How Is Bush Governing?
Transition to Governing Project

May 15, 2001

Transcript prepared from a tape recording

Moderators:
Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute
Thomas Mann, Brookings Institution
Panelists:
David R. Gergen, Kennedy School of Government
Fred I. Greenstein, Princeton University

Proceedings:

MR. ORNSTEIN: …David Gergen will join us very shortly. He is coming from across town and let us know that he would be just a couple of minutes late for this session on how is Bush governing 115 days into his presidency.

We'll make an initial assessment and then draw on some categories on leadership and project ahead.

I am joined by Tom Mann, W. Averell Harriman senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; by Fred Greenstein, who is professor of politics at Princeton University, director of the Woodrow Wilson School Research Program and Leadership Studies; and soon by David Gergen, who is a professor of public service at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and co-director of its Center for Public Leadership.

This program is part of the Transition to Governing project, a project funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts--isn't everything?--

[Laughter.]

--Which is jointly run by Tom and me through our institutions, the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution, with an effort as well through the Hoover Institution and others, which has been going on for the last almost 2 years and will through the next year, looking at how we make the transition to governing; trying to move us past or at least ameliorate a little bit the impact of what has become a major feature of contemporary American governance and politics, the permanent campaign; make the transition actually function as a transition, so that there is some separation between campaign and governing; make the nomination and confirmation process work better; but also assess the process of governing.

And here we will be talking about all of these things, partly informed by a series of books done by the project and by our two guests, which are very relevant for today.

Here at the project, we have published the "Permanent Campaign and Its Future," a collection of essays that look at the reasons behind the expansion of what we've come to know as the permanent campaign, the lack of any difference or separation between campaigning and governing, and really almost the hostile takeover of governing by politics in our time.

A book collecting the memos of Richard E. Neustadt called "Preparing to be President," transition memos that began before John F. Kennedy became president and actually continued up through the present day, that include some reflections by Neustadt on the background and history.

Fred Greenstein's most recent book, part of a long and distinguished series of books that he has written on the presidency called "The Presidential Difference; Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton," that looks at the last 11 presidents and characteristics of leadership, what matters, what helps and what doesn't.

And David Gergen's most recent book, "Eyewitness to Power; The Essence of Leadership," which are recollections in part on his own public service, working for a number of presidents in both parties.

We will also, besides relying on these books and our own observations, try and weave into a larger question a question that was raised by a colleague here at AEI, Newt Gingrich, both in an op-ed piece in the New York Times a couple weeks ago and a bit in a session here yesterday, on reflections on transformational leadership versus managerial leadership.

I think the terms almost speak for themselves, but really whether George W. Bush has the capacity or exists in the times to become a transformational leader, to really change almost the paradigm of discussion in public policy, change the basic framework, or whether we're destined because of who he is, the people around him and the lack of dramatic crisis to just tinker at the margins.

So we'll try to address that both in the context of what policies are out there and what may lie ahead.

One-hundred-fifteen days into a presidency is not a great time to develop a firm assessment. As Fred and others have pointed out, indeed, it was pointed out in Richard Neustadt’s first memo, I believe, to candidate John F. Kennedy, the 100-day assessment, even in American political terms is unfair to presidents because it goes back to Franklin Roosevelt, who not only had the dramatic crisis of the Great Depression but also existed at a time when the transition was from November to March, not from November to January.

So there was more time to build some momentum, to craft a program to get people in place before the formal 100 days, starting with the inauguration actually began.

But it also is that the concept of the first 100 days actually goes back to Napoleon and refers to the time from his departure from exile on Elba to Waterloo, which is probably not the kind of comparison that most modern presidents would like to have.

[Laughter.]

And George W. Bush and the people around him--Karl Rove, among others--have tried, first of all, to get away from the whole idea of a first 100 days, then succumbed, realized they couldn't, and tried to shape it to their best advantage, but have talked much more about the first 180 days, the first year.

Those are fair points to make, and I think we will try and stretch it out. But certainly--and make these larger comparisons.

You can begin to get an assessment after the first 100 days, and you begin to get assessment from the time the election is over, even if it takes 35 days to sort things out, to the time when the inauguration takes place, to get some leading indications of whether a president is thinking ahead, is shaping his term, is trying to shape the politics around him rather than be shaped by them, and what may lie ahead in the future for the presidency, admitting that predictions are very shaky. But also understanding that this is a great country and these days, no matter what predictions you make, if you're proven to be utterly, outlandishly wrong, the worst thing that happens is you get your own show on MSNBC.

