Starting From Scratch : Bush: New Job, Empty Briefcase

Time after time in George Bush’s single-minded pursuit of the presidency, aides would try to talk with him about the need to begin planning for a future Bush Administration. Time after time, the vice president cut his advisers short.

“I’m not thinking about it,” he would say, “and I don’t want you to think about it. All I’m thinking about is getting elected.”

That statement, startling as it may seem for a man who has spent more than two decades among Washington’s power centers and nearly that long planning his own entry into the Oval Office, is almost literally true.

Few Specific Plans

When it comes to specific plans and programs, legislative agendas, well-defined lists of priorities or detailed marching orders for his embryonic presidency, George Bush is about to assume the most powerful office on earth with something close to an empty briefcase.

“He took this run for the presidency and put other things out of his mind,” said a senior Bush adviser who declined to be quoted by name. “The election was a monolithic effort. . . . He didn’t talk about the people he’d call on to help him and he didn’t talk about plans for a hundred days or any other period.”

That laser-like focus on the task immediately at hand, some of his closest aides say, reflects both the potential problems and the bright possibilities for a man whom many of his fellow Americans are only just beginning to know.

Like all who stood at the threshold of the Oval Office before him, Bush must deal with a political landscape that is only partly his to shape and control. And how successfully he meets the resulting challenges--how good a President he turns out to be--will depend on the resources of skill, judgment, luck and weaknesses that make up the character of George Bush himself.

“Before an election, all the smart people want to talk about the issues,” said James David Barber, a presidential scholar at Duke University. “But afterwards it becomes clear that character is the most important: who the presidents are and how they operate.

“There’s no such thing as the presidency. There is simply one President after the other, and each makes and remakes the office in terms of his particular approach.”

The most critical problem facing Bush is that his failure to develop a clear program in advance means that he now must start almost from scratch to build public support for whatever proposals he makes. And he must act quickly, or the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress will seize the initiative.

The experience of Bush’s mentor, Ronald Reagan, stands as an object lesson for his political protege.

When Reagan first won the White House in 1980, he had campaigned on a very explicit agenda: to cut taxes, curb domestic spending, prune government regulations and build the nation’s military strength. Armed with what Congress perceived as sweeping public support, Reagan pressed quickly and successfully for his program. When he sought reelection in 1984, by contrast, even Reagan’s aides conceded that they had few concrete new proposals, and the Democratic Congress largely called the legislative tune for the next four years.

Similarly, some of Bush’s top advisers say, any hesitation on the new Administration’s part will leave a vacuum that the Democratic Congress will quickly fill with its own legislative initiatives.

As he moves to deal with this problem, the President-elect has several things going for him, as well as at least one serious potential blind spot.

Not the least of his strengths is the single-minded, utterly pragmatic way he approaches most challenges. Acknowledging that trait, Bush described himself last August as “a man who sees life in terms of missions--missions defined and missions completed.”

“He will do what he has to do to make his presidency work and if that means doing things that make him uncomfortable, he’ll do it,” said longtime friend and adviser Victor Gold. As he demonstrated in obliterating his old reputation as a wimp during the fall campaign, President Bush may be tougher and more adaptable than some of his opponents thought.

Said a senior Bush adviser, noting Bush’s willingness to run a slashing, negative campaign against Michael S. Dukakis even though it clashed with the vice president’s nice-guy image: “He didn’t like some of the things he had to do and say in the campaign, but he doesn’t like to lose. As much as he hates to do some things, if that’s what it takes, he’ll dish it out just like the next guy.”

Tooth-and-Claw Tactics

Although his pragmatism makes Bush capable of tooth-and-claw tactics when he considers them advantageous, he is usually inclined to be a consensus builder and to shun the kinds of confrontations that Reagan seemed to relish. He already has declared his intention to reach out and try to work with Congress.

“George Bush is not a mean-spirited person in any respect. I’ve watched him as a friend and one who’s worked for him and he doesn’t keep political enemies . . . and doesn’t develop (an) enemies’ list, that’s not his style,” said Robert Mosbacher, a Houston businessman and longtime Bush friend who is rumored to be in line for a Cabinet appointment.

