Bush mastering the congressional circus

By JON FRANDSEN
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — George W. Bush brought a Texas-size attitude when he came to town two years ago and dealt with Congress as if he had been swept into the White House by a landslide — not like a president who lost the popular vote and whose party clung to power in the Capitol by the narrowest of margins.

From the outset, Bush gambled that he could take power by asserting power — not apologetically as an accidental president but simply as president.

Bush figured he would have enough people trying to grab concessions and power from him that there was little reason to give any of it away through conciliatory gestures.

"The insight was … why compromise with yourself before you even try. Force them to challenge you for power," said Calvin Jillson, who has watched Bush’s entire political career from his post leading Southern Methodist University's political science department. "That was a real stroke of brilliance."

It's a sure-footed and almost cocky attitude that Bush and his aides maintain to this day, but now they have more than bravado to back it up.

"We are going into his midterm after a very successful election that the president claimed as a mandate — and he should," said presidential scholar James Thurber of American University.

Democrats acknowledge that Bush is a formidable opponent who has been successful in pushing his agenda through Congress.

"He is certainly getting his way," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said in a telephone interview. "I just don't know that his way is doing the country much good."

Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a conservative Democrat who has worked closely with Bush and Republicans on several issues, said the administration might be getting so overconfident that it will start making mistakes.

“Because they have had almost free rein in dealing with most matters and then having these tremendous victories, at some point you can overplay your hand,” Nelson said.

But Jillson said Bush appears little concerned about overreaching. He points to how little the White House style changed even after one moderate senator, Vermont’s Jim Jeffords, became so fed up with Bush’s conservative approach that he bolted the GOP and gave control of the Senate to Democrats.

Bush's hard-charging approach took many off guard, Jillson said, because many thought he would be more tentative because of his lack of experience. Before coming to Washington, he spent six years as governor of Texas, which has a state legislature that only meets every two years.

Off balance
By all accounts, Bush has a clear vision of where he wants to go on a given policy, and he can be charming and thoughtful in pulling votes his way. But he also can be resolute, although he usually leaves arm twisting up to others.

Rep. James Greenwood, R-Pa., a moderate Republican who occasionally disagrees with Bush on abortion and other social issues, ran headlong into Bush’s steadfastness during a meeting on education.

Greenwood suggested that consistently high-performing schools, like many in his suburban Philadelphia district, could be exempted from some of Bush’s testing requirements.

"Absolutely not," Greenwood said Bush replied without hesitating.

"He can really take the wind out of your sails,” the congressman said.

While toughness has clearly aided Bush in Congress, his success probably lies more in the mix of strategies and negotiating styles he deploys with an almost athletic agility. The unpredictability has appeared to dumbfound Democrats, and even some of his GOP allies.

For example, at the same time Bush bulled through his tax-cut package largely untouched in 2001, he struck compromises on a historic education reform bill that alarmed many of his conservative supporters.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, he resisted Democratic demands for a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security, then announced just such a department after only two months of planning. That was a bit of political judo so artful that a Democratic proposal ended up becoming one of Bush's most potent weapons in the successful fight to take back the Senate.

"It's dangerous when you are dealing with a guy like that and you don't know where he is going to end up," Thurber said. "You can become hopeful he will compromise and then find yourself with nothing but blame. You have to be united in those circumstances, and Democrats weren’t."

For all of his audacity, Bush does have a cautious side and is careful about picking his fights. That helps explain why he is one of only two presidents — the other is Bill Clinton — to come this far in his term without vetoing a single bill.

National cliffhanger
The greatest peril Bush and congressional Republicans face in the coming two years probably does not come from Democrats but the number of circumstances that could spiral into crisis.

Bush's first two years were largely about winning policy positions at home and trying to set a global agenda as he prosecutes the war on terrorism. Much of the next two years will be about carrying out those policies and living with their effects as well as dealing with multiple issues that Bush and Congress have deferred.

It is a story only half told, and it is far from clear whether it will end on a note of tragedy or remarkable success.

"There are some very serious issues before this administration and not a lot of clarity on how they will be handled," Jillson said.

The economy is still shedding jobs at an alarming rate and growing at a lackluster pace. The war on terrorism is a constant concern and the government warns that another large-scale attack is possible.

While U.S. troops continue to try and stabilize a still treacherous Afghanistan, other American forces are being deployed into the Persian Gulf for a possible war with Iraq. North Korea is threatening a full-blown nuclear crisis and U.S. diplomats keep a constant check on nuclear-armed enemies Pakistan and India.

Congress has yet to settle budget issues that should have been resolved months ago and may still be struggling with where to make cuts when Bush proposes his 2004 budget on Feb. 3. The costs of health care are infuriating and frightening Americans.

But Bush is not playing it safe and still hews to the political and ideological principles that have brought him this far.

Bush showed that again on the first day of the 108th Congress when he proposed another massive tax cut, one that Democrats can easily paint as a gift to the rich, and renominated a controversial judge knowing that he will be a political lightning rod whose elevation to an appeals court might be blocked by Democrats.

"Despite coming in under a cloud ... he got 95 percent of what he asked for in record time — faster than Ronald Reagan got his tax cut in 1982, and Reagan won in a landslide," congressional analyst Norm Ornstein said about the Bush tax cut. "Now he has many more things going for him ... so he is trying something even bolder."