See No Need for Sweeping Initiatives : First 100 Days: Experts Urge Bush to Go Slowly

In their first 100 days in the White House, Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the New Deal and Ronald Reagan touched off the so-called Reagan Revolution.

But George Bush, for his own good, and the country’s too, might do better to begin his stint in the White House next week at a much more deliberate pace, setting the stage for what might be dubbed “the incremental presidency.”

That is the consensus of scholars and political operatives interviewed about how the nation’s 41st chief executive should approach his first 100 days--the traditional period in which many new presidents have sought to accomplish their most important goals and set the tone of their administrations.

Their prescription calls for a few small steps on the domestic front--maybe a college loan program or a White House staff cut--plus a few modest gestures in the international arena--perhaps new talks with the Soviets about a chemical weapons ban--and a heavy dose of symbolism.

Underlying these restrained recommendations are two basic beliefs:

--The economic constraints on the new chief executive make this a poor time to come forward with sweeping new initiatives that would be difficult to fund, especially after Bush’s vow of no new taxes.

--Most Americans believe that the country is in pretty good shape. After all, many analysts point out, if the voters were not generally satisfied with the national condition, they would not have elected Bush, whose pledge to sustain the benefits of the Reagan era was the centerpiece of his 1988 campaign against Democrat Michael S. Dukakis.

Indeed, a recent Gallup Poll indicates that 56% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States, compared with only 17% when President Reagan took office in 1981. In the same survey, 87% of those interviewed said that they are satisfied with the way things are going in their personal lives, a level that has not been topped since Gallup started asking this question in 1979.

“The country is in good shape,” said Burton Pines, director of research for the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative think tank. “People are not looking for a quick fix from the President.”

It is true that the new President and the country face some serious problems, notably the huge federal budget deficit and the Gordian knot of international competitiveness. But the difficulties of dealing with both have been so widely advertised that no one anticipates that Bush will start solving them immediately.

“In talking about the Bush presidency you have to start with the premise that the American people don’t expect an awful lot from George Bush as President,” said Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and a former White House aide to Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon.

It is one of Bush’s major assets in his new job that he seems well suited by temperament and intellectual outlook to an undemanding public mood.

Unlike Reagan, “Bush is not an ideological politician,” said John Petrocik, a UCLA political scientist who served as a polling consultant to the Bush presidential campaign. “He doesn’t have a grand agenda.”

Petrocik argued that in the long run the country may be better off because of Bush’s pragmatic bent. “Some presidents arrive in office with a long list of problems to fix,” he said. “But the trouble is that in trying to fix old problems they often create new ones.”

Of course, no one is proposing that Bush be a passive President. He cannot afford to do nothing, if only because that would give his political opponents free rein to dominate national attention.

“He has to make a fundamental decision that he is going to set the policy agenda,” asserted Paul Weyrich, head of the Free Congress Foundation and a well-connected architect of New Right political blueprints. “If Bush allows the agenda to be driven by other political forces, then he will only be a reactive President.”

The trick for Bush will be to dominate policy debate without making proposals that are so expensive that they will worsen the budget deficit or so controversial that they will shatter the sanguine national mood.

“Whether he likes it or not, he’s pretty much in the situation of being a President of symbolism and incrementalism,” said Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman. “The real challenge is, how does he make symbolism look like real action.”

But that task may not be as daunting as it might seem, given the traditional public disposition to see a new President get off to a good start and the absence of any effective opposition.

Here are the recommendations of analysts on both sides of the partisan fence to help Bush get off to a strong start in important areas:

--Congress. “He can’t afford to be a Congress basher like Reagan,” warned Democrat Hickman. But the consensus is that for Bush, bashing won’t be necessary. “The first few months are going to go well for him because the congressional Democrats don’t have an agenda of their own,” Republican consultant John Deardourff said.

Democrats caution that Bush must demonstrate good-will to Congress. “He has to show them that he is not going to play chicken with them on the budget,” said Ted Van Dyk, a longtime Democratic brain truster. But, he added: “The Congress is a sitting duck for any President who is willing to exercise some degree of leadership.”

Moreover, it’s suggested that Bush can make points for himself stylistically on Capitol Hill by being more open and more accessible than Reagan. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see him go up there as often as once a month,” said longtime Bush associate Victor Gold, who collaborated with the new President on his autobiography, “Looking Forward.”

--The Deficit. For the time being Bush has narrowed his field of possible action by his “read-my-lips” pledge. “I don’t think he can credibly walk into the Oval Office and say: ‘I didn’t realize how serious this problem was and so now we have to raise taxes,’ ” said Democratic pollster Ed Lazarus.

Still, Lazarus believes that eventually Bush can get some wiggle room on the issue after a long debate over the deficit, during which “the leaders of his own party line up for a tax hike.”

At such a point, many of those interviewed believe, Bush could appear to go along reluctantly--provided he does not accept a direct boost in income tax rates.

The best bet for enhancing revenue is some kind of user fee. David Keene, a former Nixon White House aide and Bush campaign adviser thinks that the President could even fit a gasoline tax boost under this rubric by redefining it as a user fee--the “users” in this case being motorists.

Analysts doubt that after a decent interval has passed, Bush would face a storm of public criticism for such a move. “A sizable number of people who voted for him for President said they didn’t believe he wouldn’t raise taxes,” said Larry Hansen, vice president of the Roosevelt Center, a nonpartisan public policy think tank, citing public opinion polls.

While he waits for the tax increase issue to ripen, it is suggested that Bush make some highly visible spending cut to demonstrate his determination to trim the deficit. One option, suggested by UCLA’s Petrocik, is to cut back on weapons spending. Among the possibilities: slowing development of the stealth bomber, which costs $500 million a copy and whose effectiveness is now being questioned.

A slowdown on the stealth bomber could save $1 billion to $2 billion over the next two years.

Another alternative suggested by Harrison Hickman is to “make a fairly substantial reduction in the federal work force.” Hickman added that Bush could demonstrate his belief that economy begins at home by trimming the size of his White House staff, a move that would certainly cause no mourning among the citizenry.

--Kinder and Gentler Nation. Bush has a great deal of room to maneuver here, since no one else is sure what he meant by his promise to bring about a “kinder and gentler nation.” The general feeling among those interviewed is that he meant to refer to those social welfare areas where Democrats are normally more active than Republicans.

UCLA’s Petrocik suggested an expanded federal college loan program earmarked for graduate study in science and technology rather than humanities. This would not only demonstrate Bush’s concern with education, Petrocik says, but also would help achieve the solidly Republican objective of helping the United States be more competitive in world markets.

--Foreign Policy. This area offers Bush his richest opportunities for making useful gestures and demonstrations of intent, according to Hess of Brookings. “You have a Soviet leader who wants to deal,” said Hess, who believes that Bush could begin promptly initiating talks on such issues as chemical weapons and nuclear missiles.

More cautiously, Pines of the Heritage Foundation suggested that Bush appoint a senior staff member to deal specifically with the Soviet Union, one whose duties would be to keep a sort of scoreboard on how well the Soviets keep faith with their rhetoric about glasnost and perestroika.