Reagan-Basher Beilenson Has This President’s Ear : Politics: The liberal West Valley congressman and President Bush regularly discuss intelligence issues. They like each other too.

On a crisp New England autumn afternoon, Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Los Angeles) found himself within the heady confines of the presidential limousine beside the chief executive he has called “a disaster” on key political issues.

As President Bush, Beilenson and a congressional colleague raced past trees cloaked in amber and scarlet on their way to Bush’s speech at Phillips Academy, a prestigious Andover, Mass., private school that all three had attended, Bush commented on the cheering crowds lining the village roads.

“This has nothing to do with me,” Bush said to the lawmakers he had invited to join him. “They just like to see the President.”

Beilenson disagreed. “It’s obvious in the way they’re responding to you that they like you personally, that they like what you and Mrs. Bush stand for and the kind of people you are, the friendly, giving kind of people that you are,” Beilenson recalled telling the President. Beilenson might as well have been expressing his own feelings as well as those of many congressional Democrats, whose amiable relations with the Republican President are a dramatic departure from the enmity that existed between liberal lawmakers and former President Ronald Reagan.

Despite tough talk about making Bush pay for a bare-knuckles presidential campaign and continuing rancor over policy disagreements ranging from abortion to flag-burning to taxes, many Democrats profess a surprising warmth toward the White House as Bush enters his second year as President.

And Bush, for his part, has encouraged friendlier relations by quietly building personal bridges to selected lawmakers, including some of Congress’ staunchest liberals.

“Bush knows more of them and had more friendships and relationships with them than any other modern president,” said Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

Ornstein cited Bush’s close ties to Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, dating back to Bush’s stint as a Texas congressman. He also noted that Bush plays racquetball on Capitol Hill with Rep. G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery (D-Miss.), among others. In addition, Ornstein said, “Bush’s natural instinct is to compromise and move to the center.”

Bush’s relationship with Beilenson is a prime example of the President’s congressional outreach effort and the good will it has engendered.

“I can’t tell you how much more comfortable I am having him there rather than Mr. Reagan, and how much better and easier it is to work with him and his people than it was to try to work with Mr. Reagan and his people,” Beilenson said recently during an interview in his Capitol Hill office.

“This Administration is simply more centrist, more pragmatic, less ideological than were Mr. Reagan and many of the people around him.”

In a chair in the corner sat framed photographs of Beilenson conferring with Bush in the Oval Office. The lawmaker plans to hang them near his desk, something that would have been unthinkable with Reagan.

Beilenson’s flattering assessment is particularly striking because he and Bush disagree on so many major issues. Beilenson opposed Bush 64% of the time in 1989, according to Congressional Quarterly’s analysis of 86 recorded votes on the House floor.

Overall, Congressional Quarterly reported that Bush “fared worse . . . than any other first-year President elected in the post-war era,” prevailing on only 63% of the roll call votes where he had taken a clear position.

A veteran liberal who became chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last year, Beilenson harshly criticizes the President’s domestic policy, especially his refusal to raise taxes to reduce the deficit and address unmet social needs. His characterization of the President as a disaster involves the two issues nearest to Beilenson’s heart: family planning and the government’s sea of red ink.

In this respect, Beilenson reflects the feelings of many congressional Democrats, including Reps. Howard L. Berman (D-Panorama City) and Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles). They maintain that Bush has promised more than he has delivered, particularly on domestic programs for which he has failed to marshal the resources needed to support his rhetoric.

But Beilenson still has nothing but praise for Bush’s personality traits and management style.

Beilenson’s ties to the President--including frank exchanges at the White House on sensitive intelligence matters--were underscored in November when Bush appointed Beilenson co-chairman of a 20-member congressional team to observe the Nicaraguan elections scheduled for Feb. 25. (The Sandinistas, however, have refused to grant visas to the delegation because of tensions with the Administration.)

A senior White House official said Bush has cultivated Beilenson, in part, because of the lawmaker’s influential role as head of the Intelligence Committee. The panel’s work is of particular interest to Bush, who once headed the CIA.

“There is a mutual appreciation” for some of the nation’s intelligence activities, said the aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He noted that Bush “was extremely interested in taking Tony” to Phillips Academy last fall.

“It has been very personable and easygoing,” he said of the Bush-Beilenson relationship, which only dates back a year. “There’s a level of comfortableness there.”

At first glance, Beilenson, 57, would appear an unlikely candidate to be so enthralled with Bush.

Considered a thoughtful and independent-minded, if low-key, lawmaker, his district includes one of the nation’s most liberal areas. The wealthy enclaves of Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Bel-Air--which Beilenson has represented for 27 years as a state legislator and congressman--are home to legions of Democratic loyalists, many of whom work in the entertainment industry.

For eight profoundly frustrating years, Beilenson rarely missed a chance to lambaste Reagan, even though the two had worked together when Reagan was governor of California and Beilenson a state senator. (Reagan signed a major abortion liberalization bill championed by Beilenson in the mid-1960s.) Ironically, Beilensen is now Bel-Air resident Reagan’s congressman.

