Bush, Nancy Pelosi Try to Reconcile

President Bush pauses during a news conference, Wednesday in the East Room at the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2006. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds) (Ron Edmonds - AP)

Pelosi, for instance, put any suggestion of impeachment proceedings against Bush "off the table." She welcomed the president's move to capitulate to critics and accept the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Bush promised "a lot of meetings with Democrats and a lot of discussion with Democrats." He signaled readiness to consider Democratic priorities such as a federal minimum-wage increase and to find compromise on renewing the No Child Left Behind education law, overhauling immigration policy and overhauling budget-busting entitlement programs.

Asked why his pledge of bipartisanship should be believed when so many others have been broken, he said simply: "Do it. That's how you do it."

Yet the two sides remain bitterly divided over Iraq.

"`Full speed ahead' _ I don't think so," Pelosi said on CNN, mocking Vice President Dick Cheney's contention that the administration would continue its war strategy unbowed.

Bush countered that leaving Iraq before the mission is complete is a nonstarter. "If the goal is success, then we can work together. If the goal is, get out now regardless, then that's going to be hard to work together," he said.

Pelosi also said Democrats will pursue an agenda that has been resisted by Bush, including cutting student loan interest rates, funding embryonic stem cell research, authorizing the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare patients and imposing a national cap on industrial carbon dioxide emissions.

Bush indicated his patience with compromise would go only so far. He said he wanted to move ahead with strengthening presidential powers, an area where Democrats think Bush already has stretched too far.

"She's not going to abandon her principles and I'm not going to abandon mine," he said.