Speech Mixes New Flexibility, Old Ambition

WASHINGTON —  As president, George W. Bush has more often sought to roll over his critics than negotiate with them.

But intriguingly, in a brisk, businesslike State of the Union speech Wednesday night, he hinted at more flexibility than he has typically displayed.

Bush reaffirmed the ideologically aggressive agenda he defined during his reelection campaign. But he also attempted in subtle yet unmistakable ways to respond to key criticisms that have emerged about his plans.

Since his inaugural address last month, for instance, Bush has faced charges that he’s encouraged democratization only in countries America considers hostile. In Wednesday’s speech, he directly urged Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two allies, to expand freedom for their people.

In requesting aid to the fledgling Palestinian government, he responded to critics in Europe and America who had accused him of missing opportunities to promote peace with Israel.

Likewise, Bush has faced a steady barrage of criticism from Democrats and some independent analysts who have accused him of stressing a spoonful of sugar in the Social Security debate -- his promise to allow workers to create private investment accounts -- while slighting the tough medicine of benefit reductions or revenue increases that might be necessary to close the system’s long-term financing imbalance.

But without endorsing specifics, he explicitly said that ideas such as raising the retirement age, means-testing benefits or tying the growth of future benefits to price increases rather than wage increases all “are on the table.” And he identified each of those ideas with a Democrat who had supported it at some point during the 1990s.

Only subsequent decisions will reveal whether these gestures signal a lasting shift in Bush’s willingness to reach out to his critics.

And whatever his intention, the underlying goals of Bush’s agenda will make it difficult for him to reach consensus with Democrats in Congress -- and perhaps with traditional allies abroad. In that sense, the president’s gestures toward his critics may prove a 50-foot bridge over a 100-foot gorge.

The central domestic policy aim Bush underscored Wednesday night -- diverting part of the Social Security payroll tax into accounts workers could invest in stocks or bonds -- has virtually no support among Democrats.

That attitude was dramatized by the scattered Democratic shouts of “no” that greeted Bush’s portrayal of the program’s fiscal condition.

Similarly, the hard line that Bush signaled toward Iran and Syria was bound to raise anxieties in European capitals concerned that he was too inclined to resolve disputes by force.

Nor did he give any ground to his critics on Iraq, insisting that the U.S. could not “set an artificial timetable for leaving.”

Like almost all of Bush’s major addresses, this speech was defined above all by its ambition. With its grand goals at home and its promise of transforming change abroad, the speech sounded like the kind of crusade usually launched by a president who had won an electoral landslide.

Yet this soaring agenda came from a president whose margin of victory in November, measured as a share of the popular vote, was the smallest of any reelected president, and who continues to face a country in which voters divide almost exactly in half over his job performance.

Throughout U.S. history, few, if any presidents have sought to leverage such vast changes from such a thin electoral advantage.

The gap between the scale of Bush’s ambition and the size of his political coalition raises a simple question about the long list of proposals, initiatives and philosophical guideposts he outlined Wednesday night: Has he bitten off more than he can chew?

In his first term, operating from an even more tenuous political position, Bush enjoyed more success than almost any analyst expected in advancing his agenda -- whether slashing taxes at home or deposing Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

In many ways, Bush is in a stronger position now. Though narrow for a reelected president by historical standards, his win was much more convincing than his disputed victory in 2000.

Probably even more relevant than the size of his victory was his success at helping the GOP win seats in Congress. Since 2000, Republicans have expanded their majority by five seats in the Senate (to 55) and 10 in the House (to 231).

Those gains not only increase his party’s clout in Congress, they allow him to argue to GOP lawmakers hesitant about elements of his agenda that supporting him benefits not only his cause, but theirs.

“It’s important that he brought Republicans in the House and Senate with him,” said one GOP strategist familiar with White House thinking. “They were successful because he was successful. And that means something. They have more confidence that he knows what he is doing.”

The widespread participation in the Iraqi election Sunday may also soften public anxieties about the U.S. commitment there, especially if it leads to a lasting reduction in violence.

And the heartfelt outpouring of applause for the parents of a Marine killed in Iraq -- followed by the dramatic embrace between the serviceman’s mother and an Iraqi human rights activist -- offered a subtle reminder of how much popular strength Bush draws from his position as commander in chief.

But he also faces new constraints. The huge ongoing federal deficits limit his capacity to launch new programs; the return of red ink, for instance, has greatly complicated Bush’s Social Security initiative by requiring trillions in new borrowing to fund the individual accounts he wants to create.

“The bad policy choices he made in the first term both constrain his ability to act and to maneuver on these big-ticket issues,” said John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. “Who said deficits didn’t matter?”

The ongoing pressures on the military from the Iraq war, and the political strains it has generated at home and abroad, have curtailed his ability to use military force against other nations he considers threats.

Above all, the country -- and the globe -- is more polarized over him and his agenda than four years ago.

In the first Gallup Organization Inc. poll after Bush’s inaugural address in 2001, 88% of Republicans, 53% of independents and 32% of Democrats said they approved of his job performance. Two national polls released this week showed that his approval rating among Republicans remained virtually unchanged, but had dropped to just over 45% among independents and about 15% among Democrats.

That antipathy among rank-and-file Democrats has increased the pressure on the party’s members of Congress to oppose his agenda.

This week, for instance, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he believed he had commitments from all of the Senate’s Democrats to oppose Bush’s plan to divert part of the payroll tax that now funds Social Security into individual accounts. If that proves true, Democrats would have enough votes for a filibuster to kill the proposal that Bush promoted so ardently Wednesday night.

Just as troubling for the White House have been the cracks in Republican unity. The key to Bush’s first-term legislative success was his ability to hold together congressional Republicans, even on ideas that left some of them uneasy.

Since his reelection, conservatives have recoiled from the immigration reform proposal Bush reaffirmed last night, and a wide range of Republicans have questioned his Social Security plan.

Some of the most intriguing passages in Bush’s speech may have intended to reach out to those who have resisted him. But his first priority may be to restore the sense of shared purpose among those who have stood by his side.