[Laughter.]

I will give my own assessment in a short while, but let me turn to Tom for some initial comments.

MR. MANN: Thank you, Norman.

2000 provided perhaps the most extraordinary election, certainly in any of our memories. I think arguably in at least a century. And therefore, asking how a president is doing in the challenge of governing has to flow from the extraordinary characteristics of the election itself.

And ultimately, we have to ask the question: Has the president responded to the circumstances of that election in a way that makes sense for the country and gives him a reasonable opportunity to put in place a plausible program for governing?

I think the general consensus in this town is that the president, in embarking on a strategy of assuming a clear victory, of claiming a mandate, of shoring up his base, of sticking to his campaign promises, followed, you know, a sensible strategy that gave him the best shot of succeeding.

As long as he retains the capacity to, at the very end, accept whatever he can achieve and then declare victory, it gives him a plausible basis for moving beyond this election.

That's the consensus that has developed in this town. It may, in the end, prove correct. I don't think it's obviously correct.

I think there were alternatives and what I think, in the end, argue is that the president both took a risk in assuming normalcy and governing according to Politics 101, but he failed to take another risk, which was to say, "What an extraordinary election. What an absence of any clear public sentiment for a major departure in governing. Here's a chance to actually put some substance in a political center that has become vacated in recent years."

He decided to opt against that strategy, embrace the first. Thus far, things are moving along in a sort of reasonably productive fashion, but the jury is very much out on whether this will work in the long run.

What I think is very important to acknowledge at the outset is that there are two questions to ask about Bush and governing.

One is, how well is he playing the game of politics and governance?

And secondly, to what end? To what end?

It's easy for political scientists and pundits to set aside the end, the substance part of that, and to focus on analyzing the game of politics, but I would suggest to you that the substance is equally important.

And from that perspective, let me say on the game of politics and governing, I give George W. Bush credit for three things:

One, of making his presidency about something substantial; you can call it sticking to his promises made in the campaign, promises made, promises kept, of actually believing that it wasn't enough just to maneuver politically, to actually advance some fairly ambitious proposals. You see it with his tax cuts, his energy program, Social Security, national missile defense, and beyond.

Second, he has provided a calm, a discipline, a focus, a demeanor that contrasts favorably with the outgoing administration.

And thirdly, I would say this is one of the most skillful political administrations I have ever seen. They have very astute, strategic thinking in the White House under Karl Rove. They choreographed a beautiful start to the administration. They have demonstrated amazing political damage control. They have had four or five potentially serious missteps, and within 48 hours, they had responded.

George W. Bush is now the born again conservation president. That's a good case in point. He has been very successful in his base in moving to declare victory.

In fact, in some respects, I would argue this is the quintessential permanent campaign presidency. It makes Bill Clinton look like a stay-at-home president in his travels around the country and in the sort of political thought that goes into every aspect of his presidency. That's the good side.

Now, the negative side goes more to the "to what ends" part of it, and I'll conclude with this comment:

The only thing that matters for George W. Bush in this first year is the tax cut. The tax cut is the way of firming up his party and his base and creating the predicate for things that would follow from it.

And what is sobering are comments like we saw in E.J. Dionne's column this morning. In italics: We should not take seriously anything President Bush says about his tax cut.

That is, today the rationales for the same tax cut have changed radically over the months since it was first introduced. Everyone knows that the amount, whether its $1.25 or $1.35, is a joke. It's an accounting game to be played in 10 or 11 years. What matters is what are the revenue losses in year 11 and year 12, and what kind of shape are we going to be in to meet the challenge of the retiring baby boomers at that time.

So I would argue that the centerpiece of his presidency is, in its substantive terms, flawed and disingenuous, and that puts in question the "to want end" dimension of his start, which--and I conclude with this--raises the sort of final point I'd make: What is appropriate in a democracy? How far should an elected leader go ahead of the public? How much should he shape public opinion? Lead it? And how much should he respond to it?

My view is that clever political leaders get a bit out in front of the public, but not too far in front. I would suggest that the thrust of the substantive proposals of this administration are substantially out of line with public preferences and felt public needs. And absent any kind of election mandate or strong political support on Capitol Hill, the going will get rockier as the weeks and months pass.

Thank you.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Fred?

