On Long Road to Decision, President Searched for a ‘Compromise Route’

As he neared his long-awaited decision on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, the issue’s gravity clearly weighed on George W. Bush. During an Oval Office meeting with four senior aides and two bioethicists, the president interrupted the discussion with an aside.

“Everybody is at me on both sides,” he muttered.

Indeed.

The president’s dramatic announcement Thursday night that he would allow the research funding under limited circumstances capped unrelenting lobbying efforts directed at him once it became clear earlier this year that he would reconsider a campaign pledge to ban the spending.

In recent weeks the lobbying intensified as Bush agonized, Hamlet-like, over the issue, often in public. The delay in his decision only fueled the lobbying: The more he dragged it out, the more frenzied became the attempts to persuade him.

The pressure came from “every imaginable segment of society--from friends to associates to political supporters to academics to scientists to ethicists to moralists,” said former Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.), a Bush friend who also lobbied the president, urging federal funding for the stem cell research despite his own opposition to abortion.

At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II publicly expressed his opposition to such research during Bush’s visit last month. And when the president attended a New York ceremony honoring the late Cardinal John O’Connor, leaders of the Roman Catholic Church swarmed Bush, urging him to ban federal funding.

“He was just descended upon by the church hierarchy,” recalled House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who was with Bush that day.

On Capitol Hill, Hastert was among the few who refrained from publicly pressuring Bush. Others showed no such hesitation.

In the Senate, two Republicans known for their staunch opposition to abortion--Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Bill Frist of Tennessee--argued that the stem cell question is a different issue, urging Bush to find a way to allow some funding for the research.

But Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) declared his opposition to funding. And in the House, the top three GOP leaders under Hastert publicly urged Bush to ban such funding.

Even Thursday, some would not quit. Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) called Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political counselor, in the afternoon to make one last-ditch argument against the funding. Brownback called on his car phone from Colorado, where he was on vacation with his family.

For all the public and private pressures, however, Bush never tipped his hand as he heard the arguments and sought out opinions on his own.

“There was never a hint of where he might go,” marveled New York bioethicist Daniel Callahan, who was one of those at the Oval Office meeting last month where Bush commented on the lobbying from all sides.

As Callahan recalled the session, which lasted for more than an hour, Bush seemed to search for common ground, at one point asking point-blank: “Is there some compromise route here?”

Callahan said he also was struck by Bush’s inquisitiveness. “There was never a hint of any political aspects. He focused very much on the ethical issues.”

In recent weeks, others noticed that same quality. Frist, a surgeon before becoming a senator, was in several meetings with Bush on other subjects when the president abruptly began musing about stem cell research.

For instance, three days after meeting with Callahan, Bush unexpectedly brought up the issue during a meeting on the patients’ bill of rights with a group of medical specialists from across the country.

“I just heard from some bioethicists who gave me a lot to think about,” Bush said, referring to Callahan and the University of Chicago’s Leon Kass, whom the president named Thursday night to head a White House council to further study the issues raised by stem cell research.

Several who met with Bush commented on his grasp of the speed with which science is racing forward, thrusting upon decision makers increasingly troubling ethical and moral dilemmas.

According to aides, Bush reached his final decision Wednesday afternoon, hours after helping put up a wall at a Habitat for Humanity house in nearby Waco and lunching at a Crawford restaurant.

After the meal, Bush convened a senior staff meeting at his ranch. Participants included White House counselor Karen Hughes, who is perhaps Bush’s closest advisor.

The meeting lasted until about 6 p.m. Then the president went alone to his exercise room and worked out with weights, according to aides.

*

Times staff writers Mark Z. Barabak in Los Angeles and Megan Garvey and Janet Hook in Washington contributed to this story.