Bush's Term II: a slow road

Just seven months after the election results rolled in, some Washington cognoscenti are already wondering if President Bush has fallen into the second-term trap - overreaching and winding up with a fistful of air.

Nonsense, say White House officials, who counsel patience. The president is trying to do big things - such as remaking Social Security and transforming the Middle East - and success takes time. To be sure, Bush has suffered setbacks in recent weeks, including the challenge to his nomination of John Bolton as UN ambassador, surging violence in Iraq, and lack of momentum on Social Security reform. Job-approval ratings stuck in the mid-40s - and even lower public esteem for Bush's handling of key issues - reduce Congress's incentive to go along with his agenda.

When asked at this week's press conference whether he was losing momentum, he replied first with some successes - bankruptcy legislation, class-action lawsuit reform, and the long-delayed confirmation of a federal judge. But the bulk of his answer focused on initiatives that are stalled in Congress - energy legislation, Central American free trade, and Social Security. And he sought to put the onus for success on the legislators, speaking of "the standard by which Congress should be judged."

Ultimately, say presidential scholars, no one should count Bush out. He is a seasoned political operator, going back to his father's presidency, and it is clear from the way he speaks that he knows how Washington works. On Social Security, he has not repeated President Clinton's fatal error of laying down an ultimatum on healthcare reform. And Bush says he won't put forth draft legislation on Social Security, because "the first bill on the Hill is always dead on arrival." He has left himself wiggle room for a deal.

"I would be astonished if something does not emerge from the Hill on Social Security which he declares success on," says Fred Greenstein, an emeritus professor of political science at Princeton University. It may not contain precisely the kind of personal accounts that he wants, Dr. Greenstein surmises, but given Bush's longstanding personal devotion to the concept, it will probably have "some token in the direction of private accounts."

Bob Dole, the former Senate Republican leader and a veteran of the 1983 Social Security reform, says the president needs to sit down with the leadership of the Senate, specifically the leaders of the key committees, not for a photo op, but to try to find common ground, "if it takes an hour or a week or a month or two months."

"It's got to be bipartisan," said the former senator in a recent local public-radio interview. "You can't shove a Social Security program down somebody's throat."

So far, in public, Bush has tended toward more confrontational language in talking about his agenda. At this week's press conference, he said three times that his job as president is to "push."

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