Harsh White House Tactics Cited in Defeat of Accord : Reaction: Lawmakers blame Sununu and Darman for fueling resentment that helped sink the measure.

Gasoline taxes and Medicare cuts may have dominated the debate when the House took up the bipartisan budget accord on Friday, but back in the cloakrooms, lawmakers are citing two other key reasons for the measure’s defeat:

Richard G. Darman and John H. Sununu.

The Bush Administration’s budget director and the White House chief of staff, never noted for their congeniality inside the White House, appear to have angered lawmakers with their hardball tactics--and set off a backfire that helped bring the accord down.

Amid the recriminations in the wake of the budget deal’s collapse, there is a widespread feeling on Capitol Hill that the President “has not been well-served” by Darman and Sununu--particularly in the final hours of the budget debate.

Even Republicans were bristling Saturday. Rep. Bud Shuster (R-Pa.) rasped that the pair were “being referred to up here as Haldeman and Ehrlichman”--a reference to President Richard M. Nixon’s two top aides, H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, who drew similar reactions.

Indeed, when House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) chastised so-called “unelected officials” in a speech during the budget debate on the House floor Thursday night--a clear reference to Darman and Sununu--he received a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle.

Administration insiders sought Saturday to play down the reported frictions. A senior White House official, who has not always seen eye-to-eye with Sununu, conspicuously avoided even discussing the issue Saturday. “I’m not going to dump on him,” the official said.

And House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), appearing on the Evans and Novak television program Saturday, was equally circumspect. “I don’t have any problems in my personal relations with Mr. Darman, Gov. Sununu, and certainly not with the President,” he said.

“I’ve tried to work with them and I think they’ve been sincere when they try to work with me,” Foley said. “So, if anyone else has difficulties on a personal basis, they’re going to have to express them--I don’t.”

Sununu and Darman could not be reached for comment. A senior White House official, defending the chief of staff, said: “It’s become very vogue in Washington to become part of the Sununu lore. So people on occasion are taking an incident and embellishing it in order to become legend. A lot of that has gone on this past week.”

But the congressional reactions to them appear to track with incidents often reported by officials inside the Administration, where there are frequent complaints that the two can be haughty and condescending in their dealings with colleagues in other parts of the government.

The lawmakers’ complaints abound:

--Earlier in the week, Sununu alienated key GOP congressional members by threatening that if they did not support the President, then Bush would retaliate by visiting their districts during the congressional campaign, looking them in the eye and asking why they had not supported him.

“Sununu not only made (voting for the budget package) a point of loyalty to the President, but patriotism and (Operation) Desert Shield,” an angry Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) complained later.

--During negotiations over what elements should be added to the budget package, Sununu kept insisting that Congress freeze Social Security benefit levels--a move that was beyond what any of the lawmakers wanted to accept. He “had his own agenda,” one onlooker said.

--Democrats say Sununu and Darman torpedoed the one deal that House leaders thought might have heightened the “equity” in the package--a tradeoff involving capital gains. The two men supported the plan in principle, then later refused to approve specific numbers.

--Several lawmakers said they particularly resented the haughtiness and arrogance with which the Bush team negotiated--particularly since neither man had ever run for federal office, a distinction that congressmen regard as especially important.

How all this will affect the two current White House officials remains to be seen, but it’s clear that--for the foreseeable future--their effectiveness on Capitol Hill has been blunted. “Darman was just too clever by half,” a senior government strategist observed.

Times staff writers Paul Houston, Tom Redburn and James Gerstenzang contributed to this story.