Bush Plans New Economic Team : White House: Aides say President, if reelected, would replace Brady, Darman and Boskin in bid to change fiscal course. Clinton calls move an act of desperation.

WASHINGTON — Scrambling to persuade voters that President Bush is serious about changing course on the economy, the White House signaled Monday that Bush plans to dismiss his controversial economic policy team if reelected.

Senior White House officials indicated Monday that the President’s top economic advisers--Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady, Budget Director Richard G. Darman and chief economist Michael J. Boskin--will be replaced if there is a second Bush term next January.

White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said there “would be a new economic team” in the second Administration, while other officials Monday indicated that meant there would be no place for Brady, Darman and Boskin.

Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton saw Bush’s personnel moves as an act of desperation. “Sounds like they’ve had a losing season and the coach wants to fire the team,” Clinton said in Philadelphia. “In America, when you have a losing season, the coach gets fired, not the team.”

The move came one day after Bush announced in the first presidential debate that he plans to name White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, his most trusted aide, to be economic policy coordinator. The White House said Monday that Baker would deliver a major speech this week to outline his plans to reshape Bush’s economic agenda.

Bush also asked all Cabinet officers, agency heads and presidential appointees in the White House to submit their resignations effective immediately after the election, a request the White House sought to depict as traditional for incumbent Presidents. A Baker memo released to the press Monday night said the action is “a repeat of a customary request” for a “pro-forma letter of resignation.”

But sources said the letters were sent out by Baker to other Administration officials only after Brady and Darman complained that they were being unfairly treated. And the action came across to many in the Administration as a sign of panic in the closing days of the campaign.

Other Administration sources said the mass resignation letter was a transparent maneuver aimed at easing the ouster of Darman and Brady, who have been lightning rods for conservative ire over the Bush Administration’s inaction on economic policy. Another White House official acknowledged that sacking Darman and Brady--widely criticized for failing to persuade the President to take the nation’s economic problems more seriously--was a necessary move to “energize the conservative base.”

Fitzwater stressed that Bush has still not made any decisions on his economic team for a second term. But Fitzwater, who spoke to reporters in Philadelphia, added that Bush had asked Baker “to put together an economic program for the second term, to really take charge of designing it and implement it . . . (and) to help put together a new team to implement the program.”

Brady, the Administration’s chief economic policy maker, confirmed Monday that he plans to leave at the end of the first term, but told reporters in Colorado that he has had long-standing plans to do so.

Insiders added that Boskin, who has been less controversial and who has said he plans to leave at the end of the first term anyway, simply appeared to be caught up in the White House’s desire to make a clean sweep on the economic front. Ironically, Boskin has been one of the few figures in the Administration warning that the President needed to offer the American public a less upbeat--and more realistic--assessment of the economy.

Brady and Darman supported the Administration’s 1990 budget compromise with Congress, which resulted in Bush breaking his no-new-taxes pledge. They continued to support the agreement despite withering criticism from conservative Republicans.

Darman has long resisted conservative attempts to engineer his ouster, but his standing in the White House has been badly hurt by a series of stories last week in the Washington Post depicting his private thinking on Bush Administration economic policy.

Darman was quoted in the Post series as saying that he not only opposed Bush’s famous pledge not to raise taxes, but also that Bush’s disavowal of the 1990 budget agreement, which included tax hikes, was “sheer idiocy.”

Monday’s maneuverings meant a day of frantic confusion at the highest levels of the federal government, as Cabinet officers and their top aides sought to learn whether they would keep their jobs if Bush wins reelection.

The action caught a number of senior Administration officials by surprise, and several said they were angered by the way in which it was handled by the traveling White House staff. With Bush and Baker on the campaign trail, it was left to an obscure White House functionary, Ede Holiday, assistant to the President and secretary of the Cabinet, to telephone Cabinet members to inform them of the request for the resignation letters.

With just three weeks to go before the election, Bush advisers were clearly determined to maximize the political impact of a change that would establish Baker, a former Treasury secretary and secretary of state, as the unquestioned chief steward of the nation’s economy.

In another attempt to refocus the campaign on Bush’s economic proposals, Baker planned a major speech on domestic policy this week. A Bush campaign official noted wryly that the speech would get more public attention coming from Baker than if it were delivered by Bush himself.

The speech will focus on how Baker plans to carry out the domestic policy agenda Bush unveiled last month--giving the Administration a second chance at impressing voters with Bush’s commitment to a more active economic policy.

Before Sunday’s announcement at the debate, aides had said Baker hoped to return to his previous job of secretary of state if Bush wins reelection. Instead, a White House official said, “He is going to assemble a new team, and implement the President’s agenda. . . .”

“A lot of people have said that Bush is just saying these things to get reelected,” the official added. “Naming Baker shows how serious the President is . . . There was no resistance at all” from Baker.

“It’s no secret that a lot of voters feel that he (Bush) didn’t pay enough attention to the domestic agenda in the first couple of years, and he wanted to emphasize his commitment to it,” added Bush campaign chairman Robert M. Teeter.

Times staff writer Doyle McManus contributed to this story.