“He’ll even meet with groups that hate his guts because that’s the kind of guy he is,” Gold said. “He depersonalizes differences. He doesn’t personalize them like (Jimmy) Carter and (Richard M.) Nixon. They’d smile, but you’d know it was personal.”

Nor is Bush’s presidency expected to have the extreme ideological cast that Reagan’s did, even though the new President is likely to follow closely in Reagan’s footsteps on most major domestic and foreign policy issues.

“You’ll have identical foreign policy without the rhetoric. There’ll be no ‘evil empire’ speeches,” Gold predicted. “He’ll reach out to the Republican Party’s right wing, but it’s not his natural constituency and there’ll be none of the kind of raw-meat speeches Reagan gives to right-wing groups.”

On a “vast majority of the issues,” agreed Mosbacher, “George sees eye to eye with the President,” but there are “a few areas where he has strong feelings that we need to move much faster, such as education and protection of the environment and doing something about America’s competitive role”--areas of concern to many congressional Democrats as well.

Attuned to Minorities

Similarly, Mosbacher said, the President-elect will be “much more attuned to minorities than anything we’ve seen with Reagan.”

Before his tenure as Reagan’s vice president, Bush often sought the views of many diverse groups, even those with which he had serious political differences. The Reagan White House has been virtually off limits to civil rights and environmental groups. Bush is expected to welcome those groups back to the White House when he takes over, even though they opposed him during the election campaign.

Finally, Bush should be helped in the months ahead by the fact that--imprecise as he was on the major issues--the public agrees with his general commitments to oppose new taxes and major new domestic spending programs, bring down the federal deficit and maintain America’s military strength. As they struggle with the new Administration over the details of these issues, the Democrats must tread carefully, lest Bush mobilize public opinion against them as Reagan did.

If Bush has many things going for him, however, even his friends concede that there are features in his character and operating style which could lead to serious trouble.

Longtime Bush associates see him as much more of a doer than a thinker, and some are concerned that as President he may be so impatient to get things done that he will not spend enough time contemplating his decisions.

“He needs to discipline himself to allow more time for pondering decisions,” said a longtime adviser who formerly served on the vice president’s staff. “He’s a quick decision maker. As vice president, that might not make much difference, but as President, he will need to think things through more carefully before making a decision.”

Quayle Decision

The Bush decision that haunts many of those close him is his selection last August of Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle as his running mate.

The way Bush handled the Quayle decision says a great deal about potential weaknesses in the vice president’s management style. He sometimes closes his mind and shuts out other views if they conflict with his own, even though generally he is known for consulting broadly and listening to all points of view.

Some of Bush’s closest advisers considered the 41-year-old Quayle a major political liability--as well as a possible problem even in the largely ceremonial office of vice president. But aides never got the chance to argue against the selection because Bush presented it to them as a fait accompli.

In deciding on a running mate, Bush called his top advisers together and discussed with them the pros and cons of a number of contenders, including Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, the favorites of some Bush advisers. Quayle was on the list, too, but was widely considered a long shot, even though Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady had him on his list of five finalists and two other Bush advisers--pollster Robert Teeter and media strategist Roger Ailes--had worked on Quayle’s Senate campaigns.

Bush listened intently and took notes as his aides talked. He never showed his hand about where he might be leaning, but a Bush adviser said it was clear that the vice president considered both Kemp and Dole too contentious to be his partner.

Younger People

At the same time, Bush had “almost a fixation” on an idea promoted by Teeter that the future of the Republican Party lies in bringing younger people into positions of power, according to one Bush adviser. “I’ve heard George say time and again that it’s time for some of the old (guys) to get out of the way and let younger people move ahead, and that fit right in with Teeter’s thesis,” the adviser said.

Bush also indicated later that he thought the youthful Midwesterner symbolized the future, represented what one aide called “a slice of American life,” would help with the gender gap, was a great speaker, was compatible with the vice president on defense and other issues and had a “lovely, brilliant wife.”

Whatever the reasons underpinning the selection of Quayle, after making his decision, Bush kept the choice a secret until first telling his wife, Barbara, and then, upon arriving in New Orleans for the Republican convention, informing President Reagan. Only after taking these irreversible steps did Bush tell James A. Baker III, his campaign chairman.

“The reason George didn’t mention it to anybody until telling his wife and the President,” said a longtime Bush adviser, “was that he knew it was high risk. And he knew if he let Baker know about it before the cat was out of the bag, Baker would try to keep it in the bag.”

