Emboldened Bush Sets Ambitious Conservative Goals for 2nd Term

Almost four years ago, when George W. Bush accepted his first election to the White House, he began by promising to govern through bipartisan cooperation, to “change the tone in Washington” from the bitter divisions of the decade before.

On Thursday, as he outlined his plans for a second term, Bush presented himself as a sadder but tougher president -- determined to get what he wants, even if that means bruising fights ahead.

“I’ve been wisened to the ways of Washington,” he said at his post-election news conference. He made a small bow toward bipartisanship, but made it clear that his overriding aim was to achieve his conservative goals.

“Results really do matter, as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “I really didn’t come here just to hold the office -- just to say, ‘Gosh, it was fun to serve.’ I came here to get some things done.”

The George W. Bush who is poised impatiently to begin his new term in the White House is a far different president from the unmarked Texas governor who arrived in Washington four years ago.

Unlike some presidents, Bush is staking out difficult goals for his second term, most notably a sweeping restructuring of Social Security.

If he accomplishes everything he committed himself to on Thursday, he could claim a place alongside Ronald Reagan -- the president he cites as a model, more than his own father -- in reshaping government policy to conservative design.

And the second-term Bush has something Reagan never enjoyed: solid Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.

Also, unlike four years ago, he has the momentum gained from winning 52% of the popular vote Tuesday -- an advantage he is not shy about trumpeting.

“When you win, there is a feeling that the people have spoken and embraced your point of view, and that’s what I intend to tell the Congress,” he said. “I made it clear [in the campaign] what I intend to do as the president ... and the people made it clear what they wanted.”

“Now let’s work together,” he added.

But that offer to work with Congress came from a president who believes he comes to the table armed with the unique authority of the nation’s voters.

In 2001, his first year in office, Bush sometimes deferred to more-seasoned aides on questions of congressional strategy or foreign policy, former officials have said. But after waging a series of first-term legislative battles that he won on largely party-line votes, and after taking the country to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush of 2004 openly declares that he needs no further education in “the ways of Washington.”

Bush is, as he said Thursday, “more seasoned to Washington. I have cut my political eye teeth, at least the ones I’ve recently grown here in Washington. And so I’m aware of what can happen in this town.”

“When he first became president, there was sometimes a sense that he was still a student, learning the job from mentors like [Vice President Dick] Cheney and [national security advisor Condoleezza] Rice,” a former Reagan administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I think that’s over now. He doesn’t look like a student any more.”

Just as he did as governor of Texas and as a first-time presidential candidate, Bush has reduced his agenda to four or five major goals. “You’ve heard the agenda,” he said, “Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.”

That litany reflected another longtime Bush principle: A governor or president must set his own large-scale goals at the outset, to prevent others from defining goals for him.

In his insistence on taking the offensive, just as in his thoroughgoing conservatism, Bush has deliberately styled himself after Reagan. Just as deliberately, he has avoided the example of his father, George H.W. Bush, who was often charged by more conservative Republicans with failing to seize the policy offensive.

To some analysts, Bush has now staked out the goal of completing the conservative revolution that Reagan launched in the 1980 election -- and perhaps going further.

Bush sometimes appears “less pragmatic” than Reagan was, the former Reagan administration official said. “Reagan worked in a Democratic-majority era, and had to compromise to get 80% of what he wanted,” he said.

Bush holds out for more, he said, and now with stronger Republican majorities in Congress he may succeed more often.

“This goes beyond the Reagan agenda, considerably beyond it,” said professor Walter Dean Burnham, a longtime Bush-watcher at the University of Texas in Austin.

“This was an election of exceptional significance.... All the brakes are off.” Burnham said Bush has come close to achieving “realignment,” a lasting shift in the political balance that could put Republicans in control for a generation.

“I see no immediate prospect for the Democrats to recapture either house of Congress,” he said. “The question is: How long is he going to be able to maintain this majority coalition?”

“This majority isn’t huge, but it’s decisive,” Burnham said. “It looks pretty durable until some major impact hits the system -- until something awful happens to sweep them out of office.”

Burnham and others noted that Republicans in Congress are not unanimous in their support for every part of Bush’s agenda. Deficit hawks complain that the president, who favors more activist government than Reagan did in areas such as education, has never vetoed a spending bill and has failed to rein in the federal budget deficit.

“Majority coalitions tend to fall into a lot of infighting,” Burnham said.

Republicans in Congress will gingerly embrace Bush’s demand for changes in Social Security, the popular federally administered pension.

“Social Security is the most perilous of all,” said Ross K. Baker, a congressional scholar at Rutgers University. “Members [of Congress] are just terrified of it.... Terrified that the Democrats will accuse them of doing major surgery and endangering people’s benefits.”

“I can understand why he’s doing this,” Baker said. “You want to start a new term with a bold, brassy overture.... You want to start with a big bold sound.

“But members of Congress will be skeptical. He’s got four more years; they’ve got all the time in the world. He’s not running for reelection; they are.”

A Democratic historian of the presidency warned that Bush faced another danger common to second-term presidents: trying to do too much.

“Will he overreach?” asked Robert Dallek, a biographer of presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Kennedy. “Will he get bogged down in Iraq the way Johnson was bogged down in Vietnam? Can he succeed in getting both tax reform and Social Security? Where’s he going to get the money?

“If he tries to put someone on the Supreme Court who is decidedly in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade,” the 1973 case that declared women have a constitutional right to abortion, Dallek said, “that will be an overreach and will stir up a hornet’s nest.”

“With presidents who win this kind of majority, the assumption is that they can do anything they want,” Dallek said. “But they often run into problems.”