In Address, Bush Is Seen Avoiding Large Initiatives

01/26/2006

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
NY Times
Published: January 26, 2006

WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 — Having stabilized his political standing after a difficult 2005, President Bush is heading into his State of the Union address on Tuesday intent primarily on retaining his party’s slim majority in Congress this year and completing unfinished business from his existing agenda.

Unlike last year, when he used the occasion to kick off an ambitious and ultimately failed effort to overhaul Social Security, Mr. Bush seems unlikely to reshape the political landscape with his speech on Tuesday, members of both parties said.

Lawmakers said this election year would not be a good time to push difficult initiatives, and the White House has already shelved what it had initially planned as its big idea for 2006, a rewriting of the tax code.

Administration officials and other Republicans in Washington said Mr. Bush would focus on several topics, including health care, spending restraint, illegal immigration and the nation’s international economic competitiveness, as well as an unapologetic restatement of his national security policy.

Much of the speech, they said, will be tied together under a broad theme acknowledging that the United States is going through transitions that involve wrenching dislocation as well as opportunity.

His aides portray Mr. Bush as undaunted by the plague of setbacks last year that loosened his grip on his party and drove down his poll numbers, which although up from their lows last fall remain at anemic levels. They said he was intent on using the nationally televised address on Tuesday to set out a forceful agenda that he will use to draw sharp contrasts with Democrats.

“People don’t sit around here wallowing and wondering if we should go the school uniform route because we had some challenges last year,” said Nicolle Wallace, the White House communications director, referring to an initiative once championed by President Bill Clinton that has come to symbolize a retreat into small-bore leadership.

“The state of the union address will be directional for our party and our country, and visionary,” Ms. Wallace said. “That is not code for it lacking substance.”

In the broadest sense, Mr. Bush’s challenge is to demonstrate to both parties that he can still drive the national agenda despite the increasing difficulties he has had keeping Republicans together on domestic issues and in line with his assertively expansive view of his own wartime powers.

After five tumultuous years in office, he must show that his administration is not exhausted and bereft of ideas, and that the more ambitious goals he has set out at home and abroad have not crashed up against the nation’s tolerance for ideological change.

The president’s main goals for the year appear to be showing progress in Iraq, the issue that more than any determines his public support, and doing all he can to help maintain Republican control of Congress in the fall elections.

Part of that calculation, members of both parties said, is acknowledging that overreaching on legislative initiatives this year could carry outsized political risks, since the loss of even of few seats in either chamber could endanger his ability to get anything done for the remainder of his term.

“We shouldn’t underestimate the White House’s ability to win a political campaign, so to the extent that success in November is his objective, this is his announcement speech, and an important one,” said Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, an organization of centrist Democrats.

The speech is an opportunity for Mr. Bush to frame the legislative debates that will dominate Congress in coming months and provide ammunition for the fall elections. He has signaled that he will push hard for the extension of his tax cuts, arguing that failure to do so would amount to a tax increase that would endanger the economy. He is also fighting big fights over reauthorization of the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act and legislation to stem illegal immigration.

Aides said he also wanted to set out a broader vision of where the country should be heading and how it should get there.

“He views the times we are living in to be transformational, and with that comes great anxiety,” said a senior administration official who is working closely with the president on the speech and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide a glimpse of the speech’s contents.