Bush to Set Tone With His First Pick: Powell

President-elect George W. Bush plans to announce today his first appointment: Colin L. Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as secretary of State.

Bush plans to make official the long-rumored announcement at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, where he will formally introduce Powell. Upon Senate confirmation, the retired general would become the first black American to hold the nation’s top foreign policy post.

The Powell announcement is expected to be quickly followed by others, including some that Bush plans to announce Sunday in Texas before he leaves for a two-day visit to Washington, aides said.

During a brief question-and-answer session with reporters Friday at the Governor’s Mansion after lunch with Sen. John B. Breaux (D-La.), Bush would not confirm the Powell appointment. But he said coyly, “I think America will be pleased.”

Latinos likely were pleased by word of another appointment leaked Friday. Bush reportedly has chosen Texas Supreme Court Justice Alberto Gonzales as his White House counsel. Gonzales, a Harvard-educated lawyer, was Bush’s top legal advisor in his first term as governor and was named later by the governor to the state Supreme Court.

In the wake of the closest presidential election in a century and the only one ever contested in the courts, Bush on Friday continued his high-profile outreach effort to Democrats.

The first elected Democratic official to visit with Bush since he became president-elect was Breaux, a centrist widely seen as a key power broker in the next Senate, which will be divided 50-50 along party lines.

The three-term senator from Louisiana has been widely rumored as a candidate for a Cabinet post, but both men indicated after lunch that Breaux would remain in the Senate.

Asking for Advice on the Agenda

Bush’s remarks hinted that he and Breaux had discussed the possibility of putting off Medicare reform. Breaux has said recently that the issue may be too divisive to take up in the current political climate.

“One of the things I intend to do is to work with members of both parties, to discuss not only the agenda but the timing of the agenda,” he said.

“So the discussion about Medicare, for example, was . . . not only about the particulars . . . but he gave me a good sense of his view of the timing on how we ought to approach the issue.”

Bush also spoke of the emotions he felt Wednesday night when he realized that he would become the nation’s 43rd commander in chief.

“I didn’t sleep that well that night,” he said, musing that he wished he could “blame the cats.” But, he said, it was more likely that he was excited about building a new government.

Bush is expected soon to announce the appointment of former Stanford University Provost Condoleezza Rice, a Russia expert who also served in his father’s White House, as national security advisor. Rice already is participating in Bush’s daily intelligence briefings here.

Rice is an African American. And Bush, with three minorities among his first appointments, appeared to be sending a powerful signal that he wants to reach out to groups that voted for Vice President Al Gore on Nov. 7.

As a further effort to cultivate bipartisan goodwill, Bush will meet with congressional leaders of both parties, as well as with President Clinton and the vice president, when he visits Washington next week.

Bush also intends to conduct job interviews for other positions in the White House and the Cabinet during the visit.

In suburban Virginia, meanwhile, Michigan Gov. John Engler, another Republican who has been mentioned as a possible Cabinet member, showed up at Bush’s transition headquarters. Both Engler and Bush aides cautioned against reading too much into his visit, however.

“Being governor of Michigan is a terrific job. . . . I haven’t been looking for something [else],” Engler told reporters.

Briefing reporters at the transition headquarters later, spokesman Ari Fleischer said Vice President-elect Dick Cheney was seeking “advice” from Engler and other leading Republicans.

Fleischer and other Bush aides in Austin said that the transition team has begun crafting a legislative agenda that Bush can present to Congress. Priorities are improving public education and giving seniors prescription drug coverage.

The legislative proposals are to be prepared with the help of small cadres of policy experts from the public and private sectors whom the Bush team is recruiting now, they said.

Josh Bolten, Bush’s policy director during the campaign, will oversee the policy coordination groups, Fleischer said.

The transition team also is dealing with an avalanche of resumes from job seekers. As of midnight Thursday, more than 25,000 resumes for about 7,000 jobs had arrived, Fleischer said.

The 75 full-time transition staff members have been busy sorting through the resumes and helping prospective nominees prepare the voluminous paperwork needed to complete several layers of government background checks.

The transition staff has yet to begin working with top Clinton administration budget officials so that the Bush team can work on the president-elect’s first budget, which is due to be submitted to Congress on Feb. 6, Fleischer said.

He said that those conversations cannot begin until lawyers for the transition draw up and have signed “memorandums of understanding” required before the administration can share sensitive data with the president-elect’s team.

In his remarks in Austin, Bush, sitting before a blazing fire, also touted his campaign proposals for a $1.3-trillion tax cut. He and Cheney have called attention to signs of a softening economy in recent days as reason for the cut.

“I look forward to going to Washington to make the case that the plan that the people heard in America is the plan that I hope to get passed,” Bush said. “At any rate, I’m optimistic to know that tax relief discussion is taking place, that people do recognize the need for tax relief.”