MR. GREENSTEIN: The later we are in this sequence of presentations, the more we're likely to be a victim of what a friend of ours once called "anticipatory plagiarism."

[Laughter.]

So having heard the points, how can I weave into this? Well, I've just been concentrating my mind, not by the imminent prospect of hanging, but the need to write an afterward for " The Presidential Difference" for the paperback, and therefore, writing some things about what one can make of George W. Bush and his political style, which you've got some insight into, after all, from six years as a governor. But also from a lifetime of being someone who I think generically is a political natural, even if, unlike, say, his fellow early Texan, Lyndon Baines Johnson, he doesn't know where all bodies are and all the issues are in Washington and has to rely on his very impressive support system.

Very quickly, just to tick off some things in terms of a checklist that'll be familiar to anyone who knows "The Presidential Difference." There are, in my views, a half dozen core things one might look at in a president.

The first two are about the president as an individual. There are ones that in Dave Gergen's leadership course at Harvard are pegged by the headings "IQ" and "EQ," the emotional and the intellectual qualities. And of course, there was a point where gravitas was a repetitive cliché about this man.

I think being emotionally together is a kind of a threshold that one really wants. You don't want a president who is going to destroy his presidency via a Watergate or mess it up via a personal indiscretion. And we have examples, as those things indicate.

At age 40, George W. Bush stopped, to some extent, being the conspicuously underachieving son of a super-achieving father. Up until then, among other things, he had been drinking heavily for the previous two years, and then took a particular religious fix to get away from that.

You might think that someone like that would be an emotional tinderbox. What's striking, I think, is the resiliency he's shown in the face of the defeat in New Hampshire, the long stalemate, keeping his cool I think basically, after some perhaps inappropriate initial responses in that standoff over the surveillance plane.

So as far as one can see this is someone who seems to be taking the heat in the kitchen.

Brains? "Saturday Night Live," to the contrary notwithstanding, this is obviously a man who is not cognitively challenged in any fundamental sense. I was struck by the sort of solid way he was handling Friday's snap press conference.

But someone also who has never invested a lot in sharpening his mind, who doesn't seem to have interest in the play of ideas, and some of the things we have seen here have been signs of discomfort, signs of reluctance to handle the sorts of issues that his father could handle very well, because his father had spent a lifetime being up to speed on specifics, and his father had been Phi Beta from Yale not a C student from Yale.

The political system is set up --was setup in the 18th century to make it very difficult to get results and now we need to get results from it, so skill is important. And I don't think George W. is quite a Lyndon Johnson, of whom it was said he was a genius at dividing by two and adding one. He seems--on the other hand, George Bush plus Dick Cheney plus everybody else and that makes for quite a strikingly, as Tom points out, skilled presidency in a narrow gauge direction.

Now the great Texan Lyndon Johnson's skill was not accompanied by a concrete and realistic and appropriate vision in foreign policy, and therefore, used that skill to get us into the swamp of Vietnam.

What's striking, I think about George W. Bush is not that he is a policy wonk who is fascinated with the substance of a concrete vision, but that he has learned from his father's shortcomings in the area of the vision thing to have a program, to stand by it, indeed, almost to be kind of excessively programmed on a few set issues so as to be insensitive to new things that arise.

But I think of this as sort of vision by proxy. Not a Reaganesque vision that is implanted in your psyche but an instrumental sense that you need a compass and therefore, he's got one.

Organization is under-recognized, but chaotically organized presidencies give us things like Iran-Contra or the Clinton presidency, which was described as being internally like a child's soccer team without assigned roles and everybody chasing the ball. And this is not a presidency that is chasing the ball.

And I think it's well recognized that there is a real problem about the lack of second, third level appointments, which is in many ways an institutional problem. Just having so many experienced people is impressive and the fact that somebody like this can have supporters who have followed him over time and remain bonded to him suggest an organizational capacity. Clearly, the issue is the extent that this man engages in. And that then relates to the absence of a short of substantial investment in the cognitive side of presidential leadership.

In Texas, Bush often made decisions on the basis of very, very structured and limited bits of exposure.

For instance, in appeals on capital punishment, he spent 15 minutes on each, getting briefings. On the report on the Texas A&M bonfire tragedy, he did not read the executive summary, had a paragraph or two of it highlighted.

I think you can tell from press conferences and so on that he's getting deeper into substance, if only just by virtue of being constantly briefed in the course of the day.

