For Bush, Policy--and a Tour

The new Bush White House began life Sunday with prayer, people--several thousand of them trooped through the mansion’s elegant chambers--and a purposeful pitch of the president’s education program, including efforts by top officials to tiptoe around the issue of vouchers.

As the nation’s capital wrapped up a weekend melange of partisan pride and promises of unity, officials of an administration not yet 24 hours old played down their commitment to the school-choice provision that candidate Bush had repeatedly trumpeted during the campaign. Bush hopes to make his education package a signature of his first year in office, and insisting on vouchers could produce deadlock in the evenly divided Congress.

The president’s choice to head the Department of Education, Rod Paige, said vouchers--government payments that parents of students in failing public schools could use to pay private school tuition--are not a priority of the new administration. And Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., announced that Paige “said the right thing.”

Policy maneuvering aside, for the new first family, Sunday was a day of getting acclimated to the new surroundings.

Bush and his wife, Laura, toured the formal rooms of the White House, along with about two dozen people they had met during the presidential campaign--many of them “tax families” sought out by campaign aides to illustrate how financial circumstances could be improved by the candidate’s $1.6-trillion tax cut plan.

Indeed, as the chief White House curator, Betty Monkman, led the tour, Bush craned his neck--just one of the tourists--to study the walls and a high ceiling on the State Floor near the East Room.

“I’m, uh, really looking forward to getting to work,” Bush told reporters at the start of his tour, a declaration he has repeated so frequently in the last week that his delivery has lost all punch. He stopped by the Oval Office at 5:39 p.m. EST Saturday for his first look after the inauguration, but he hasn’t worked there yet.

In much of the business end of the White House, the offices were not yet ready. Painters and other workers plied their trades about the West Wing, redecorating work spaces that had not been tackled in eight years.

An Associated Press reporter, unseen by guards, managed a quick stroll to the Oval Office and discovered a new peach and sage decor. The cherry- and white-striped sofas and royal blue rug of Bill Clinton’s office were nowhere to be seen, replaced by simple cream brocade pieces and an off-white rug. A photograph of Bush taking the oath of office was already framed behind his desk.

Beyond the office, chairs filled corridors, making space for painters to reach the walls; telephones and computers were being reinstalled.

But the long oval table and heavy leather and wood chairs of the Roosevelt Room were in place for a meeting of the senior staff early in the afternoon.

The operations of the White House staff seemed momentarily upended too.

When Card was asked on CBS’ “Face the Nation” about the news that Sen. Phil Gramm, one of Bush’s fellow Texas Republicans, was going to announce that he and Sen. Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, would co-sponsor Bush’s tax cut plan, the new White House chief of staff replied: “I did not know that Sen. Gramm was going to do this.”

Today, his first workday, Bush plans to swear in his White House staff, have lunch with Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and, in the first of what promise to be daily events this week pegged to education, meet with people who have worked in successful reading programs.

“I haven’t seen my full schedule, but it will be a full day,” the president said.

In response to a question, Bush blamed “faulty laws” in California for the state’s energy crisis. However, he said his administration would “analyze exactly where the federal government can help.”

But the California energy crisis is not a topic of the administration’s choosing.

The Bush team is clearly focused on using its first week to create an impression of an administration attacking problems left over from the Clinton years or created by the Clinton administration.

So, the president is likely each day this week to make at least one public statement on education.

How far he can get with vouchers in the program remains uncertain.

When it comes to Congress, education reform and bipartisanship--another buzzword in Bush’s first-year lexicon--do not have a happy history together. Vouchers, testing and support for religious schools are hot issues, bringing politics and emotion into play.

For the first time in 35 years, Congress failed in its most recent session to complete the normally routine reauthorization of the main federal education law, a reflection of the ever-greater political sensitivity of the issue.

As though welcoming Bush to the fray, Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, said: “If he insists on vouchers, you’ve got your first problem.”

And Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, the Democrats’ unsuccessful vice presidential candidate, said on ABC’s “This Week”: “I don’t think we can find a meeting of the minds on the question of so-called vouchers. Certainly, not the way that President Bush is proposing it.”

Even the word vouchers is a red flag.

“We never use that word too much,” Paige said on “This Week.” “Parental choice is our preferred way to approach this issue.”

While Card, Paige and Karl Rove, a senior Bush advisor, hit the Sunday talk shows, the president and first lady attended services at Washington’s National Cathedral. Early in the afternoon, they joined the White House tour before greeting about 3,000 guests who had lined up for a brief White House open tour.

“I need to brush up on the history,” Bush said as his own turn as a tourist began. He said he had already welcomed one tour group, made up of his and his wife’s college friends and others. “It’s exciting to be here.”

Asked how his first night in the White House had passed, he said, “It was OK.”

“I was exhausted from dancing so much. About 10 minutes’ worth of dancing at 10 balls, or nine balls, I guess. It’s pretty tiring,” he said. Actually, he returned to the White House from the inaugural balls at 11:38 p.m. EST, more than an hour earlier than scheduled.

He said that on Sunday morning, he had “coffee with my mother and dad,” searching out the former president and former first lady.

“I had to find the visitors’ room. I found it. They were staying in the Queen’s Bedroom,” he said. That would be on the second floor, down the hall from their old bedroom when they lived in the White House.

The president and his extended clan posed for a family portrait and had brunch together.

His parents and his twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna, accompanied him and the first lady to the church service, at which several Texas clergy, including a rabbi from Houston, participated.

Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, also attended the service, as did many Bush family friends and supporters.

“We are here to join you in your quest for justice and opportunity,” said the Rev. Jane Holmes Dixon, bishop pro tem of Washington.

And after an Inauguration Day in which the ceremonies studiously avoided reference to the peculiarities of the electoral process in 2000, the Rev. Franklin Graham built his sermon around the ability of King David to unite the nation of Israel after reaching power despite great controversy.