In the Gipper's Footsteps

...Well into March his woes captivated New York and Los Angeles, the very media centers where Bush was widely viewed during the campaign as an amiable cipher...

...However highly voters may have ranked Bill Clinton's policies and prowess, they tended to hold his character in lower esteem...

...In his move from Austin, the President has retained his proclivity for stroking the solons too...

...There is a good deal of this kind of "very exciting" stuff going on these days in the White House...

...The similarities run deeper than Bush's desire to enact a big tax cut or his penchant for a national missile defense...

...A compromise on the final dollar amount promises to be easier to negotiate than an agreement on who gets what...

...He has also added an extra $2.6 billion in his budget for research and development...

...If logic served as a governing principle in national politics, the Bushes' morality motif would have fallen on deaf ears...

...Overall, Bush's political strategy in dealing with the military calls for upsetting the brass, comforting rank-and-file troops, and pursuing his antimissile system at a pace fast enough to anger but notprovoke Moscow...

...The President's laid-back style, coupled with just a hint of formality, is no act...

...Jimmy Carter held most lawmakers in contempt because they reminded him of the parochial Georgia Legislature...

...Even though the President has picked up some early support at the conservative end of the Democratic spectrum, a firm majority for his tax scheme has yet tojell...

...Similarly, Bush has shown some courage in asking whether the nation needs to have 7,000 nuclear weapons fueled by three expensive weapons labs on full alert...

...Frank Bruni, a New York Times White House correspondent, has observed that Bush has crafted a "no-fuss, no-sweat, 'look-Ma-no-hands' Presidency, his exertions ever measured, his outlook always mirthful...

...Reagan: Oh, this is very exciting...

...But Congress cannot escape dealing with what Bush views as the biggest shake-up in American defense policy since the advent of the Cold War...

...At times his tic-like impish grin seems to evoke Chauncey Gardner, the simple-minded, goodnatured character played by Peter Sellers in Being There...

...Like Ford-38, an improbable set of circumstances may have fueled Bush43's path to the White House...

...So I'm getting ready to sign right now...

...The Democrats, who have 50 Senate votes, are committed to some kind of tax relief, but for the most part they favor a smaller package...

...But that is not a Presidential priority thus far and McCain, who attracted a broader constituency during last year's primaries, will probably carry some Republican defectors with him...

...Besides keeping the Joint Chiefs and their Congressional allies at bay, Bush will have to use all the charm he can muster to get his tax cut enacted into law in anything approximating its current size and scope...

...None of these trademark Democratic themes had come within a mile of the 2000 Bush campaign...

...Understandably, little of it makes news...

...Mrs...

...Reagan: (inaudible) Bush: Well, thank you...

...His deputy, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, admitted "There's no question that we miss having the Presidency," but added, "the good news is that it's an easier message to control...

...Back then, Republicans used the Family Leave debate to bash Clinton's startinggun effort to comfort gays in the military...

...Mrs...

...Arizona Senator John McCain, who assailed the Bush tax plan during the primary season as reckless and regressive, might have come aboard in return for a Bush pledge to press for campaign finance reform...

...Bush and Rumsfeld realized something had to be done to curb those desires...

...Whether this, combined with his relaxed personality, will translate into the passage of significant legislation— particularly his signature tax-cutting package—we shall shortly learn...

...Video cameras were invited into the Oval Office to record the event and the cable news networks, starved for anything that smacks of emotive fare, lapped it up...

...Although it is still too early to make firm predictions about Bush-43's course, preliminary signs suggest that his role model is not Bush-41 or Ford-38, but rather President Ronald Reagan...

...So they did a bit of both...

...Bush: We honor him with his greatness and his goodness...

...In the end, even if he winds up not doingmuch about it, Bush deserves credit for raising several apposite questions...

...The 33-member "Blue Dog" coalition in House—a Democratic subspecies familiar to Bush because its political cousins in the Texas Legislature tended to vote with the Republicans—wants no tax cut at all...

...They include Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which handles tax bills sent over by the House...

...Reagan, hi...

...In this respect he differs from other recent former governors who became Oval Office occupants...

...Within a month of his inauguration in 1993, Bill Clinton had already signed into law the Family and Medical Leave Act, a top priority in his 1992 campaign...

