Six months old this week, the Bush White House has reached the gawky, adolescent stage of all new administrations: the one in which everyone needs to be reassured that they are OK. Though Bush’s numbers are decent– on the upswing in some polls– he motorcaded to the Capitol for a pep talk with his most powerful allies there, Republicans who (barely) control the House. Bush touted proposals for education testing, “faith-based” welfare and a less court-dependent patient’s bill of rights, declaring about each, “I have passion about this.” He uttered the phrase so often the crowd began to titter. “Hey, I’m a passionate guy,” he said with a grin.
But the old Andover cheerleader needs more than his “passion.” Inevitably, team spirit is giving way to carping and backstabbing. Last week, for example, the administration was caught trying to cut a deal with the Salvation Army in exchange for its support for Bush’s faith-based plan. The arrangement would have given the group (and other religious organizations) protection from state and local statutes that bar discrimination against gays and lesbians in hiring. When the talks were disclosed by The Washington Post, the White House backpedaled. The next day anonymous aides outed Rove in the paper for his role in trying to engineer the deal– which prompted in-house warnings about the dangers of talking to manipulative reporters.
Bush is learning he has even less control over friends in Congress– who aren’t always as helpful as they think they are. The issue of campaign-finance reform is a case in point. House leaders took advantage of a tactical overreach by desperate Democrats to yank the bill minutes before the showdown debate. It was a typically coldblooded maneuver by Majority Whip Tom DeLay, one that perhaps mortally wounded the measure. But Bush aides (who think he’d prosper under any financing system) wanted the issue off the table, and would have signed whatever bill Congress had produced. Instead, Sen. John McCain has yet another rallying cry in his bid to win the allegiance of independent voters–and yet another part of the GOP establishment to decry.
The episode foreshadowed the story line ahead. With the Senate now in Democratic hands, DeLay and the House majority leader, Dick Armey, are the Other Texans Who Count: heavy lifters on whom Bush must now depend, but who have their own hard-line agenda that won’t always gibe with the softer conservativism the president, from time to time, will project.
In an interview, DeLay laid out his own wish list. Despite a shrinking budget surplus, he wants another round of tax cuts, the sooner the better, and will try to attach them to upcoming bills on energy, faith-based social services and the minimum wage. He claims he has the votes to sanction drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And he is determined to prevent funding for stem-cell research. Even if Bush opts to lift the ban on it, DeLay and Armey told Newsweek, they will seek to bar such funding by amending appropriations bills. “We’ll treat it like federal funding of abortion, putting a ‘Hyde Amendment’ on it,” said DeLay. Recognizing the new dynamic, Bush took time in the Cabinet Room late last week for a private heart-to-heart with DeLay on the stem-cell issue. “He looked me in the eye and told me he’d do what he thought was right, what his heart believes,” said DeLay. “I think he will.” Bush had another topic to discuss. Would DeLay like to play some golf? The president didn’t need a polltaker’s advice to make the offer– and DeLay didn’t need any to accept.
