Bush burnishes communication skills

This week, a record number of summer-school students are returning to their school-year classrooms, and many have made use of the summer to try to improve on their weak areas.

Count George W. Bush among them.

For the month of August, Mr. Bush was honing his communication skills, and trying to shake the early media label of him as a tongue-twisted Texan.

Using the American heartland as a kind of language lab, he delivered his first televised presidential address to the nation, and experimented with small and informal settings where he's more at ease. In a rare moment of rhetorical freedom in Independence, Mo., he dropped his prepared text in favor of an improvisational riff on the budget.

For the most part, it all worked fairly well, say observers. But that was low-risk August, when Americans were contemplating picnics, not presidential policy, and Congress was on vacation. This is September, the high-stakes month when the president is fighting for several major priorities on Capitol Hill.

Longer term, effective articulation could be a key determinant of success for Bush's presidency. In an era of 24/7 news coverage, communication is critical to presidential success, as Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan proved by their skillful use of the national-TV stage.

The "central challenge of his presidency now" is to persuade those outside the Republican fold, says David Gergen, adviser to presidents from Richard Nixon to Mr. Clinton.

"Whether he can do that or not, I don't know. He's obviously working on it, and he has a talented staff," Mr. Gergen says. But so far, he's had "difficulty in persuading people beyond his base of his views, his agenda, his vision."

Indeed, the country remains stubbornly divided, with 48 percent of Americans saying they would vote for Al Gore today and 48 percent saying they would vote for Bush, according to an August poll by USA Today, CNN, and Gallup.

Wayne Fields, an expert on presidential rhetoric at Washington University in St. Louis, says he's noticed the president appears "a little bit" more comfortable with his material. Mr. Fields calls Bush's Aug. 9 stem-cell speech "one of his better efforts."

In that talk, broadcast from the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, Americans got their first real glimpse of the president's decisionmaking on a complex issue, perhaps countering somewhat his image as an intellectual lightweight.

"The American people don't get to see how he arrives at his thoughts very often, and that speech did afford the country that opportunity," says Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, adding that his boss is decisive and not one to "emote on his sleeve" in the manner of former President Clinton.

At his only press conference during his four-week vacation, the president seemed more confident and quick-footed at the Crawford Community Center than back in the White House briefing room.

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