Edition: U.S. / Global


By ANDREW ROSENTHAL, Special to The New York Times
Published: August 26, 1990

Even on a day when he savored a hard-won diplomatic triumph at the United Nations, President Bush and his handling of the Persian Gulf crisis encountered irritating criticisms from unexpected quarters.

At the same time that

Mr. Bush is basking in beams of approval from Europe and receiving support from the Soviet Union, television comedians and journalistic commentators at home are suggesting that he set an example for the nation by giving his gas-guzzling speedboat a rest.

And he is getting conflicting reviews from American conservatives, with some doubting the worth of the mission and others, including two former Secretaries of State, Henry A. Kissinger and Alexander M. Haig, warning about the dangers of wearing out popular support by waiting too long to act in his effort to control the expansionist ambitions of Saddam Hussein.

This situation reflects the problem that while Mr. Bush has adeptly marshaled foreign support and stitched together a broad alliance, he has had little appetite or time for grappling with the implications of the crisis for the national economy, the impact on the Federal budget deficit of tens of millions of dollars a day in additional military spending and, finally, developing an election-year rationale for the overarching goals of his policy.

Within the White House and among outside experts, there is a sense of a President launched on a stormy period that will be crucial to the verdicts on an Administration that had begun well but had not yet faced a test of such magnitude.

''I think we're seeing Bush feeling his way into a whole new world,'' said Stephen Ambrose, biographer of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. ''This is the first post-cold war crisis, the first in which none of the givens of his lifetime are there anymore. It's uncharted water for the White House and I don't think they're navigating it entirely successfully yet.''

As the focus of such attention, Mr. Bush has so far avoided the appearance of personal anguish that characterized the presidency of Jimmy Carter. He has tried to project the image of a leader unintimidated by perilous military action and willing to bear the responsibility of military command without being paralyzed by threats to the lives of American hostages.

Mr. Bush has clearly distinguished himself from his predecessors - more decisive than Mr. Carter, more in charge than Ronald Reagan - and yet is haunted and occasionally hobbled by the ghosts of their presidencies.

By holding to his summer vacation plans, Mr. Bush has rejected Mr. Carter's decision to stay in the White House during the Iran hostage crisis. But Mr. Bush's approach has sprung an entirely new trap: while Mr. Bush is hard at work here, the television imagery is of a President blithely speed-boating and golfing through what has become a dangerous summer for tens of thousands of American soldiers and thousands of American civilians.

''He may end up being the first President who's held hostage on a Cigarette boat,'' said Jody Powell, who was Mr. Carter's press secretary. ''He's sort of got himself in a position where he has to go fishing even if he doesn't want to. They made a decision about appearances that's got away from them and is now controlling him.''

An Intimate Portrait

Although Mr. Bush fiercely resists close inspection, the last three weeks have provided a intimate portrait of his leadership. They have revealed him at his most temperamental, grousing at reporters who dog his golf cart. They have shown him at his diplomatic best, telephoning around the world to hold together the anti-Iraq alliance.

They have also demonstrated the perils of the personal way Mr. Bush conducts his diplomacy. He has relied on a knowledge of the Middle East that comes from a long association with its oil-rich, conservative royal families and leaves Mr. Bush with a blind spot in assessing the currents of the Arab street and the intentions of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

In general, the Persian Gulf conflict puts the final focus on a picture that began taking shape in 1989 as the new President began shedding images accrued over the years in which he had been Mr. Reagan's silent and loyal No. 2: ''wimpy,'' ''excessively cautious,'' ''inarticulate,'' ''lacking in vision.'' ''He's had to wipe off eight years of cobwebs,'' said a senior Administration official.

The leader evident in today's crisis began emerging, this official suggested, in a May 1989 meeeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization at which he made a proposal to cut conventional armed forces. ''The idea was to tell the allies clearly that he was going to lead NATO, that he had the personal will and ambition to match the U.S. role as a superpower,'' the official said.

After the Malta summit meeting and the Washington meeting with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev this year, many of Mr. Bush's critics were acknowledging that he had moved effectively on the world stage. But there has been a lingering complaint that while he excelled at shifting gears quickly, Mr. Bush was disinclined to provide a broad vision for his actions.

Untested in Adversity