But we've also seen episodes where he changes policy toward Taiwan inadvertently and obviously not changing the policy. But another element of this presidency is the readiness to engage in damage control or the readiness on his part to essentially correct Cabinet members and other subordinates after they have taken positions.

Finally, something of fundamental importance is the bully pulpit and communications. And as everybody has recognized, this is a president who even though he is out on the hustings all the time is not making national news to a surprising extent, who doesn't seem somehow to fill the space of the political system, who seems almost to view the presidency as if it's a narrow executive role rather than a role that also has a larger inspirational head of state quality.

So while many people may think it's edifying that he didn't fly out to Seattle when the airmen came back--and nobody doubts that Clinton would have done that--you don't--I think there's a problem with him failing to be up front. And that may be related to the 9-point drop between this month and last month in his approval level from 62 to 53 percent. It's hard to say what to do on the basis of one month.

But for those of us who watch presidencies, it's one more butterfly for our collection, and we'll see whether we're classifying it correctly.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Do we call presidential butterflies monarch butterflies?

[Laughter.]

David Gergen.

MR. GERGEN: Thank you.

And I apologize for being late here. I was speaking to another group, Leadership Washington, which for some reason was meeting in Oxon Hill.

[Laughter.]

But in any event, Fred and Norm and I shared a platform in Princeton a few weeks ago to talk about the 100 days. And I've been stealing shamelessly from Norm ever since.

[Laughter.]

I think he was the one that had the announcement: This just in, we have a new title for the Clinton years, "Sex Between the Bushes."

[Laughter.]

Which it's Okay to steal from Norm. Al Franken has been doing it for years, too.

[Laughter.]

I have not heard the full benefit of all the comments here, but I can to a large extent some of what has been said already that I have heard.

It seems to me that George W. Bush, for those who watch presidents, is a curious president in many ways. There are a couple of issues that he raises that are different from what we have seen in the past. A predominant theme among our recent presidents is we've had people who are highly regarded in terms of their capability, but were done in, to a large extent, by their character. And I think we saw that in particular in the most recent case with Bill Clinton, but we obviously saw that with Richard Nixon as well. And there have been other examples that Fred talks about in his book in which the emotional intelligence and his capacity for self-understanding and for self-mastery has been lacking and some of our most capable people have wound up performing below expectations.

In George W. Bush's case, it seems to me is that the question has been flipped. Here we have a man of clear, strong character, a man who not only understands himself, but has I think achieved self-mastery. He has the kinds of emotional skills with others that he has developed over time. He has both empathy and social skills.

He has all the ingredients Daniel Goldman would call emotional intelligence. And the issue has become for many journalists, indeed for a lot of people: Is he ready for the presidency? Was he ready by way of background, intellect, curiosity?

It's notable, for example, that if you go back to the presidents from Franklin Roosevelt on, up until the beginning of this administration, and leave Eisenhower out of this because most of his time was spent in military jobs, but if you look at the number of years prior presidents have spent in public office prior to becoming president, all of them were over 10 years and the average was 16 or 17 years in public life, in public office. And in George W. Bush's case, it's six years. That is a very, very different background for coming in performing this way.

I think the other curiosity is that ordinarily the first 100 days do define a president. We learn a great deal about both his political personality, his political character and the agenda and that he is going to pursue over a long period of time. We got some sense of the arc that he is on.

At the end of the first 100 days of the George W. Bush presidency, I think we're not quite sure of where he is. If anything, I think this is a work in progress. And it's too early to make large judgments; it's not too early to ask large questions.

Given where he started and the odds against him, he's done remarkably well. Given the long count, the division in the country, the fact that he had no coattails, the fact that he didn't really have a mandate coming in, that he was a minority president, he has done remarkably well in these few short weeks.

I certainly agree with Tom and Fred that he has restored a sense of dignity, of decency, integrity to the office that I think has served him well. Many Americans feel they are no longer assaulted by stories coming out of the White House in ways that were offensive, offended their sensibilities in some times past. And I think that has been to his credit.

He has changed the agenda. He has changed the national agenda. If Al Gore were president now, we would be discussing very different issues than we are with George W. Bush.

We would not be talking about tax cuts. We would have modest tax cuts, but we would be talking about how to spend a great deal of the surplus.

We would certainly be talking much more about conservation than we are. We would not be talking about faith-based initiatives. We would not be talking about a variety of things that--George W. Bush has changed the agenda.

Even though he's not all that persuasive, he has put a new stamp on the national agenda, and that is what leadership, in part, is about.

