’t say I’m not going to vote for him because I haven’t seen the other guy yet. I don’t see the fire in either one of them.”

That ambivalence highlights the stakes for Gore in the Democratic National Convention that opens Aug. 14 in Los Angeles. These reactions suggest that, despite his lead, Bush hasn’t slammed the door on this election; but Gore has yet to show these uncommitted voters that he can walk through it.

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Times staff writers Richard Simon, Bonnie Harris and Megan Garvey and researchers Anna M. Virtue, Lianne Hart, Belen Rodriguez, and Lynette Ferdinand contributed to this story.