...Others view Bush II as a reprise of Bush I, albeit with the son's fondness for populist Tex-Mex fare supplanting the father's elite Connecticut Yankee upbringing...

...But Bush has also brought a good deal of big-picture focus to the White House operation, complete with a campaign-honed, incessantly repeated "Message of the Week" for Congress and the public...

...One media critic, Tom Shales of the Washington Post, noted thatwhilethere was no soaring oratory to be heard, "the age of soaring oratory is past anyway...

...Reagan remained above the Congressional fray: Clinton tended to pay attention to Congress only when he was in dire need of votes...

...I like to give short speeches," he told Congressional Republicans in his best Sellers manner at their opening retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia...

...While imposing wage and price controls in the runup to the 1972 election, Nixon tapped Rumsfeld as his economic czar and he, in turn, tapped Cheney as his top deputy...

...Mrs...

...The assembled Democrats couldn't decide whether they should applaud the fact that Bush had co-opted some of their best lines or show their disdain by keeping their hands in their laps...

...Like Reagan, Bush appears content to delegate much of the daily grind of government to others, notably to Vice President Cheney and to Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr...

...They appear to be trying to blur the differences and they've succeeded...

...And we honor you, as well, for your strength of character and your service...

...If nothing else, the review serves as a wedge to keep the Pentagon brass in check...

...Furthermore, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld quietly acknowledges that the force deployment changes to follow a strategic review the President has ordered will be phased in over 30 years...

...Mrs...

...Bush seems to sense that the fate of large issues, such as his $ 1.6 trillion tax-cut program, may rest on small gestures, such as having his picture taken in the Rose Garden with Louisiana's Rice Queen...

...Reagan: Oh, how nice...

...I think the Republicans have taken playbooks from the Democrats," said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota...

...In the 2000 campaign, it will be recalled, George W. Bush made much of having to restore "honor and dignity" to the Oval Office, a theme George H.W...

...Naturally enough, the President's main emphasis reflected his desire to pump legislative life into education reform and tax cuts, the twin foundations of his campaign platform...

...Reagan: (inaudible) Bush: Good, thank you...

...Bush's maiden speech to the lawmakers on February 27, delivered with a personal warmth that in corresponding situations often eluded his father, exceeded expectations...

...The demands of the military threatened to swallow more than half the budget surplus that would remain if (1) a Bush-style tax cut was adopted, and (2) the economy stayed on an even keel, leaving tax receipts at present projected levels...

...I'm here in the Oval Office...

...In tone, if not in substance, those are the kinds of questions that Ronald Reagan raised in the mid-1980s during his historic meetings with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Switzerland and Iceland...

...And I'm getting ready to sign a birthday card to the President, my first document I'll sign as the President, which is a joint resolution from the Congress...

...A few days later, on his way into a similar meeting of Democrats in Farmington, Pennsylvania, he told his staff: "I'll answer some questions and then I'm going to head home and take a nap...

...The kindness and candor he ascribed to his narrowly divided Congressional audience, however, will not by itself serve to enact much-needed Social Security and Medicare reforms...

...And unlike Gore, Bush remains quite comfortable in his own skin...

...Bush: ...which expresses our deep gratitude and admiration for President Reagan...

...Andrew J. Glass, a longtime NL contributor, is the Washington-based senior correspondent of Cox Newspapers...

...How are you today...

...Meanwhile, a fair number of Republicans have voiced reservations...

...His aggressive fund-raising tactics may have crossed the line, but it was a line the Republicans unhesitatingly also crossed many times...

...Like Reagan, he appears prone to focus on a small number of large themes: cutting taxes, improving education, re-energizing the military...

...Moreover, since Inauguration Day those reservations have been fed by the controversies surrounding Clinton's departure from office...

...If Bush continues to couple his favorable media profile with his low profile on legislative details, the odds are that he will achieve his objectives on some issues of genuine importance this year...

...But the Bush crew, having learned from Dad's mistakes, knows such folderol can score valuable points among key constituencies...

...Far more comfortable in his role as Commander-in-Chief than Clinton ever was, he has promised an additional $5.7 billion for military pay raises and such inkind payments as better health benefits and improved housing...

...For better or worse (probably worse), the Vice President waged his campaign as the un-Clinton, stressing a point that cost him Arkansas at the minimum, and quite possibly the Presidency...

