Bush Vows More Open Ties With Soviet Union : Vice President Sees Early Summit Talks

SOUTH BEND, Ind. —  Opening the campaign’s final week with a call to the political moderation that his long candidacy has often eschewed, Vice President George Bush on Tuesday vowed a more open relationship with the Soviet Union than he has earlier advocated and pledged that he would place “moderate” conservatives on the Supreme Court.

Reaching deliberately toward centrist Americans in a symbolic journey to the University of Notre Dame and later in Waukesha, Wis., Bush chided the nation’s Democratic leadership as abandoning the country’s “big, full-hearted center” and presented himself as a common-sense humanist meant to fill Ronald Reagan’s shoes.

‘Great Divide’

And, in words that echoed his well-received speech at the Republican National Convention, Bush drew a contrast between himself and Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis, saying they were separated not by their sincerity of beliefs but by “the great divide” on the issues.

Two national polls, meanwhile, offered reassuring news for the vice president and challenged the idea raised by both campaigns late last week that the race had begun to tighten in a number of battleground states.

A CBS News poll showed Bush leading Dukakis 53% to 41%, and a Washington Post-ABC poll showed Bush ahead 55% to 42%. The CBS poll was conducted Saturday through Monday, and the Post-ABC survey over five days ending Monday. Both had margins of error of 3 percentage points.

In what aides billed as the philosophical wrap-up to a campaign that formally began 13 months ago, Bush on Tuesday seemed intent on casting his election as inevitable, shunning the slash-and-burn tactics of recent weeks to adopt a decidedly presidential tone.

Seizing on his foreign policy experience in an obvious contrast to that of Dukakis, Bush announced that he would meet with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev “at the earliest time that would serve the interests of world peace.”

In contrast with past statements--in May he said he did not favor “meeting for the sake of meeting” and would tie summits to Soviet achievement on such issues as human rights--Bush on Tuesday suggested a broader approach.

“My purpose in such a meeting would not be to achieve any grand breakthrough but to engage in a serious and direct examination of where we are and how we best can go forward . . . toward a surer peace.”

But the vice president, his address marred by a few verbal slip-ups and persistent hecklers who seemed to distract him, issued a cautionary warning aimed directly at Dukakis.

“This is no time either for misplaced hopes or misplaced fears or total inexperience,” Bush declared. “We must be realistic and informed.”

Criminal Justice

Bush also emphasized the theme of criminal justice--an effective weapon in his battle with Dukakis--in words less vitriolic than in the past.

The vice president noted that the next President, given the advancing age of several Supreme Court members, would likely appoint several members of the court.

While he said that he believes Dukakis would appoint “doctrinaire liberals” to the Supreme Court, Bush suggested that as President he would not insist on placing doctrinaire conservatives as has Reagan.

“I will appoint moderate persons of conservative views,” Bush said.

Bush’s potential court selections have been the subject of much discussion because he has in his political career personified both the moderate wing of the Republican Party and, as Reagan’s vice president, the conservative wing.

Truman, Kennedy

But while he drew the line at “doctrinaire” liberals, Bush took pains to laud past Democrats like Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy, two recent-day heroes whom Dukakis recently embraced along with the “liberal” label.

Yet Bush scolded present-day liberals for failing to show the same outrage against crime victims as they did victims of discrimination.

“I see that violent crime is a great civil rights question of our time--that the victims of crime are not the rich and the well-connected, but the working poor and the young and the old, and that an old woman who is afraid to go out for bread after dark is every bit as oppressed as a political prisoner in a totalitarian country.”

Upbeat Addresses

References to Dukakis were scattered through the generally upbeat addresses in Indiana and Wisconsin, although Bush did not refer to the Massachusetts governor by name.

Bush praised his opponent as a “sincere” man. But he added: “I think he’s guided more by abstract theories and grids and graphs and computer printouts and the history of Swedish social planning . . . more by the ideas about the way men and women should be than the way they are.”

The vice president was apparently referring to a much-repeated anecdote that Dukakis once took a copy of “Swedish Land Use Planning” along on a family vacation.

Bush described himself in more human tones, saying that he knew the concerns of common voters. “I’ve been there,” he said, evoking the names of his two youngest granddaughters.

‘Activist President’

“I will be an activist President,” he said. “I want this job because I want to do things.”

“I am no mystic, and my leadership will not be the most charismatic,” added Bush, who once said he would model his presidency after that of Dwight D. Eisenhower. “But I’m not sure we need a lot of razzle-dazzle. There’s probably enough drama in the world already.”

A touch of drama filtered into Bush’s address in South Bend, despite stringent entrance requirements that left dozens of Notre Dame students milling angrily outside.

Several batches of students inside the Thomas J. White Center for Law and Government stood in silent protest as Bush spoke. Another young man, dressed in casual clothes and a camouflage cap, rose and screamed “Lies!” as Bush spoke, startling the vice president into silence.

The crowd of about 1,000 guests drowned the protester out with chants of “Four more years!”

Stumbles Over Lines

Bush added to the unscripted flavor of the event by stumbling over his lines. Once, in describing gains under the Reagan Administration, he meant to say that he and Reagan decided that “the slide stops now--the comeback begins today.”

Instead, the vice president said determinedly into the microphone: “The slide show stops now.”

Bush’s South Bend speech represented an attempt by the Bush campaign to draw together the vice president’s overall message in a more positive format than the last scrappy and vitriolic weeks of the campaign have allowed.

‘Set the Tone’

His chief of staff, Craig Fuller, said the speech would “set the tone” for the remainder of the campaign, establishing a philosophical trail that the vice president will follow through the final days.

Bush’s visit to Notre Dame was rife with symbolism: A university in middle America, the educational icon of Roman Catholics (a sought-after voting bloc in the Midwest), the home of the nation’s top-ranked college football team and, although Bush did not mention it, the hallowed grounds of the Gipper, whose image Ronald Reagan portrayed in the movies and appropriated during his political career.

Indiana was clearly not a state that Bush was forced by the polls to visit: He is well ahead in the polls here and carries on his ticket the state’s junior senator, Dan Quayle. But Quayle, like the theatrical Gipper, was not mentioned Tuesday by Bush.