Bush’s Vow to Unite Encounters a Great Divide

George W. Bush campaigned for the presidency promising to be “a uniter, not a divider.” Now, as president-elect, Bush must try to keep that promise under more difficult circumstances than anyone imagined.

The Texas governor will enter the White House with an uncertain mandate. He came in second in the nation’s popular vote and won the state-by-state electoral vote only after 36 days of legal wrangling. Polls show that most Americans consider Bush the legitimate president and will probably grant him the usual “honeymoon,” but the new chief executive knows he has little leeway for political error.

Bush sought to send a message of soothing bipartisan conciliation in his first statement as president-elect.

“I am optimistic that we can change the tone in Washington, D.C.,” Bush said. “I believe things happen for a reason, and I hope the long wait of the last five weeks will heighten a desire to move beyond the bitterness and partisanship of the recent past.”

Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said the president-elect “wants to seize the moment, set the right tone, reach out to Democrats and Republicans and get people working together.”

But it won’t be easy. “The governor is coming in with his eyes wide open. He’s been to Washington before,” Fleischer said. “He’s hoping to change it, but he knows what it’s like.”

Democrats in Congress, fresh from the losing battle to capture Florida’s electoral votes for Vice President Al Gore, say they’ll give Bush a chance to be bipartisan--but warn that they want to be met halfway.

“We’re happy to do business, but it has to be a compromise,” said Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate Democratic whip. “If he comes in with both guns blazing, he’ll leave in about 30 hours with no ammunition.”

“I think we’ll need a unifier more than ever before,” said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the Senate majority leader. “A lot of Democrats will try to help him in that; some will say, ‘We’ll never accept it,’ I guess. But he will have to work extra hard to get some things done for the country.”

Peacemaking Efforts Already Underway

The president-elect already is launching a charm offensive to try to bind up the nation’s wounds, aides say. It began even before his conciliatory victory statement with the appointment of Andrew Card--a moderate Republican with friends in both parties--as White House chief of staff, and will include a rapid round of meetings with President Clinton and Democratic congressional leaders; the appointment of at least one Democrat to a Cabinet position; and a search for early legislative actions that can win support from both sides of the aisle.

Even in a deeply divisive campaign, Bush said, “there was remarkable consensus about the important issues before us: excellent schools, retirement and health security, tax relief, a strong military, a more civil society. We have discussed our differences; now it is time to find common ground and build consensus to make America a beacon of opportunity in the 21st century.”

“We want to create a tone that will dissuade both sides from continuing the warfare,” one Bush advisor said.

Bush and his aides like to point to his six years as governor of Texas as a model for his coming presidency.

In the Texas Capitol and later as a presidential candidate, Bush followed three basic rules: He married conservative principles to political flexibility. He chose a few top priorities and stuck to them. And he combined a seemingly laid-back style with iron organizational discipline.

That approach brought Bush success in Texas politics, where bipartisan compromise is a way of life. But now he faces a tougher challenge: transplanting his style from deal-friendly Austin, Texas, to the stonier, more partisan soil of Washington.

If the president-elect follows the path he blazed in Texas, he will reach out quickly to both Republicans and Democrats in the closely divided Congress. (In Texas, Bush set out to visit all 181 members of the Legislature in his first two months--and nearly succeeded.)

He will choose three or four priorities from among his campaign promises, and focus on getting something--anything--done on each of them. Aides are betting he’ll start with education, prescription drug benefits for the elderly and initial steps toward a process to reform the Social Security system. Spokesman Fleischer says Bush still plans to propose the big, across-the-board tax cut that was a cornerstone of his campaign, but adds that the president-elect is willing to negotiate with Democrats over the details.

Bush will clash once or twice with conservative leaders of his own party, like House Republican Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas), who may not always be happy with his willingness to compromise. “He doesn’t have to worry about that; it will happen on its own,” said former Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.).

And Bush will go jogging every afternoon if his schedule permits, for three or four miles a day. Aides say he’s in much better form on days when he’s had his exercise.

Bush, 54, will enter the White House at the peak of a meteoric political career. He has held only one public office, his current job as governor. (He was elected in 1994 and reelected in 1998).

But that slim official resume may be deceiving. The son and grandson of Republican grandees, Bush has been a political animal since his boyhood. As early as 1963, at the age of 17, he confided to a friend that his father, George H.W. Bush, intended to run for president--and that he, the first son, hoped “to do just like his dad,” according to biographer Bill Minutaglio.

Before the younger Bush won public office, his career took some long detours: political work on Republican campaigns, a failed 1978 run for a House seat in Texas, a decade running a sputtering oil company, and high-profile success as managing partner of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise. In the middle, in 1986, came a life-changing decision: a turn to evangelical Christianity--and away from alcohol.

