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Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed

Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed
Credit...The New York Times Archives
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February 5, 1992, Section A, Page 1Buy Reprints
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As President Bush travels the country in search of re-election, he seems unable to escape a central problem: This career politician, who has lived the cloistered life of a top Washington bureaucrat for decades, is having trouble presenting himself to the electorate as a man in touch with middle-class life.

Today, for instance, he emerged from 11 years in Washington's choicest executive mansions to confront the modern supermarket.

Visiting the exhibition hall of the National Grocers Association convention here, Mr. Bush lingered at the mock-up of a checkout lane. He signed his name on an electronic pad used to detect check forgeries.

"If some guy came in and spelled George Bush differently, could you catch it?" the President asked. "Yes," he was told, and he shook his head in wonder.

Then he grabbed a quart of milk, a light bulb and a bag of candy and ran them over an electronic scanner. The look of wonder flickered across his face again as he saw the item and price registered on the cash register screen.

"This is for checking out?" asked Mr. Bush. "I just took a tour through the exhibits here," he told the grocers later. "Amazed by some of the technology."

Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, assured reporters that he had seen the President in a grocery store. A year or so ago. In Kennebunkport.

Some grocery stores began using electornic scanners as early as 1976, and the devices have been in general use in American supermarkets for a decade.

Having sampled the ways of the American shopper, Mr. Bush tried to identify with the American bad mood.

He pounded a lectern and raised his voice. He accused "professional pessimists" in Congress of conducting class warfare by criticizing some of his programs as favoring the wealthy. He talked sarcastically about advisers who urged him to get "the right political ring" into his oratory and his policy proposals. And he told jokes.

Reminding the audience of his "love for sports," Mr. Bush added: "And this being an election year, my competitive juices are flowing more than ever. And so today I'm making an announcement that many of you have been expecting for a long time. I am officially declaring my entry into your best-bagger contest. Just one question -- paper or plastic?"

It was a clearly improved version of the promotional speeches the President has been making for his economic proposals, and it drew a wildly enthusiastic response from the grocers in Orlando.

But Mr. Bush could not seem to escape the impression that, with the Democratic field still in disarray and the economy still in recession, he was still running against himself. Mom and Apple Pie

Mr. Bush can raise cheers from his audience, as he did today, by attacking government regulators with a late 20th-century version of an old American saw. "Regulations may have stated aims as wholesome as Mom and the apple pie," he said. "But you know better than anyone that when regulators carry that regulation too far, there won't be any apple pie for Mom to buy."

And the President could also note with a tone of satisfaction that the grocers' convention included a seminar entitled "The Regulators Are Back." But he had to leave it there and not go into more detail, since the "regulators" mentioned are in his Administration, which resumed issuing regulations at an energetic pace after the deregulation frenzy of the Reagan years.

After drawing a distinctly unenthusiastic response from a crowd in Philadelphia last week, when he gave a professorial recitation of his economic proposals, Mr. Bush seemed determined to rouse his audience with exhortations today.

He urged his listeners to pepper their Congressional representatives during the Feb. 8-17 Congressional recess with demands that they pass his economic proposals by March 20, the deadline he set in his State of the Union Message last Tuesday.

Mr. Bush acknowledged that the nation had "run into some hard times," but told the grocers not to listen to "professional pessimists" who he said "tell us America has become weak and disabled -- that our economy has fallen and it can't get up."

"Well, that's plain bunk!"the President said, his voice rising and his fist pounding the lectern. Focus on the Economy

Mr. Bush focused his remarks almost entirely on the economy and other domestic issues, part of a campaign tactic of avoiding talk of foreign policy to avoid criticism that he spends too much time on diplomacy.

He did mention foreign affairs, drawing applause for his leadership in the Persian Gulf war. He also talked about his meeting with world leaders.

"I had a fascinating visit with Boris Yeltsin up at Camp David on Saturday," Mr. Bush said. "This man's got some tough reforms here. Got to stay with him. Got to help him make them work."

But the President quickly brought the talk back to politics, suggesting that Congressional Democrats are lagging behind even the Russians in moving into the new world. "Isn't it ironic that at the exact moment the world is turning to our values of more economic freedom and competition, some in the United States want to go just the opposite way," he said.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the National edition with the headline: Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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