Yet, despite Beilenson’s substantial policy differences with Bush, his comments about Reagan’s successor are decidedly kinder and gentler. In public appearances and interviews, he is quick to praise Bush personally, even as he points out their political disagreements.

“Folks back home in California sometimes get a little upset about my speaking that way; the Democrats about my saying nice things about a Republican president, and the Republicans because I’m comparing him so favorably to Mr. Reagan,” Beilenson said.

In particular, he said, “Democrats don’t think I’m being partisan enough. People get up and say, ‘You disagree with him on the budget and abortion and gun control, so why are you saying all these nice things about him?’

“I say, ‘Because you’re all grown people and you can differentiate about the things I’ve said.’ ”

Los Angeles Democrats say that Beilenson’s propensity to say nice things about Bush in public doesn’t appear to be a political problem in his 23rd District, which stretches from Pacific Palisades to West Hollywood on the west side and over the Santa Monica Mountains to the more conservative communities of Canoga Park and Reseda in the west San Fernando Valley.

“If anything, to the extent that some Republicans have heard me speak highly of him in some respects, they will like the fact I’m being fair to him,” Beilenson said, particularly in the 60% of the district located in the Valley.

Beilenson’s personal ties to the President date back to a White House reception and tour that George and Barbara Bush gave for the leaders of Senate and House committees and their spouses less than a year ago.

“They’re a delightful couple,” Beilenson recalled. “Mrs. Bush is just as nice in person, maybe nicer, than she comes across in the media.”

Beilenson and other senior congressmen have enjoyed far greater access to the President than they did during the Reagan years.

Beilenson joins the House and Senate leadership, other heads of the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Armed Services committees, and ranking Republican members for periodic meetings with Bush and top Administration officials in the White House Cabinet room.

At these sessions, which generally last about an hour, Bush and Cabinet members such as Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Council Adviser Brent Scowcroft have briefed lawmakers on the President’s meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the Administration’s arms control proposals, hostage situations and other foreign policy matters.

In addition, Beilenson twice has met privately with the President to discuss intelligence matters. The meetings were held at the request of Beilenson and Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), the Intelligence Committee’s ranking Republican. Beilenson declined to divulge the subjects discussed.

“On a personal level, he appreciates the President’s openness and candor and believes that the President and his Administration are not engaged in any deception of the committee and any attempt to withhold information,” said Rep. Matthew F. McHugh (D-N.Y.), a fellow member of the Intelligence Committee and close Beilenson ally.

“That’s very important, especially in the wake of our experience with former CIA Director Casey and the Reagan people on the Iran-Contra, where we were lied to and people engaged in deception over an extended period of time.”

Beilenson is not among those who fault Bush for his secrecy in dispatching top aides to China in the wake of the massacre at Tian An Men Square. Although he opposes reaching out to the Chinese leadership after the killing of pro-democracy protesters, Beilenson said, “I don’t find it unhealthy that a modest amount of secrecy is used by the President.”

It appears that the friendship between Bush and Beilenson has had an impact on executive policy, albeit within the often closely held realm of intelligence matters.

Rep. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), an Intelligence Committee member, credits Beilenson with persuading Bush to abandon plans to covertly fund the opposition to the Sandinistas in the Nicaraguan elections.

Beilenson, a skeptic about covert operations generally, met with Secretary of State Baker and Bernard Aronson, undersecretary for Latin American Affairs, to argue against covert aid. Others suggest his voice was only one of many taking this position; the Senate Intelligence Committee leadership also weighed in against this approach.

In general, the senior White House aide said, Beilenson has not been critical of the President and in the monthly meetings, he added, the lawmaker “has been fairly supportive.” Some Democratic partisans suggest that Beilenson has not been tough enough on the Administration, and the committee under his leadership has not been as aggressive as its Senate counterpart.

But other members of the panel, including McHugh, insist Beilenson has vigilantly opposed covert actions, which are generally the most controversial matters in the committee.

“Tony still retains an independence of judgment,” agreed a Republican member of the intelligence panel who asked not to be named. Beilenson’s relationship with Bush does “not influence Tony’s instincts, which are against covert activities for the most part,” he said.

Panama has been a particular source of discord. Beilenson was one of only a few lawmakers who opposed the December invasion as an unjustified use of American force. And previously, Beilenson and McHugh were said to have sent Bush a letter opposing a covert action plan disclosed in November to permit the CIA to spend up to $3 million recruiting Panamanian military officers and exiles to overthrow former strongman Manuel A. Noriega.

Beilenson also has publicly urged the Administration to end aid to the Afghan rebels.

But, whatever their specific policy differences, the veteran lawmaker maintains the most reassuring thing about George Bush is that he is not Ronald Reagan.

“I used to see a lot of him when he was governor,” Beilenson said of the retired President. “You were never sure that your having had a chance to talk to him made the slightest bit of difference.

“It’s pretty obvious Bush is another alert human being who’s talking with you and argues with you and gives his own position. At least you know you’re having some real input, whether or not what you’re suggesting is accepted.”

Nevertheless, he said, the honeymoon may be ending unless Bush confronts the problems caused by the nation’s budget deficit. “I like him,” Beilenson said. “But I’m getting impatient.”

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.