Bush Sticks With Tax Cut Proposal

Asked about public comments earlier this week by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) that Bush’s tax cut proposal may be too big a bite for Congress to swallow, Bush reiterated his commitment to the 10-year, across-the-board plan.

He said that he found it “positive” that Hastert “was recognizing that we need some tax relief.”

The president-elect also expressed concern about the cost of energy. “I think all of us ought to be concerned about high energy prices. We’re seeing what the high price of natural gas is doing on the West Coast.”

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Times staff writers Marlene Cimons, Esther Schrader and Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this story.

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Names in Play for Posts in Bush’s Administration

Washington is abuzz with speculation on who President-elect George W. Bush will tap to fill out his administration. Andrew H. Card Jr. already has been chosen as Bush’s chief of staff. Here are some of the names in play for Cabinet and White House posts:

* State: Retired Gen. Colin L. Powell.

* Defense: Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.); Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Armitage, Steve Hadley, aides when Vice President-elect Dick Cheney was Defense secretary; Republican Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas J. Ridge; Norm Augenstein of Lockheed Martin Corp.

* Treasury: John M. Hennessy, former CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston Inc.; Donald B. Marron, chairman of PaineWebber Inc.; Walter V. Shipley, retired chairman of Chase Manhattan Corp.; William McDonough, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank; Lawrence B. Lindsey, former governor of the Federal Reserve.

* Attorney general: Montana Republican Gov. Marc Racicot; Oklahoma Republican Gov. Frank Keating; Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.); Virginia Republican Gov. James S. Gilmore; former Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.); Harriet Miers, Bush’s personal attorney; FBI Director Louis J. Freeh.

* National security advisor: Condoleezza Rice, Stanford University scholar and Bush foreign policy advisor.

* Budget director: Christopher C. DeMuth, president of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank; John F. Cogan, Stanford economist; Timothy Muris, George Mason University law professor; G. William Hoagland, Senate Budget Committee staff director.

* Health and Human Services: Wisconsin Republican Gov. Tommy G. Thompson; William Roper, dean of the school of public health at the University of North Carolina; Gail R. Wilensky, former administrator of the federal Health Care Financing Administration; Rep. Rick Lazio (R-N.Y.).

* Energy: Former Sen. Bennett Johnson (D-La).; Tony Garza, Texas railroad commissioner; Alaska Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles; Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Chairman John M. Quain.

* U.S. trade representative: Robert Zoellick, Bush foreign policy advisor.

* Education: Sandy Kress, Bush education advisor and former Dallas Democratic Party chairman; former New Jersey Democratic Gov. Thomas Kean; Roderick Paige, Houston school superintendent; Lisa Graham Keegan, Arizona education superintendent; former Rep. William Gray (D-Pa.); Eugene W. Hickock, Pennsylvania education secretary; Lynne Cheney, Education secretary under President Bush and wife of the vice president-elect; former Rep. Floyd Flake (D-N.Y.).

* Labor: Rep. James M. Talent (R-Mo.); Linda Chavez, former Reagan administration civil rights commissioner; Rep. Jennifer R. Dunn (R-Wash); New Jersey Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.

* Commerce: Bush campaign finance director Donald Evans; Garza; California venture capitalist Floyd Kvamme; Netscape founder Jim Barksdale; Dunn.

* Agriculture: Texas Secretary of Agriculture Susan Combs; Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.); former California Secretary of Agriculture Anne Veneman.

* Interior: Racicot; Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colorado); Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.).

* Transportation: David M. Laney, Texas Transportation Commission chairman; Texas House Speaker Pete Laney (no relation to David Laney); Elaine L. Chao, former deputy Transportation secretary under President Bush; Kansas Republican Gov. Bill Graves.

* Environmental Protection Agency: James M. Seif, Pennsylvania Environmental Protection secretary; David Struhs, Florida Department of Environmental Protection secretary; DeMuth; Whitman.

* Housing and Urban Development: Former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith; Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas); Garza.

* Veterans Affairs: Former Deputy VA Secretary Anthony Prinicipi; Florida VA Director Robin Higgins.

* White House counsel: Alberto Gonzales, Bush’s top legal advisor during his first term as governor.

* White House domestic policy advisor: Bush campaign policy director Josh Bolten; Goldsmith.

* White House political affairs director: Chief campaign strategist Karl Rove; Bush campaign finance director Jack Oliver.

* CIA director: CIA Director George J. Tenet.

* FCC chairman: Michael Powell, member of the Federal Communications Commission and son of Colin Powell.

* Secretary of Navy: Rep. Tillie K. Fowler (R-Fla.); Roger Staubach, former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.

* U.N. Ambassador: Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (R-Ind.); Whitman.