Bush Is Making His Mark by Not Grabbing Headlines

With the Senate consumed by its historic debate on campaign finance reform this week, President Bush has spent most of his time talking about energy and taxes--two of his long-standing priorities.

It’s a signature of his presidency: He focuses single-mindedly, almost relentlessly, on a handful of priorities, even when other issues are dominating Washington and the headlines. Indeed, to an almost unprecedented degree, this White House has shown that it is willing to trade a lighter public presence for a tighter legislative focus.

The result is that Bush may be the first “A4” president: entirely comfortable repeating familiar arguments for his proposals, even if that means appearing on an inside page of the newspaper’s front section, such as Page A4, that attracts far less attention than Page 1.

This determination to narrow the agenda is shaping the administration’s interaction not only with the public but with Congress as well. By devoting almost all his lobbying energy toward his top goals--principally his tax, budget and education plans--Bush is allowing lawmakers enormous leeway to resolve other issues.

To some analysts, Bush’s willingness to accept a lower profile as the price for a disciplined message carries a substantial risk: the possibility he will fail to establish deep connections with voters that could sustain him in bad times.

“The Bush people think that he doesn’t need to be a dominant public figure at this moment,” said Michael Waldman, the chief speech writer for President Clinton. “Maybe they are right, but I suspect they may look back on this time as a lost opportunity for him to assert his leadership profile.”

Bush is following a pattern he set as governor of Texas, where he unwaveringly concentrated on a limited list of policy initiatives. In his first gubernatorial term, Bush was so famous for highlighting just four priorities that he once joked to the state Legislature that he was adding a fifth: Pass the first four.

“He is of the philosophy that you lower the degree of difficulty and you increase the chances of success if you sharpen the focus,” said Bruce Buchanan, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

This approach diverges sharply from Clinton’s. Waldman noted that Clinton came to believe that the president’s influence depends on interjecting himself into virtually all high-profile controversies.

Waldman, in a recent book drawn from his White House experience, argued that, in the cacophony of the modern 24-hour cable and Internet news world, the president faces more competition for the public’s attention than ever. In that environment, Waldman concluded, the only way for the White House to maintain the traditional power of the “bully pulpit” and promote the president’s ideas was to “almost become a 24-hour cable network itself, constantly putting the president out there, constantly trying to advance his agenda by making news.”

But so far, Waldman said, the Bush team has rejected that strategy. Rather than trying to generate news, Bush usually repeats a few central arguments, often in appearances in the states of legislators he considers swing votes on his plans. And rather than seizing on events in the headlines to highlight his ideas, Bush seems to view unexpected controversies almost as a distraction.

In an assessment difficult to imagine from almost any contemporary administration, one senior Bush advisor even said that generating more headlines might actually make it more difficult for the president to achieve his goals.

“The president is committed to seeing that certain things are accomplished, and the way you do that is by working within the system and not by generating the most press,” said the advisor, who asked to remain anonymous while discussing White House strategy. “Certain times the things you need to generate press--i.e., introduce something new or create controversy--are counterproductive for your main goal.”

Two examples highlight the gulf between the Clinton and Bush visions of how a president exercises power.

The first is the way the two men have approached one of the president’s most reliable communication tools: his weekly national radio address. Over time, Clinton came to see the broadcast as an opportunity to dominate the headlines in typically news-starved Sunday newspapers; he routinely used the sessions to announce new policy initiatives, which ranged from substantial to microscopic.

Bush, by contrast, has devoted all or part of each of his seven radio broadcasts to selling his tax and budget plan.

The second example captures the same difference. After the shooting at Columbine High School in 1999 in Colorado, Clinton quickly advanced an agenda that included virtually every idea of the left and the right for responding to such attacks--from gun control to restrictions on the marketing of violent entertainment to young people.

By comparison, after the school shooting at Santana High School earlier this month in Santee, Calif., Bush offered only a brief comment about the responsibility of parents before turning back to his planned message of the day: taxes and Medicare reform. Though Bush has already proposed several initiatives to improve school safety, the White House chose not to discuss them in the shooting’s aftermath.

In part, advisors say, that decision reflected Bush’s distaste for seeming to exploit a tragedy to advance his agenda. But, some close to the White House acknowledge, it also reflected his reluctance to be sidetracked into a debate over gun control or school violence while trying to pressure Congress on his own main issues.

Bush’s response to the California power crisis shows similar instincts. He has not offered any substantial federal intervention; instead, he’s cited the state’s energy woes in support for proposals he formulated before the problem crystallized: a broad effort to increase domestic energy production.

More than communications’ strategy explains these divergent approaches. Bush spends less time than Clinton highlighting initiatives because, as a Republican who believes in limited government, he simply has fewer initiatives to highlight. The Cato Institute calculated that, in his joint address to Congress last month, Bush offered only one-quarter as many new proposals as Clinton did in his last State of the Union speech. Also, Bush White House aides argue, compared to Clinton, the new administration emphasizes scale over breadth, offering fewer but often more sweeping ideas.

Bush is as narrowly focused with Congress as he is with his public pronouncements. The White House staff is “omnipresent” in developing strategy for this spring’s key congressional votes on the budget, said one Senate GOP leadership aide. But after signaling broad support for the Republican efforts to toughen the bankruptcy laws and roll back Clinton’s workplace regulations on repetitive stress injuries, the White House put almost no energy into shaping the actual legislation.

“A little bit of presidential authority goes a long way on these issues,” said Karl Rove, Bush’s top political advisor. “Bush is an athlete, and he understands the economical expenditure of energy.”

The behind-the-scenes White House role may be somewhat greater in organizing opposition to the campaign finance reform bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.). Even so, Senate GOP sources say the White House has not been heavily involved in developing the party’s daily strategy on the issue. Instead, Bush has confined himself to a broad statement of principles on campaign finance reform that did not specify which provisions might draw a presidential veto.

In all these ways, White House aides argue, Bush is avoiding the mistakes of Clinton or Jimmy Carter who, especially early in their presidencies, appeared to dissipate their energies across overly broad agendas. If there’s a risk for Bush in this approach, critics say, it might be the danger that voters will see him as passive or disengaged.

Said Fred Greenstein, a Princeton University political scientist and an expert on presidential leadership: “While it’s easy enough for [Bush] to tell you he’s doing this in a smart way . . . it’s just hard to see that there is a lot of momentum developing in this presidency, and it’s hard to say that he is really introducing himself to the American people.”