Despite Problems, Bush Continues to Make Advances on His Agenda - New York Times

Despite Problems, Bush Continues to Make Advances on His Agenda - New York TimesJuly 29, 2005
Despite Problems, Bush Continues to Make Advances on His Agenda
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

WASHINGTON, July 28 - His problems remain many, and include the relentless violence in Iraq, the leak investigation that has ensnared some of his top aides and poll numbers that suggest substantial dissatisfaction with both his foreign and domestic policies. But President Bush has still had a pretty good July, showing how his own doggedness and a Republican majority in Congress have consistently allowed him to push his agenda forward even when the political winds are in his face.

In a flurry of last-minute action as it prepared to recess, Congress on Thursday passed or stood at the brink of final action on several hard-fought measures that had been at the top of Mr. Bush's summer to-do list and that at times had seemed to be long shots. The House narrowly approved a new trade deal with Central American nations early on Thursday morning, the final hurdle for a pact that was one of the administration's top economic priorities this year.

The House and Senate were wrapping up work Thursday on an energy bill that more or less conforms to what Mr. Bush has sought. And the two chambers were moving toward final passage of a transportation bill that contained enough pork to please lawmakers as they headed home, but with a price tag acceptable to the White House.

Even as the legislative wheels turned in Mr. Bush's direction, the White House was watching with satisfaction as the president's choice to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, Judge John G. Roberts, continued to win support from all wings of the Republican Party while leaving Democrats with little that might threaten his confirmation.

"You can disagree with the merits of individual things, but there's a lot that's been done," said John B. Breaux, the former Democratic senator from Louisiana who often worked across party lines.

The president's record over the past few weeks, combined with generally good economic news and word that the budget deficit is shrinking, suggests that Mr. Bush has hardly lapsed into the lame-duck status that Democrats had been hoping to assign him.

It also highlights yet again the importance of the time and effort he has put into helping retain the Republican majorities in the House and Senate, which for all their fractiousness tend to come through for him at the big moments. As he often does, Mr. Bush relied heavily on his party's leaders on Capitol Hill to make the deals necessary to achieve his broad legislative goals.

"If you had said a month ago that there would be a bill-signing ceremony for the energy bill, the transportation bill and Cafta, no one would have believed you," said David Winston, a Republican pollster, referring to the Central American Free Trade Agreement. "If the last election was about giving the Republican Party the responsibility to govern, they've now shown that ability, and that's a very significant message for them to take back home."

Yet there are limits to the message from this string of positive outcomes for the administration and its allies in Congress.

Mr. Bush remains at odds with substantial elements of his own party, including some Congressional leaders, on issues like federal financing for embryonic stem cell research and immigration, both of which threaten to explode into messy legislative battles in the coming months. Democrats continue to attack him for ignoring the issues of most concern to voters, like health care. And with the exception of his Supreme Court selection, the batch of initiatives that the White House has put front and center this month show few signs of producing a big surge in political support for Mr. Bush.

The energy bill gives Republicans, as the party in power, a chance to show that they responded to high gasoline prices, but the legislation is at most a modest start on addressing the nation's thirst for oil. The trade deal, while certainly a symbolic victory for the administration's economic philosophy at a time of growing protectionist pressures and hardening Democratic opposition, affects only a minuscule percentage of American exports.

Looking ahead, it is not clear that whatever momentum Mr. Bush has picked up on Capitol Hill will do anything to give new impetus to the domestic initiative on which he had staked the most this year, his call to overhaul Social Security.

Democrats have been united in opposition to his plan to add investment accounts to Social Security, and have portrayed the issue as one that revealed how Mr. Bush had overreached in trying to place a conservative stamp on the nation.

Republicans have shown themselves reluctant to embrace his approach, and have backed far away from the White House's demand for a comprehensive approach that would also assure the retirement system's permanent solvency.

At the same time, Mr. Bush faces possible fallout from the investigation into the disclosure of the name of a Central Intelligence Agency operative. And in the long run, Mr. Bush's political fortunes seem wedded more than anything else to developments in Iraq, where the bloody insurgency shows no signs of weakening.

"The energy bill, the highway bill, Cafta - they are all feathers in his cap, but they don't change the underlying drift in public opinion against him," said Doug Schoen, a Democratic pollster.

If the nation has learned anything about Mr. Bush over the last four and a half years, though, it is that he pushes ahead with his agenda in the face of all kinds of crosscurrents. In doing so, he displays what many Democrats view as ideological rigidity that ignores reality and what many Republicans consider principled consistency that defies the political pressures of the moment.

Mr. Bush shows every sign of sticking to his current path in Iraq. He has signaled that he will not abandon his push for changes to Social Security and is gearing up for an ambitious effort to overhaul the tax code.

It is not just Democrats that he will take on as the year progresses. While he seeks common ground with fellow Republicans on his approach to immigration, he has shown no signs of backing down from his proposal to grant temporary guest-worker status to many people who are in the United States illegally, despite intense opposition within the party.

Mr. Bush, Mr. Breaux said, operates by the adage Lawrence F. O'Brien Jr., Democratic Party chairman in the 1960's and '70's, used to cite: that there are "no final victories" in politics, only battle after battle to be fought.

"He's stubborn," Mr. Breaux said of Mr. Bush. "He's persistent."