ERRIMACK, N.H. - Governor George W. Bush, trapped in a tight race before the first presidential primary, did yesterday what any politician might do: He directly attacked his top opponent.
Then Bush suddenly stopped himself. Even as he disparaged Senator John McCain for sounding ''amazingly similar'' to the two Democratic candidates and produced an ad that specifically assailed McCain's tax plan, Bush bent over backward to compliment the Arizona senator. He insisted - four times - that he respects McCain. He reminded a crowd of supporters that McCain is a ''worthwhile opponent.'' And in doing so, Bush highlighted the unusual challenge he faces in the last 1 1/2 weeks of the New Hampshire race: how to undercut McCain, a national war hero and celebrity, without sounding petty or unnecessarily cruel.
The two contenders have already taken a no-negative-ads pledge, and they have thrown few serious barbs during the last six GOP debates. But with McCain continuing to pose a serious threat in the New Hampshire polls, Bush is grasping for ways to dismiss his opponent, while at the same time respecting the high regard in which McCain is held.
''It's sensitive. I think it's good he is going out of his way to say he respects John McCain, he considers him a friend,'' said US Representative Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, who was campaigning yesterday with Bush. ''I heard him say he's a good man three or four times today. ... There's a little risk in taking on a guy who's viewed as a war hero. On the other hand, the stakes are pretty high here. This stuff could actually become law, depending on who becomes president.''
The greatest source of friction between Bush and McCain in recent days has been tax cuts, an issue each began focusing on weeks ago to appeal to the Republican Party's most conservative wing. Bush is proposing a $483 billion tax cut over five years that would affect earners in all tax brackets. McCain is offering a tax cut half that size - $237 billion over five years - geared more toward low- and middle-income taxpayers.
Bush has seized the smaller size of McCain's tax cut proposal as an opportunity to differentiate their campaigns, using it as a battering ram against the conservative record McCain built in the US Senate. But it is also clear that, tactically, Bush and his aides view taxes as a relatively safe battleground, one where they can dismiss McCain's ideas without insulting the candidate himself.
Yesterday, Bush released the first television ad specifically aimed at McCain. Filmed during a campaign stop in Pittsfield, the ad spoke about McCain's philosophy of government, though it stopped short of mentioning his name.
''My opponent trusts the people of Washington to spend money. I trust the people of New Hampshire to make the right decisions for their families,'' Bush said in the ad.
Yet Bush defended his criticism of McCain, sounding almost apologetic as he continued: ''If he says something I don't agree with, I am going to point it out.''
''I darn sure don't agree with saying you're going to take $40 billion of employer-related benefits and have people pay taxes on them. I think that is a mistake,'' Bush said. ''If you abolish employer-related benefits to pay for a tax cut, it means working people will have to pay those benefits.''
Bush opponents charged that the ads were, in fact, negative. Paul Young, a New Hampshire adviser to millionaire publisher Steve Forbes, who has run his own negative ads, said: ''What it says about what Bush is doing is that he's losing to McCain.'' As for the no-negative-ads pledge, Young said, Bush is ''basically trying to have his cake and eat it, too.''
But Dean Spiliotes, a Dartmouth College government professor, said the ads were on the soft side of negative. ''In any primary contest you have to distinguish between the candidates,'' Spiliotes said.
Whether to tax employer benefits - perquisites, such as transportation, given to an employee in lieu of a pay raise or a bonus - have been the focal point of the tax cut argument since last week, in many ways illustrating the Bush campaign's eagerness to spotlight minute details rather than broader policy differences.
Bush repeatedly has criticized McCain's tax plan for what he says would be a $40 billion tax on employer benefits, despite repeated denials from McCain aides that no such increase exists in the senator's proposal. The McCain plan would exempt employer benefits such as dependent care, continuing education and health premiums from being taxed. Only fringe employer benefits such as meals and transportation would be taxable, making the amount in question only about $3.9 billion, not $40 billion, McCain aides said.
''The governor's economic advisers are inventing figures out of thin air,'' said Dan Schnur, McCain's communications director. ''I don't know how many times we can say it. There's no $40 billion tax increase in this proposal.''
Karl Rove, a senior Bush adviser, said the Bush assessment came from figures provided by the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan source. Rove also said Bush is not handling McCain more delicately than he is anyone else.
''He says nice things about Gary Bauer and nice things about Senator Hatch,'' Rove said. ''And he tries to say nice things about Steve Forbes.''
Other Bush supporters said there was a clear strategic advantage to the tax debate: It depicts the Texas governor as the real conservative, challenging McCain on ideological, not personal, grounds. Tom Rath, a Bush adviser in New Hampshire, said the tax debate clearly shows ''McCain has moved to the left.'' And US Representative Charles Bass, Republican of New Hampshire and a solid Bush supporter, described the McCain tax plan as one that would ''please Lloyd Doggett or Richard Bonior or Dick Gephardt,'' all liberal members of the US House.