Some Bush advisers say that the Quayle selection reflects a blind spot in Bush’s management style that could portend trouble for his presidency. “Watch the personnel thing,” one adviser said. “He won’t have any litmus tests like Reagan has had to see whether somebody is conservative or liberal. He’s sensitive to that. But he has not understood the importance of staff, and there could be other Quayles.”

Won’t Have Luxury

Beyond personnel decisions, while Bush’s single-mindedness served him well on the campaign trail, as President he will not have the luxury of focusing on a single goal.

In an interview with The Times shortly before the election, Bush made it clear that he realizes a President who gets off to a slow start can lose the initiative to Congress. And he said that although he respects Congress as an institution and will try hard for a cooperative relationship, he has been “very frustrated by the usurpation of presidential power by the Congress.”

As for his general operating style, Bush, like Reagan, has always been a delegator who depends heavily on subordinates. But the President-elect, who has promised “more hands-on leadership,” is considered much more likely than Reagan to follow up and see that assigned tasks are carried out.

In fact, Bush’s advisers say that he gets impatient, even testy, if he believes an assignment has not been fulfilled quickly enough. “He’ll ask you to do something,” said Pete Teeley, his former press secretary, “and if he checks back and you haven’t done it, he’ll just say: ‘Forget it, I’ll do it myself.’ ”

Between Carter, Reagan

Bush’s management style is expected to fall somewhere between Reagan’s detached manner and Carter’s regimen of detailed oversight that even included studying budget details and monitoring use of the White House tennis court.

Bush has a broad circle of friends and advisers and is an extraordinarily sociable person. Although the Oval Office invariably isolates even the most gregarious of presidents, Bush has said that he is determined to keep up the personal contacts that have served him well as vice president and earlier in such roles as CIA director, Republican Party chairman and congressman from Texas.

“He wants to maintain that standard of being responsive to friends,” said senior aide Craig Fuller. “That’s been important to him his whole life.”

Bush, asked at his post-election press conference in Houston how he could maintain communications on such a personal level given the demands of the presidency, said:

“Reach out and touch someone. Use the telephone. I’m not going to change . . . my belief that the more personal contact you have the better. I recognize the parameters of this job are quite different. But I will continue to do what I have done in terms of contact.”

Reaching out broadly can have its drawbacks, though. It opens the way to greater competition for the President’s ear and sources close to the campaign say that there is already a measurable rise in staff infighting.

Generally, Bush’s gregariousness has made him personally well liked on Capitol Hill. Bush himself said in an interview that he believes what a prominent Democrat in Congress told him, that “George Bush has more good relations up here on both sides of the aisle of any President in a long, long time.”

Nonetheless, he has major bridge-building tasks with Congress, even among some Republicans. He was unenthusiastic in helping Republican candidates for Congress and was criticized by Senate Republican leader Dole, who said he should have done more, especially in Florida, where GOP Rep. Connie Mack won a Senate seat by only the narrowest of margins.

Another difficulty Bush may face in his struggle with Congress is that he probably vastly over-promised what he can deliver to the American people.

Although it is not unusual for presidential candidates to over-promise, Bush’s book of promises, titled, “Leadership on the Issues,” runs to 347 highly detailed pages--covering everything from eliminating asbestos in buildings to assuring that “every child in every community should enter first grade healthy and well nourished.”

And there is a special problem with a fellow Texan--House Speaker Jim Wright. During the campaign, Bush infuriated Wright by calling for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate recent allegations of unethical conduct by the Speaker. Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced), the House majority whip, thinks that Bush needs to reach out to both Wright and another Texan--Senate Finance Committee Chairman Lloyd Bentsen, whose stature was enhanced by his performance as Dukakis’ running mate.

Bush’s Congress-bashing during the campaign also complicates his task on Capitol Hill. He blasted Congress for excessive spending. Many members of Congress have expressed skepticism that Bush can develop an acceptable deficit-reduction plan without raising revenues, and they seem none too eager to help him do so.

However, says Coelho, Bush can develop a harmonious relationship with Congress “if he meets with members and treats them seriously and doesn’t just sit down and talk jokes with them and then ignore them the way Reagan has done.”