...He has banned jeans in the White House working quarters, but dropped the playing of "Hail to the Chief" at every conceivable opportunity, thereby neatly reversing Clinton'sapproach to the symbolic aspects of the job...

...Does the United States truly need to retain 40,000 troops in Japan, or 70,000 in Germany now that it is a fully "normal" country and serves the economic engine of an increasingly integrated Europe...

...Reagan: How nice...

...Though intended to avoid any monarchical reference, this nevertheless casts Number 42 as the roguish neoCromwellian usurper, now ousted after eight long years of combat...

...Indeed, the contrast between Clinton and Bush—underscored by the White House at every opportunity—has helped the new man look good in the opening months of his Presidency...

...In addition, in his initial speech to a joint session of Congress, Clinton put forward the highly controversial budget cuts and tax increases that eventually were enacted without any Republican votes in the House or a single vote to spare in either chamber...

...It was a stretch to pin President Bill Clinton's sundry scandals on the Democratic standard-bearer, Vice President Al Gore...

...Listen.I'm honored...

...What Reid meant was that the onetime Clinton strategy of "triangulation," in which the President kept himself apart from the Democratic troops, is gone because all the players are on Capitol Hill...

...Bush struck in his address to the 1996 Republican National Convention...

...But in a throwback to the Eisenhower era, and in keeping with his Texas moorings, Bush was content to leave the actual drafting of legislation to House and Senate committees, where his proposals will wind up anyway...

...Daschle, who joined House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri in the official Democratic response to the Bush speech, has become far more visible than he was during the Clinton years...

...In reality, only $ 1 billion of this sum goes beyond previously announced Clinton targets...

...The President shrewdly talked about the need for a rainy day fund, the need to pay down the Federal deficit, and (albeit briefly) the need for campaign finance reform...

...Inevitably hard choices will have to be made on where to reduce the rate of increase (actual cuts are usually out of the question...

...George W. Bush's Role Model In the Gipper's Footsteps By Andrew J. Glass Washington Some people say the roots of the new Bush Administration lie in the old Ford Administration, because a generation ago several members of today's inner circle served under President Gerald R. Ford...

...And like Reagan, he is a "people person" who favors staged events that allow him to shake hands, squeeze elbows and get as close to the citizenry as the Secret Service will allow...

...Actually, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld owe their start in the Executive Branch to the ultimately disgraced President Richard M. Nixon...

...These have been pushed aside to a Presidential commission, therefore, in hopes of gaining enough traction and political cover to bring them about later...

...Mrs...

...Because regal allusions do not sit well with the White House, the staff's private need for distinguishing handles has been filled by their referring to "Bush41" and "Bush-43," the respective numerical place of each in the Presidential sequence...

...Many Democrats see the Bush tax initiative as a potential vehicle for redistributing income to lower rungs of the middle class, a core Democratic constituency, at the expense, quite literally, of wealthy Bush Republicans...

...Bush displayed his approach to governance in a two-minute phone call to Nancy Reagan, placed in mid-February shortly after her husband's 90th birthday...

...One seemingly likely White House recruit, Louisiana Democrat John Breaux, assiduously wooed by Bush, wants to slice the package in half...

...Clearly Bush is no policy wonk...

...But surveys show that "honor and dignity" played well in the American heartland...

...BUSH (wearing a coatandtie andseated behind his desk): Mrs...

...But by dint of a winning personality, and with some good luck, he stands a fair chance of ranking right up there with old 40, the Gipper—which is not an unmixed blessing...

...Here again, as in his speech from the House podium, Bush may do better than expected because his White House lieutenants are quite prepared to leave much of the decision-making to the narrowly Republican-led Congress, while the President focuses on the big picture at home and abroad...

...Bush's relationships on Capitol Hill will now be tested by his budget proposals...

...That promises to considerably lessen the pain to today's crop of generals and admirals who have come to perpetually yearn for more costly weapons systems...

...It is not hard to see how his easygoing disposition might prompt Gore and other "serious" people to believe the Washington Policy shelves have been restocked with Bush Lite...

...The Democrats' abilityto stymie Bush-sponsored legislation on Capitol Hill did nothing to check the early round of positive press coverage the President garnered by emphasizing civility, reason and bipartisanship...