Recent Bush Victories Smell of Compromise
Lately, President Employs a Little-Used Tool

By Dan Eggen and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 13, 2008

The decider has become the compromiser.

President Bush has racked up a series of significant political victories in recent weeks, on surveillance reform, war funding and an international agreement on global warming, but only after engaging in the kind of conciliation with opponents that his administration has often avoided.

With less than seven months left in office, Bush is embracing such compromises in part because he has to. Faced with persistently low public approval ratings, a Democratic Congress and wavering support among Republicans, he and his aides have given ground on key issues to accomplish broader legislative and diplomatic goals, according to administration officials, legislative aides and political experts.

"To get something done or to get what you want or most of what you want, you've got to compromise," said Nicholas E. Calio, who served as Bush's first legislative affairs director. "The president and the White House are very focused on getting things done, and they don't abide the notion that he's a lame duck."

Bush's willingness to compromise remains limited, and he has threatened to veto several key measures winding through Congress, from Medicare payments to housing reform. Yet any hint of accommodation is notable for a president who has often pursued a confrontational strategy with Congress -- even when it was in GOP hands -- and who has stood behind an unpopular war and go-it-alone policies abroad.

"There hasn't been wholesale change, but there has been definite movement toward compromise," said Thomas E. Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. "What you're seeing is a willingness to bend some when you're getting a broader objective. On other things, you finesse it."

Two weeks ago, for example, Bush signed a $162 billion spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that he hailed as a product of bipartisan cooperation. But the final legislation was far more expensive than Bush had said he would accept, and it included expanded G.I. Bill college benefits and other provisions that he had opposed.

A new surveillance bill signed into law Thursday also marked a significant victory for Bush, largely because the White House won legal immunity for telecommunications firms that helped in eavesdropping after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Yet even there, the compromise legislation included reforms that the administration had initially opposed, including language making clear that the measure is the exclusive legal authority for government spying. The changes allowed the bill to easily overcome opposition from Democratic leaders and civil liberties groups.

Bush's conciliatory mood extended to the Group of Eight summit last week in Japan, where the United States for the first time joined the other major industrialized countries in agreeing to try to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Although environmental groups said the deal lacked vital specifics, it marked a long journey for a U.S. president who came to office questioning the science of climate change.

Democrats on Capitol Hill said these and other signs of accommodation from the White House have sprung largely from political and legislative necessity. Indeed, Democrats point out that in a growing number of key votes, Republicans have simply ignored Bush's veto threats and sided with Democrats.

"The closer we get to the election, the more we're going to see them breaking from the White House," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

In May, for example, the president opposed new education benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and an extension of unemployment insurance. But 75 senators -- including almost half of the Republican conference -- voted to include those provisions in the war spending bill, which Bush had vowed to veto if any additional money was included.

Several weeks later, House Democrats made the unemployment extension a separate bill to test GOP support for the measure. It passed by a two-thirds margin, the veto-sustaining level, with 49 Republican votes.

In some cases, Bush has been unwilling to bend even in the face of strong GOP opposition and certain defeat. In May, for example, the House and Senate easily overrode his veto of a $307 billion farm bill, handing Bush perhaps the biggest legislative defeat of his presidency. Similar votes in 2007 saved a water-resources bill from a veto.

The latest example of GOP rebellion on Capitol Hill came last week during a Senate vote on a bill drafted by House Democrats that would offset a freeze in pay cuts to doctors who treat Medicare patients. Eighteen Republicans joined Democrats in approving the measure with a veto-proof margin. Even two of Bush's staunchest Senate allies -- Texans John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, both eyeing potentially difficult statewide races in 2008 and 2010 -- abandoned him and switched sides after an appearance by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who recently underwent surgery.

Bush opposes the plan because it pays for the "doctors' price fix" by slashing as much as $14 billion in payments to fee-for-service insurers that participate in the private Medicare program. He first threatened to veto the Medicare provision on the eve of a June 24 House vote.

After an aggressive push by GOP leaders against the bill, two-thirds of House Republicans joined a unanimous bloc of Democrats to pass it.

Asked days later about Bush's apparently weaker hand on Capitol Hill, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) declined to address the administration's standing on domestic issues. "On the national security and defense issues, the president is still an incredible force," he said.

Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the GOP's chief deputy whip, applauded the White House's willingness to oppose otherwise popular measures such as the Medicare bill, but also noted that Bush is "not on the ballot this year."

"People are voting their constituencies," Thune said of the GOP defections. "It's not atypical to what happens in any election year."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto suggested that any perceived shift in Bush's approach to Congress has more to do with the changed political climate than a change in White House strategy.

"I don't think we've become more conciliatory than we've ever been," he said. "We're going to stay on the right side of our principles. If we can get these things done and not compromise those principles, then of course we are open to compromise. We always have been open to that."

He added: "Just because you're leading doesn't mean you get everything you want."