Priority Remains War on Terror, but Bush Sets Domestic Goals

President Bush is entering the second half of his term with a slim list of proposals on his domestic policy agenda but a growing likelihood that he will be able to put more of his program of “compassionate conservatism” into effect than during his first two years in office.

White House attention is focused largely on potential war with Iraq, the ongoing campaign against terrorism and accelerating tax cuts to stimulate the economy. But social policy will round out the quartet of issues Bush will focus on to build a case for reelection. The president used his weekly radio address Saturday to outline his priorities on the domestic front, beyond his call for quick congressional action to extend emergency unemployment benefits that lapsed at the end of the week.

On the president’s list: health care, drug costs, limiting certain lawsuits, carrying out the education legislation he signed a year ago, continuing the 1996 welfare overhaul and making it easier for religious groups to tap the federal treasury to carry out charitable programs.

“We will keep our commitment to America’s seniors by working to reform and modernize Medicare and include a prescription drug benefit to help seniors who are squeezed by rising drug prices,” Bush said. “We will tackle the crisis of frivolous lawsuits that drive up the cost of health care.”

“We will work to reauthorize the historic welfare reform law that has improved so many lives,” he added, in a speech taped at his ranch about 30 miles from here. Bush is on a two-week holiday break from Washington.

The focus on drug benefits for the elderly, the faith-based initiative and welfare revisions leaves Republicans optimistic that the president will have assembled a domestic record that will help him avoid the political fate of his father’s presidency.

The elder Bush’s reelection drive was foiled in 1992 largely over voters’ belief that he had ignored their economic woes and domestic matters while fighting the Persian Gulf War the year before.

Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, said that a survey of 2,000 voters on election day last month found that “a sizable number of people voted Republican because they thought the Republicans more likely to deliver a drug benefit.”

Gaining congressional passage of such a measure, Luntz said, would demonstrate that Republicans “can deliver what they promised to an electorate willing to give them a chance and now expecting results.”

At the same time, Luntz said, “it plays against type,” putting Bush in the role of a compassionate leader, when the public sees Republicans’ strength in the hard-edged realm of law and order and national security.

With the focus on welfare, religious charities and prescription drug costs, Bush is “raising all the issues the Democrats blocked that have significant support across the political spectrum,” Luntz said.

Each was part of Bush’s original agenda and won approval by the House, where Republicans held a majority, and were blocked in the Democratic-led Senate.

With Republicans gaining a majority in the Senate and several moderate-to-conservative Democrats likely to support Bush’s proposals or some version of them, Luntz and others give the president a high chance of success with the modest list.

Indeed, the two parties are not far apart on an important element in the drug proposal: A Republican measure would cost from $325 billion to $375 billion over 10 years, a Democratic measure would cost about $500 billion. The gap is wider, however, on the mechanics of the competing plans.

“If it doesn’t get done, it will be seen as a breach of promise, and that doesn’t go well with the citizens,” said William A. Galston, a professor in the school of public affairs at the University of Maryland.

But the prescription drug program carries a political weight beyond the substance of the measure itself. It is seen, Galston said, as a test of Bush’s ability to deliver on his 2000 campaign promise to change the tone of partisan bickering in Washington.

Because it is unlikely that any serious legislation will be passed in 2004, a presidential election year, “what happens in 2003 will really define in the public’s mind whether or not the tone has changed, and that’s why prescription drugs will be so fateful,” said Galston, who was President Clinton’s deputy assistant for domestic policy. “I don’t think the president can afford to go into 2004 without a prescription drug program.”

This will give Democrats leverage and may make it more difficult for Bush to place a take-it-or-leave-it proposal on the table.

To be sure, the success of the war against terrorism, the outcome of the president’s campaign to disarm Iraq and the state of the economy will trump any element of the social policy agenda on election day 2004.

The White House acknowledged the role of the security issues in an internal document, obtained by Associated Press, that puts the war on terrorism atop Bush’s reelection agenda. The list continues with protection of the American homeland, access to health care and its cost, and legal reform.

“The big priorities continue to be winning the war on terrorism, protecting the American people and strengthening our economy,” said Scott McClellan, a deputy White House press secretary.

Emphasizing the limited effects that specific domestic programs will have on the electorate’s 2004 decisions, Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said: “They’ll add some rouge to the cheeks of the proposals, but they won’t be trotted out at the Oscars.”

However, beyond providing the president with specific accomplishments to take to the voters, the domestic agenda can create an aura “that makes Republicans look more compassionate,” Baker added.

During Bush’s first two years in office, the divided Congress approved the $1.35-trillion, 10-year tax cut he championed as the centerpiece of his economic policy and the overhaul of federal education programs that was at the heart of his social policy agenda. But otherwise, it approved only a limited number of the president’s programs.

Bruce Reed, who for eight years directed Clinton’s domestic policy efforts, said in a recent forum at the Brookings Institution that Congress’ reluctance to act notwithstanding, the approach of the 2004 presidential election will invigorate the White House.

“They do have some problems here on the home front, and the president seems attuned to at least seeming to care about these problems,” he said.

As a veteran of the 1996 presidential reelection drive, Reed said, “I can tell you there will be enormous pressure from inside the West Wing to get things done.”