March 6, 2003	Thursday	Muharram 2, 1424

WASHINGTON: From his law office in the small Texas town of Henderson, former Democratic state Rep. Paul Sadler barely recognizes George W. Bush anymore.

When Bush served as Texas governor, Sadler probably negotiated with him more extensively than any other Democrat in the Legislature, forging agreements on difficult issues from education reform to taxes. Through that partnership, Sadler came to see Bush as a conciliator committed to building consensus across party lines.

Now, as he watches Bush operate in Washington, Sadler sees what he calls “a harder edge.”

At home and abroad, Bush has surprised friends and critics with the ambition of his presidential agenda — and the forceful, often confrontational, manner in which he has pursued it.

From a dealmaker in Texas, he has morphed into a back-breaker in Washington, D.C. With both Congress and allies abroad, he has displayed a pugnacious style of leadership, advancing boldly ideological ideas that test the boundaries of consensus. He often has accepted compromise only when it appeared that he had no other choice.

“I remember describing Bush as an incrementalist when he was down here, and he was,” says Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas. “He was not throwing the long pass. He was not a policy ideologue by any stretch of the imagination. Now all of a sudden he’s this guy who is deeply and passionately committed to a heavily substantive ideological agenda.”

This approach has brought Bush many successes, from a major 2001 tax cut to the United Nations resolution that returned arms inspectors to Iraq. But it also has produced a more polarizing presidency than his record in Texas, or his rhetoric in the 2000 campaign, might have predicted.

Bush advisers believe that by showing his commitment to bold change, he reinforces an image as a strong leader that could become his greatest asset for re-election. But Democrats believe Bush is unnecessarily dividing Congress and the country in ways that could threaten his legislative agenda and his prospects for a second term.

In 2000, Bush pledged to govern as a “uniter, not a divider,” who would “change the tone in Washington.” On one level, he has succeeded — personal animosity between the parties isn’t as intense as it was between congressional Republicans and President Clinton. But the policy differences between the two sides might be even wider than in the Clinton years.

Party-line voting in Congress has reached a new peak. According to Congressional Quarterly, Republicans voted with their party on nearly 90 per cent of the votes during Bush’s first two years, while Democrats voted with their party nearly 86 per cent of the time.

And despite the public’s impulse to rally around the commander-in-chief in an unsettling age of global terror, opinion about Bush’s performance and priorities is at least as polarized as it was about Clinton. In the most recent Los Angeles Times poll, 95 per cent of Republicans said they approved of Bush’s performance, while just 28 per cent of Democrats agreed.

These centrifugal tendencies predate Bush’s presidency. Party- line voting has increased steadily in Congress over the last 30 years. So has the gap between the president’s approval rating among voters from his own party and those from the opposition, according to Matthew Dowd, director of polling at the Republican National Committee.

Yet Bush’s decisions have, in most respects, accelerated these trends.

The administration worked closely with Democrats on Bush’s education reform bill and the legislative response to the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. And on issues such as campaign finance reform, corporate accounting reform and the federalization of airport security workers, he eventually acquiesced when bipartisan congressional majorities insisted on a course he had resisted.

But mostly, Bush has pursued as hard a line in pushing his goals with Congress as he has with the world over Iraq. His intent was clear even before he took office.

Shortly after the 2000 election, Nick Calio, the first White House director of legislative affairs, went to see Bush in Texas. When Calio started to walk through concessions he might have to make to pass the tax cut bill, Bush cut him off. “Nicky,” he said, “we will not negotiate with ourselves, ever.”

It’s a promise Bush has kept with a vengeance.

From his initial tax cut through a huge second round of tax reductions he has proposed this year, to his energy plan, his staunchly conservative judicial nominations and his new plans to restructure Medicare and Medicaid, Bush consistently has offered proposals that excite conservatives while holding little appeal even to centrist Democrats. Several moderate Republicans also have recoiled at elements of his new tax cut proposal, and he has been forced to back off his initial Medicare plan after objections from both parties.

“What you get now from Bush is a sense that this is a White House determined to squeeze every last bit of political advantage out of every situation,” says Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank.

Indeed, centrist Democrats open to accommodation with Bush have complained that the White House has shown too little interest in working with them.

Moderate Sen. John B. Breaux, D-La., who has tried to operate as a bridge between the parties, has expressed frustration about being shut out on Medicare reform efforts, an issue where he has offered ideas similar to Bush’s.

Many Bush advisers acknowledge pursuing a hardball approach, but argue they are applying lessons from President Reagan on how to move the policy debate in their direction.

Most Bush advisers say it’s not possible to recreate the consensual approach he used in Texas because the environment in Washington, D.C., is much more partisan.

Given the choice between making concessions that create a broader bipartisan majority and narrowly passing a bill that more closely tracks his preferences, Bush will choose the latter, White House aides agree.

The aides believe his hardline approach energizes the GOP base — his approval rating among Republicans exceeds even Reagan’s — and reinforces his image as a strong, decisive leader. In effect, many of Bush’s key advisers see polarization as an acceptable cost for the demonstration of resolve and vision.

Some friends and foes also see in Bush a growing confidence after the Sept 11 attacks in his own beliefs, which leads him to view domestic issues in the same black-and-white terms he has used to frame the ‘war against terrorism’.

The political risk is that this approach portrays Bush to swing voters as too rigid or too ideological.—Dawn/The Los Angeles Times News Service.