Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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The First Report Card

Friday, April 20, 2001

In the tradition of that great Groucho Marx line: "I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members," I generally don't attend meetings, because I don't care to sit in gatherings to which people like me have been invited.

Nevertheless, the other day, I dutifully stood in line (the New York construct of "standing ON line" has taken on a different meaning since the advent of the Internet) at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building presenting my driver's license and being cleared in for a meeting with, as we like to say, Senior Administration Officials.

The meeting included a pretty impressive list of former high Ford, Reagan, and Bush (41) Administration officials, big time lobbyists, former Members of Congress (to the extent that is not a redundancy), public relations experts, assorted other movers and shakers, well known pollsters, and � me.

The issue at hand was a discussion on how the Administration of President George W. Bush is doing as it nears the geologically accurate, but functionally immaterial 100 day mark on April 30.

The biggest success of the Bush Administration's First 100 Days, is that there are any successes at all.

The Republicans in the House have a majority which can be counted on one hand and on no hands in the Senate. Yet, there is no gridlock.

If, in April 1996, the word had gone out that five years later the GOP majorities would be at these levels you would not have been able to get a bet that the House could approve the Journal each morning, much less pass major budget and tax legislation.

As for the Administration's defeat in the Senate on a budget resolution which contemplated a tax cut of only about $1.3 trillion, consider this from Alison Mitchell's NY Times article on December 16, 2000 - just a few days after Al Gore's concession speech:

"The tax-cut proposal was one of the clear dividing lines in the campaign just ended. Mr. Gore proposed only $500 billion in tax cuts, most of them for specific needs, like a college education or retirement savings. Most Democrats oppose cuts of the magnitude proposed by Mr. Bush."

$500 billion proposed, $1.3 trillion adopted. Some defeat.

On another legislative front, there have been buzzings throughout Your Nation's Capital over the past few days about the warm feelings which have developed between Senator Ted Kennedy and President Bush over the progress being made toward an education reform bill.

Former White House chief-of-staff, Ken Duberstein, said, wisely, that the most important thing about how "The First 100 Days" is portrayed is "the extent to which it lays the foundation for the second 100 days" when the Congress will be voting on final passage on tax bills and education bills.

See pictures of Groucho, the Executive Office Building, and the Catchy Caption on the Secret Decoder Ring.

Over the next week you will not be able to pick up a newspaper or turn on a chat show without seeing 100-day comparisons between Bush and President Clinton.

It was the Clinton model to be in the face of the Members of the House and Senate on every semi-colon, in every subsection, of every bill, every day.

Clinton got almost everything he asked for sooner or later, so it was a very successful model.

Bush promised to change the tone of Washington; which he has done. But we have such a finely developed sense of cynicism here that we find it difficult to take anyone at his or her word without trying to peek behind the screen to see what's REALLY going on.

The Democrats and the press are having some difficulty taking Bush at his word and adapting to the new - Bush - model.

The Bush model in Washington pretty closely tracks the model he developed as Governor of Texas:

- Clearly indicate the boundaries around an issue, inside of which he would like the proposal to be drawn.
- Let the Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate hammer out a solution which works both as to the policy and the politics but stays within those boundaries.
-Sign it.

As we saw in the context of the China incident last week, President Bush does not need to have his personal stamp on negotiations each and every step of the way.

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