Bush Bringing Bridge-Building Charm to D.C.

AUSTIN, Texas —  When President-elect George W. Bush meets with the two Democratic congressional leaders in Washington today, surely he won’t put a headlock on Sen. Tom Daschle or Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, no matter how playfully.

Or will he?

The Texas governor applied precisely that unorthodox form of lobbying on a recalcitrant committee chairman in Austin last year.

One spring afternoon, as Texas Rep. Elliott Naishtat, a Democrat, emerged from the state Capitol here, accompanied by friends from Rhode Island, Bush sneaked up and put him in that wrestling hold.

“Someone started pulling me down the south steps. I knew it was in a friendly manner. I looked up and it was George Bush,” Naishtat recalled.

At the time, he and Bush were at loggerheads over Bush’s welfare reform proposals, which Naishtat deemed too draconian and thus blocked.

“Elliott, what’re we gonna do? We got some problems. You know this is important to me,” Bush said as stunned state troopers and tourists watched, unsure what to do.

“Governor, I’m working on it,” Naishtat answered.

“This is important. This is important,” Bush said.

Finally he let go of Naishtat, who, at age 55, is a year older than Bush and about three inches shorter.

Then Bush happily posed for snapshots with Naishtat’s guests.

Applying the personal touch is just one weapon in an executive style that Bush has wielded in six years as governor in the face of an almost evenly divided Legislature.

The next president of the United States also values personal relationships, nurses an instinct for bipartisanship and shows a willingness to compromise and a tendency to set broad agendas--but leaves the details to others.

In Washington, that mixture of intimacy and detachment soon will face its severest test as Bush seeks to unite the nation while working with a bitterly divided Congress.

In Texas, a key to his successes as governor was his adroit care and feeding of Democrats. But building coalitions in Washington won’t be quite so easy.

Congress is not the Texas Legislature, where Democrats generally are more conservative and Republicans are far less ideologically rigid than most in Congress.

“A lot of the Democrats he works with in Texas are to the right of Wisconsin’s most conservative Republicans,” said U.S. Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) “It doesn’t take much to work with those folks. It’s Texas--they all have the same agenda.”

As Bush arrives in Washington for a whirlwind, two-day visit, he remains a stranger to many members of Congress, including even some Republicans, from whom he distanced himself during the 2000 campaign.

But a look at Bush’s tireless charm offensive aimed at key Democrats here suggests how he is likely to go about wooing Daschle and Gephardt and their many rambunctious rank-and-file members in Congress.

To start with--and this hardly surprises Naishtat and other Texas Democrats in Austin--Bush today will meet with Daschle and Gephardt individually and in private--not so much a divide-and-conquer ploy as a means of establishing intimacy and a personal bond.

That is precisely what Bush did as governor. (Indeed, before long, he may well assign individual Democrats their own nicknames--another Bush trait.)

Within days of his November 1994 election, Bush began courting Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock, the most powerful Democrat in Texas. Bush privately called him “Bully.”

Bush visited Bullock in his west Austin home, calling him “sir.”

Bush had good reason to be wary. He later described Bullock as “a man of outsize passions and famous faults”--someone who was “frequently outrageous, sometimes crass, often funny, always cunning.”

The two ended up forging a close personal as well as professional relationship, culminating in Bullock’s endorsement of Bush in his gubernatorial reelection campaign over Bullock’s own Democratic protege. Days before Bullock died of cancer in June 1999, the two men shared words of respect and tears.

Another influential Democrat whom Bush quickly sought out was state Rep. Paul Sadler, inviting him to his office for a box lunch.

As chairman of the House Committee on Public Education, Sadler had campaigned vigorously for Gov. Ann Richards, showing up at Bush’s campaign events to make the case for the Democratic school reform agenda.

But the newly elected governor immediately put Sadler at ease by thanking him for avoiding partisan attacks during that campaign.

They proceeded to exchange ideas over education--the start of an unusually productive relationship.

To this day, Naishtat remembers sitting at his desk in the House chamber just weeks after Bush had been inaugurated, as several fellow Democrats gathered at his desk to compare notes on the Bush treatment.

Each one marveled at the individual attention Bush had lavished upon them, including private invitations to the Governor’s Mansion.

“The whole time that Richards was governor, she never came by to our offices,” Naishtat recalled in an interview. And even when she did reach out to her fellow Democrats, such invitations nearly always were extended to them en masse.

Naishtat, who also backed Richards in 1994, got the royal Bush treatment as well.

Bush immediately made a good first impression, showing that he had done his homework. “How did a guy from New York, an ex-VISTA [Volunteers in Service to America] volunteer, end up in Texas and pass more bills than any other member?” Bush asked Naishtat.

During the course of their 25-minute tete-a-tete, Bush told him: “I know we’re not going to agree all the time, but feel free to call.”

“It was brilliant of him to do that,” said Naishtat, who is about to begin his sixth House term and is chairman of the Human Services Committee. “It certainly demonstrated his willingness to reach out to the other side.

“When he thinks he has a good relationship, he’s really very friendly and engaging. It was a very enjoyable meeting.”

Despite that playful headlock on Naishtat, Bush did not get his way that time.

“I think that George Bush is going to bend over backwards to reach out to Democrats,” Naishtat said. “That is his style. It worked well for him in Texas.”

Another object of Bush’s courtship was Democratic House Speaker James E. “Pete” Laney, a West Texas cotton farmer and used-car dealer whom Bush would describe as “a master of brinkmanship.”

A day or two after his election, Bush met with Laney in the swank Four Seasons hotel, which overlooks Austin’s scenic Town Lake.

Soon thereafter, Bush was having weekly breakfasts at the Governor’s Mansion with Bullock and Laney. But after Bullock complained about the food being “too healthy, not greasy enough,” the three moved their get-togethers to Bullock’s place, where the fare consisted of biscuits and gravy, eggs and pancakes.

“Our early meetings were push and pull. Bullock would thrust, and I’d jab back. We were testing each other, probing,” Bush recalled in his 1999 autobiography, “A Charge to Keep.”

His relationship with Laney so blossomed over the years that on Wednesday night, when he was to address the nation after Vice President Al Gore conceded the presidential election, Bush asked Laney to introduce him.

The venue itself was symbolic--the chamber of the Texas House of Representatives, which Bush called “home to bipartisan cooperation.”

“Many of us wondered what kind of leader he would be. We wondered how he would bring everyone together after a hard-fought election,” Laney said.

“When he became governor, he reached out to members of the Legislature of both parties. We didn’t always agree on issues, but we found that we could have policy differences without having gridlock. We could debate without bitterness and we could reach agreement and resolve problems without sacrificing principles.”

Laney’s flattering words notwithstanding, many Democrats here in fact were miffed because they had not been invited to Bush’s speech.

“A lot of people are very upset,” said state Rep. Glen Maxey, a Democrat, who strongly backed Gore.

In his address, Bush told the nation: “The spirit of cooperation I have seen in this hall is what is needed in Washington.”

But Naishtat is dubious about Bush’s ability to make that happen.

“I think there are many Democratic [congressional] members who will be favorably impressed by Bush’s approach and believe that they have been treated in an unusually personal manner,” he said.

“But whether they will be swayed in their opinions by this approach remains to be seen. I certainly have my doubts. . . . Washington is so partisan. It’s a different system.”