White House Journal
In the Rose Garden, Bush, Aides Revel In Their Successes
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 4, 2001; Page A04
President Bush accepted a shiny blue racing bicycle from Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong yesterday -- and did a metaphorical victory lap of his own.
On the eve of a month-long vacation in Texas, the president shared a podium in the East Room with the three-time champ, extolling Armstrong's recovery from cancer and his athletic prowess in the French Pyrenees.
"He's done more than survive -- he has triumphed," the president said. "Lance Armstrong is a vivid reminder that the great achievements of life are often won or lost in the mountains when the climb is the steepest, when the heart is tested."
Such notions -- a steep climb, testing the heart, great achievements -- blended perfectly with Bush's parting theme yesterday: triumph over adversity. Celebrating his administration's achievements, he made plain that the determined can clear any hurdle. Cancer. Mountains. Even partisan Democrats.
"Together with Congress, we're proving that a new tone, a clear agenda and active leadership can bring significant progress to the nation's capital," the president, flanked by his Cabinet, said in the Rose Garden before meeting Armstrong. "We're ending deadlock and drift, and making our system work on behalf of the American people."
The event was a celebration of Bush's achievements in his first six months -- a tax cut enacted and education, health, energy and social-policy legislation making its way through Congress. The Cabinet secretaries were suitably festive. The attorney general put the secretary of transportation into a playful headlock. The secretary of defense gave a gentle shoulder check to the secretary of state. The chief of staff joshed with the secretary of energy.
Bush's remarks, his spokesman said, were to celebrate "the successes, the accomplishments, the importance of working in a bipartisan fashion." The bipartisan bromides he offered were meant to be a soothing balm after a week in which inter-party bonhomie was strained, a time when Bush and congressional Republicans quarreled noisily with Democrats before defeating them on the issues of energy policy and protection from HMOs.
Bush's "changed the tone" words are at odds with the actions of lawmakers on the Hill. A Congressional Quarterly analysis yesterday found that partisanship in Congress hasn't declined, and may have increased. In the Senate, CQ found, "party unity" votes increased to 64.1 percent this year from 48.6 percent in 2000, the highest level of partisanship in the six years CQ reviewed.
In the House, CQ found, 45.5 percent of roll-call votes were party unity votes, defined as a majority of voting Republicans opposing a majority of voting Democrats. That's up from 43 percent last year and similar to the years back to 1996, which ranged as high as 55.5 percent.
The experts say the tone hasn't changed much at all. "We've got some pretty significant partisanship on these critical votes as they occur," said American Enterprise Institute scholar Norman Ornstein. "Partly because of the leaders, partly because of Bush's strategy, we've seen fairly sharp partisanship." And the voters don't seem convinced, either. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week found that 50 percent of respondents thought Bush had "brought needed change to Washington," while 47 percent thought he had not.
But the president is an optimist, and his aides share his upbeat views. "The president's leadership is replacing a culture of gridlock and cynicism with a constructive spirit of bipartisan respect and results," the White House affirmed yesterday in a document distributed to reporters. It said Bush "won bipartisan legislative victories on several key priorities, including education, debt reduction, tax relief, defense, energy and his agenda to rally America's armies of compassion."
Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, after a series of close votes in the House on Bush's energy policy this week, said the House "sent a bipartisan message in support of a comprehensive energy policy." Vice President Cheney, at a rally with GOP leaders Thursday, made it a point to "thank a lot of Democrats who actively participated in the bipartisan efforts that were mounted."
The Democrats are having nothing to do with such conciliatory talk. "Today we will vote on a bill that's just another example of a good idea that will be parked in the GOP junkyard," an Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), the House minority leader, growled at a rally dueling with Cheney's.
Bush and his advisers know that politics is often more about brass tacks than togetherness. "It may be a slim party-line vote," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, defending the president's tough tactics on the patients' rights legislation this week. "Still, at the end of the day, a majority is how you get things done in America."
While Democrats seethe and stew, Bush has figured that, however fierce the underlying partisan disputes, there's more to be gained by keeping himself above the fray and urging lawmakers to get along. Americans, Bush said in the Rose Garden yesterday, "want us to look for agreement instead of looking for fights and arguments. Americans know obstructionism when they see it, and when necessary, I will point it out."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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