As governor of Texas, George W. Bush managed to become the master of all he surveyed. But Jeffords’s departure dramatized a message the president has yet to hear and seems not to want to accept: Washington isn’t Austin, and he isn’t LBJ. In fact, Bush isn’t even Tony Soprano. He can’t afford to be smug or arrogant or dictatorial–or caught by surprise, as he was by Jeffords. The capital’s Democrats are far more powerful, shrewd and well funded than the ones in Texas, and Republicans in D.C. aren’t all of a predictably conservative stripe. The media are omnipresent and harder to tame, and interest groups are more massive and entrenched. There are far more people to be stroked and far less time to do it. Even a president can’t slow the driving pace of the place.
Are there lessons to be learned from the loss of Jeffords? Inside the White House, they tend to think not. They point out that the president got his big tax cut–the centerpiece of his campaign agenda–as well as the biggest increase in education funding the House has approved in 36 years. They put Jeffords’s departure down to a mixture of liberalism and personal ambition, not a failure of attention. “If the president had reached out any more, his arms would have fallen off,” said a senior White House aide. Aides insist legislative strategy will change little. Handling the Senate, after all, is always like herding cats. “It’s a disappointment to everybody, sure,” said a top aide, “but nothing changes the fact that he is the president, and he will lead the way he was elected to lead.”
Still, with the relatively easy wins behind him–and the wily Sen. Tom Daschle confronting him–the president must do what he’s reluctant to do: become adept at the Washington inside game. Ironically, he now must dig back into his own family roots, mimicking the dealmaking, compromising career of his own Yankee father, who thrived on Hill gossip and owned a fan-jet-size Rolodex of Washington contacts. It’s a pattern that the Texas-bred Bush the Younger had hoped to avoid–because it cost his father a secure conservative base. But 43 may now be destined to repeat it. At least that’s the sum of the advice from wise guys busy examining what (and who) went wrong, and how Bush can do better. For starters, everyone agrees he has to work nights and weekends. The rest of their collective wisdom:
Get better intel. Bush shouldn’t have been blindsided by Jeffords. “This was a long process, and the scuttlebutt was around for weeks,” said Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd. Democrats began a systematic effort to woo Republican moderates more than a month ago. Democratic elders, from Daschle to Ted Kennedy to Dodd, huddled privately with Jeffords, McCain and Sen. Lincoln Chafee. McCain was invited to what he thought was a health-care meeting with Kennedy, who it turned out wanted to ask him to become a Democrat. A month ago Vice President Dick Cheney’s own legislative liaison got wind of Jeffords’s terminal displeasure, and passed on the info. But no one acted on it–and Bush didn’t get the word until last Tuesday, well after the first published hints surfaced in Vermont.
Expand the charm circle. It’s easy to be ingratiating in your own fraternity. Bush, a frat president at Yale, is good at it. His challenge now is to befriend the quirky and uncool, for, as one of his aides says, the Senate is “100 kings.” Jeffords is a lost cause, but opportunities remain. One is Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who was close to Bush the Elder, but she doesn’t have regular conversations with the current president. “She could help Bush a lot,” said one Democratic colleague. “She’s smart and wired. He should be talking to her all the time.” Indeed, it was Snowe who warned Card that Jeffords was about to quit the party. Maybe Bush is paying more attention: he is scheduled to have dinner soon after the recess with Senator Chafee.
All politics is personal. LBJ made it his business to know every whim and want of his allies and enemies. The Bush White House produces statistics that show that the president has “met” with a record number of legislators. But the Hill remains largely terra incognita to him. It may be more important to reach out to enemies than friends. McCain’s aides were amused when the White House called to ask if McCain would like to smoke cigars after the postponed dinner. The senator is one of the Hill’s leading anti-tobacco crusaders, and hasn’t touched the stuff himself in decades.
Don’t count on Cheney. The vice president tends to be more comfortable in the role of tough-guy enforcer than favor-dispensing father confessor. GOP moderates call his office just off the Senate floor the “Torture Chamber.” “When you get called in there it means you’re going to get your arm twisted,” said one GOP senator. Cheney, who learned a bare-knuckle style as a member of an oppressed GOP minority in the House, simply isn’t good at schmoozing with the enemy. He and Sen. Joe Lieberman played to good reviews, and met after the Florida finale to exchange good wishes. But the veep hasn’t called since, sources close to the senator say.
Rein in Rove. In public, Karl Rove, the president’s political guru-for-life, obliquely questioned whether Jeffords’s motive was a better chairmanship. Privately, other GOP insiders trash the senator as an unreliable hypocrite. Rove’s conservative allies in the Americans for Tax Justice, meanwhile, will launch a jihad against the New England Dairy Compact. It’s a “stupid little compact,” says ATJ director Grover Norquist. GOP moderates plead for the White House to lay off, or risk offending others of their number. “That kind of thing is not going to be helpful,” said Snowe. Indeed, the First Father was so upset by Jeffords’s decision that he privately asked another Vermont friend, former senator Robert Stafford, to make a last-minute plea to their mutual old friend.
Learn to love the chaos. Bush and his closest aides–Rove and counselor Karen Hughes –are control freaks. They believe above all in loyalty and long-term planning. Bush’s initial legislative agenda was, in effect, written in Austin in 1999, when Bush assembled his campaign platform in a series of meetings with issue advisers. But that plan has lost much of its value now, like the scripted plays for the opening drive of a football game. “Party loyalty” is becoming an oxymoron, as each new issue draws a new coalition of support. Now Bush has to go with the flow, looking for the best-available deals on issues such as the patient’s bill of rights. The White House must begin following Bush’s own be-humble dictum. “If you hear it from one you hear it from 30 guys up here,” said Dodd, the Democratic son of a senator and a student of the Hill game. “They come off as arrogant in the extreme.”
Look for the silver lining. Some White House advisers see benefit in the Senate’s switch to Democratic control. They ruefully recall how the GOP takeover in the House in 1994 drove Bill Clinton to the middle on issues such as welfare reform–and helped get him re-elected in 1996. Now, says one adviser, Bush will “have to be more moderate. On the environment, on his judges. This frees him up from the more conservative wing. In the end, it’ll be a good thing.” In other words, by acting more like his father Bush may win the second term his father never could.