But all along, the idea of politics was there with more deliberation and strategy than Bush’s insouciant manner betrayed. He attached himself to his father’s budding presidential campaign in 1986, apprenticed himself to hard-nosed strategist Lee Atwater and became the Bush family’s liaison to Christian conservative groups. As a loyalty enforcer in the Bush White House, he took on the difficult task of firing his father’s ineffective chief of staff, John H. Sununu, in 1991.

Associates say the younger Bush learned three lessons from those years, especially from his father’s stinging defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton in 1992. One was to stake out clear priorities on domestic issues close to voters’ hearts. The second was to stick to those priorities, and resist being thrown off track by external events. The third was to take advantage of political momentum and not rest on your laurels, as the elder Bush appeared to do after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

“He’s a much better politician than his dad,” said a leading Republican who has worked closely with both Bushes. “Part of it is that he knows you have to use your political capital or you’ll lose it. . . . Part of it is his feel for the political angles of every issue--not just electoral politics, coalition-building politics.”

Republican state Sen. Teel Bivins, a Bush ally in the Texas Legislature, put it more simply: “Cobblers’ sons make the best shoes.”

Bush applied his political lessons promptly. When he decided to run against Texas’ formidable Democratic Gov. Ann Richards in 1994, he had done enough spadework to become the GOP’s presumptive challenger. With a team of aides that has remained largely intact, Bush ran what Texas politicians consider a nearly flawless campaign and turned a surprised Richards out of the statehouse with 53% of the vote.

In that 1994 campaign, Bush hammered at four issues: education, welfare reform, crime and tort reform. In his first term as governor, he focused almost solely on those four, and produced results on each.

“What the press indicates as disinterest in issues, I see as incredible political discipline,” Bivins said. “He’s said, oftentimes, he doesn’t want to waste political capital on issues that he doesn’t believe are the top priorities.”

In 1997, Bush tried to move beyond his initial mandate with an ambitious plan to reform his state’s antiquated tax system. But lobbyists blocked his initial bill, forcing Bush to retreat to a more modest property tax rebate. In the end, the governor settled for half a loaf--and claimed it as a victory.

“It’s been written up as a failure, but I think he views it as a successful use of political capital,” Bivins said. “He ended up with the largest tax cut in state history.”

Bush also demonstrated his willingness to compromise on another campaign promise: a law requiring that parents be notified if a minor sought an abortion.

When he couldn’t get the fractious state Legislature to agree on a bill, he turned to a powerful moderate Democrat for help and told him he’d back any bill that could pass.

“He had very simple criteria: He wanted a bill that included parental notification and could withstand a constitutional challenge,” said the lawmaker, Rep. Steve Wolens. “He wasn’t interested in the details.”

Anti-abortion conservatives opposed Wolens’ bill as too soft. Abortion rights supporters condemned it as too harsh. But Bush stuck with the Democratic committee chairman, and the Legislature handed both men a victory.

“He sets a limited goal and he reaches it and claims success,” Wolens said. “He has always been practical, never dogmatic.”

In 1998, Bush swept to reelection with 68% of the vote, and almost instantly became the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

Now, as president-elect, Bush faces two big tasks: choosing a White House staff and sorting out his own priorities.

Staff choices are important for any president. For Bush, who likes to set broad goals and let his aides fill in the blanks, they may be even more critical.

Wolens, who in the past has been in on some of the governor’s deliberations, described his decision-making process this way: “He’ll bring three or four or five aides in there, and they argue with each other. Bush sits back and he listens. And then he starts picking a little bit, and he will be sometimes a buzzard about chewing at an issue and making somebody go back and get some information. And he will ultimately make up his mind.”

As for priorities, some of Bush’s own advisors acknowledge the difficulties. The long presidential campaign, with its demands for a position on every national issue, required the nominee to offer many more than four targets.

“It’s a big list; I don’t know what comes first,” said Stephen Goldsmith, a former mayor of Indianapolis who has been a key advisor to Bush. “Clearly prescription drugs, tax cuts, Social Security and defense. Even that’s a pretty sizable handful of issues.”

Another advisor, Robert B. Zoellick, offered a similar list at a Washington conference earlier this year: education, Social Security, tax cuts, prescription drugs and defense spending.

Zoellick suggested two areas where Bush will negotiate with Congress and might accept, at least initially, less than he asked for during the campaign. One is his big tax cut, estimated at $1.3 trillion over 10 years. In a first phase, Zoellick and other aides have said, Bush may seek a more modest tax cut, still broad-based but aimed primarily at lower-income groups. A second is Medicare, where Bush proposed a sweeping reform but may not make it one of his first-year goals.

On Social Security and Medicare, however, Bush already has reached out--characteristically--to at least one of the powerful Democrats whose help he will need.

“Every time he goes to Louisiana, he mentions my name five times--Johnny Breaux this, Johnny Breaux that,” laughed Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), a leader of the centrist “Blue Dog” Democrats who have supported major Social Security and Medicare reform. “I don’t know where the ‘Johnny’ came from; it must be some kind of Yale thing. But on Medicare and Social Security, he’s pretty much where we are.”