Lawmakers Welcome Attention : Bush’s Personal Touches Promote Bipartisan Spirit

It was a scene to conjure with--Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, the baronial chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, bouncing on the Lincoln bed in the upper reaches of the White House with his wife, Peatsy, while President Bush snapped their picture.

His honeymoon with Congress may be short-lived, but at least for now, George Bush’s skillful use of such personal touches--coupled with a barrage of disarming rhetoric--has some of the most powerful congressional Democrats all but eating out of his hand. And the capital is caught up in a new spirit of bipartisanship not seen for a decade or more.

“The personal touch makes a real difference,” said Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “It doesn’t change folks’ positions, but it makes them willing to sit down and talk with an open mind.”

Massachusetts’ Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a leader of the Democrats’ liberal wing, said Bush “is building up respect for a willingness to listen and that goes a long way. We have our differences, but he is helping us try to find middle ground.”

Few expect the new bipartisanship to last indefinitely or eliminate the all-too-real disagreements that exist on critical national issues. Some wonder whether it can even survive past next Thursday, when Bush lays out his policy agenda and the details of his position on the federal budget before a joint session of Congress.

But after 12 years of often-rocky relations with the Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter administrations, congressional leaders appear to welcome the possibility of less confrontational dealings with the executive branch.

In particular, Democrats said they are relieved to be dealing with a President who shows interest in them and their work and understands Congress as an institution. Bush’s background as a former Texas congressman is seen as giving him a degree of understanding and respect for the role of Congress that many of his predecessors lacked.

The new atmosphere on Capitol Hill “is for real,” said Nunn, “because we’ve got somebody in the White House now who’s listening to people in Congress and that makes a difference.”

Demonstrates Interest

Calling Bush’s approach “beyond bipartisanship,” Kennedy said the President “has demonstrated an accessibility and an interest in Congress and an understanding of it as an institution that we haven’t seen in a long time--at least since President Ford.”

Gerald R. Ford had been a member of Congress, of course, and Carter and Reagan are, as Kennedy pointed out, “not of Congress.”

Although Bush has sometimes portrayed his appeals for bipartisanship as a return to traditional values, bipartisanship as “a big idea” in American politics did not take hold until President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s appeals to Congress for cooperation during the Great Depression of the 1930s, according to James David Barber, a presidential scholar at Duke University.

The economic crisis of the Depression was so severe and Roosevelt so persuasive, Barber said, that House members shouted, “vote, vote” and quickly passed the economic measures Roosevelt sent to Capitol Hill. Otherwise, bipartisanship has seldom taken hold on domestic issues.

Goal Seldom Realized

It prevailed in foreign affairs during World War II and afterward during much of Harry S. Truman’s second Administration, but even in the sensitive area of foreign affairs bipartisanship has been a goal presidents have more often expressed than fully realized.

On the foreign relations front, however, Bush’s call for bipartisanship may already be paying some concrete dividends. While declining to reveal specifics, Nunn said the President’s private sessions with Democratic senators has brought the Administration a step closer to achieving a consensus on the thorny problem of South Africa’s system of apartheid.

House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas has spoken of “earnestly” sharing Bush’s goal of a bipartisan foreign policy and has announced several initiatives to show “good faith” on the Democrats’ part. And he has expressed optimism about reaching a bipartisan consensus on how to end the bloody conflict in Nicaragua, which was the source of bitterly partisan fights during the eight-year Reagan presidency.

The new atmosphere was reflected at a dinner party hosted by Kennedy at his spacious home in nearby Maclean, Va., several nights ago.

Attended by leaders of both parties, the dinner was a tribute to a man who personifies bipartisanship: Max M. Kampelman, a longtime Democrat who is retiring after serving as the Reagan Administration’s chief arms negotiator.

Among the guests: Vice President Dan Quayle, Secretary of State James A. Baker III, Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell of Maine and Senate Democratic Whip Alan Cranston of California.

Baker Consults Cranston

At one point during the party, Baker pulled Cranston aside to assure him that the Administration agreed with his strong statements denouncing right-wing death squads in El Salvador and the recurrence of violence against leftist opposition leaders there.

Baker told Cranston, who was obviously pleased at being consulted, that Vice President Quayle, who was leaving the next morning on a trip to Latin America, would carry “a very strong message” about the violence to military leaders in El Salvador.

At the dinner, Kennedy, Cranston and other Democratic leaders raved about the red-carpet treatment Bush had rolled out at the White House for officials of both parties at a reception earlier in the evening.

The guided tour of the White House for leaders of both parties and their wives, conducted by Bush and his wife, Barbara, gave a grateful Cranston the first look he had had of upstairs at the White House in his 20 years in Washington.

For an equally grateful Kennedy, it was his first view of the residential quarters since his brother John was President in 1963.

Bush, speaking with business leaders invited to the White House for lunch Friday, pointed out that he is “the product of Congress in some ways” and said he realizes he will have differences with Congress when he outlines his proposals on Thursday.

‘Sending Confusing Signals’

But he said he is serious about consulting and listening to Congress because “it’ll be good for domestic policy, and I’m absolutely convinced that it is vital for foreign policy because we’ve been sending confusing signals around the world of two major branches of government that can’t ever quite get together on something important.”

While wooing Democrats, Bush also has felt compelled to stroke the feathers of right-wing members of his own party in the House who have served notice they will not support the President on policies that veer from conservative philosophy.

Bush will “remain true to conservative ideas,” insisted Frederick D. McClure, the President’s assistant for congressional liaison, while also continuing to reach out to “all spectrums” on Capitol Hill.

McClure conceded that Bush’s proposals on Thursday may be a serious test for his bipartisanship campaign, but added: “I wouldn’t say all hell’s going to break loose because while he’s going to make some tough choices, he’s going to try to keep his approach as bipartisan as he can.”

Several senators contrasted Bush’s approach to Congress with that of Carter and Reagan, who they felt never fully understood or appreciated the institution.

Carter, who had fought constantly with the Legislature when he served as governor of Georgia, ran into difficulty from the outset of his presidency, fulfilling a prophecy of a longtime aide who expressed concern Carter would treat Congress like it was the Georgia Legislature and Congress would treat him like he was Georgia’s governor.

Although Reagan parlayed his popularity with voters into congressional support for his economics program early in his first term, he and Congress were constantly at loggerheads in the second term. In the first term, Reagan charmed key members of Congress with a great deal of personal attention, but when things turned sour in the second term he began to ignore them and frequently attacked Congress on domestic and foreign issues.

Bush does not mind giving credit to Congress for the vital role it plays in government, according to several senators. “I think it was Woodrow Wilson,” said Kennedy, “who said, ‘There’s no end to what can be achieved in this city if one is willing to give credit to others.’ Bush understands that.”

Not all Democratic leaders are so sanguine about Bush’s overtures to Congress. Hollings expressed concern that Democrats are “so intoxicated with this honeymoon that Bush may believe he can finesse the budget situation for another four years the way Ronald Reagan did for eight years.”

Talk of Tour

Hollings and his wife enjoyed the White House tour. At Kennedy’s dinner party they talked enthusiastically of how Bush snapped their photo as they bounced on the bed where Abraham Lincoln slept.

But the senator said the way he sees it, “this stroking by Bush is just to get us to go along with this charade of saying no new taxes when we know we have to have new revenue to solve our budget problems.”

And Senate Majority Leader Mitchell insisted Congress will not “be lulled by the current relations and atmosphere.”

“The atmosphere will be better throughout the Bush term because he’s a different person from Reagan and much more likely to sustain a positive relationship with the Congress,” Mitchell said, “although there will certainly be substantial differences on specific issues.”