And as Norm would argue, I think--at least I've heard him argue this--when we look at the end of the second 100 days or maybe 250 days, he's probably going to have a pretty good legislative record by the standards of presidents.

He's going to have a tax bill. He'll have a budget which restrains spending more than has been true in the past. He's likely to have an education bill that's watered down, to be sure, from where he was. He may have a patients' bill of rights by the end of the summer.

And I think normally one looks to the August recess of Congress as the critical time--you know, that's the most important window a president has for action, especially on Capitol Hill, is between January 20 and the August recess. It's not the first 100 days. It's the first 180 days to 200 days or whatever that works out to be that become critical.

And by the end of that time, he is going to have a fairly substantial list of legislative accomplishments he can point to. Some have changed, to be sure. Some are watered down, so conservatives are not as happy as they might be.

But if you look at what he originally proposed on the tax bill, he's getting 75 percent, basically, of what he asked for. And that, by any definition, is usually called success. And I think deservedly should be considered success.

So all in all, much better than one might have expected, given where he was in early November.

I do believe there continue to be questions that remain unanswered and it may well determine the failure of this presidency. Some things are beyond his control, and we don't know how those are going to go.

But if you talk to serious economists, they believe that the economy is likely to continue to have bad signs for another six months or so before we begin to really see a sense of pickup, that the early signs suggest we've got another six months before we truly hit bottom. That's going to drain him politically of a lot.

He may be at his high point politically right now. He's got the issue of Japan, which is out there, and Japan gets--if Japan goes down, if this new leader of J apan can't hold things together, if Japan goes down, it will suck this economy down. I think everybody believes that. It's going to be a hard one to handle.

The energy issues, the rising energy prices.

There are a lot of reasons. There are things almost beyond his control that may affect his prospects and may make this indeed the honeymoon as we look back.

Looking at his personal leadership, or the capacity of his administration, there are three questions which I have.

One is, how adaptable is this administration going to be to new challenges? It seems to me that Clinton had a great deal of this strength in his economic team, and they were particularly good at dealing with international economic issues. George W. Bush has invested a lot of his great strength in national security issues.

His economic team, while he has terrific individuals there, they are less tested on international economic issues. Japan being the No. 1, but you've got Turkey, you've got a lot of countries, now Argentina, all of which could be in rough shape here in the next few months. Moving to adapt to that is tough.

I think the issue that Fred Greenstein raises about curiosity, intellectual curiosity, remains unanswered. And any president, to be effective, while you want to delegate to Dick Cheney, and Dick Cheney has done a fabulous job, the president ultimately has to make the tough choices and has to think outside the box and has to ask questions that go beyond the briefing papers and has to push the system beyond the briefing papers. And that requires a certain sort of oomph from the president. Certainly an intellectual cutting edge, asking those questions and being able to think through the answers.

Harry Truman's recognition of Israel, typical of a presidential tough decision. His top foreign policy adviser says don't do it; this is George Marshall, secretary of state. His top domestic adviser says do it, Clark Clifford. He has to make the call. Because Truman has read, because he is deeply school in the issues in the Middle East, because he understands the Jewish faith, the Jewish history, he makes the decision to do it. Tough call, very courageous. Marshall might have resigned and cost Truman the election of '48. He didn't.

But Truman was able to think that. Truman is the only president of the 20th century that didn't go to college. But he was self-educated and he was very curious. And that's an important quality in a president.

The second quick question, to me, is where is the political center of gravity going to with this president? Is it going to be on the right or is it going to be the center right? I don't think we know that. Some weeks it's been one way, some weeks it has been the other. Maybe he's going to veer back and forth. There is something to be said for that.

But is there a coherent political philosophy? We have an agenda; is there a coherent political philosophy? I don't think that question is fully answered yet.

The final question I would raise--and here I do part company with Tom to a degree-I think George W. Bush is proven he is a good manager. Selected good people. He's run a well-buttoned-up White House. They do respond well to crisis or to the many episodes that they've had so far. Is he a good leader? He's a good manager; is he a good leader?

And that I think we do not know yet because leadership is more than getting the agenda out there. Leadership often involves persuasion, getting to buy in, getting your following to buy in, whether it be on domestic or international.

Think of this: One of the recent Gallup polls had him, among Republicans, the approval rating was 94 percent. Among Democrats, it was 39 percent. There was a 55-point gag. Ordinarily, FDR on, on average, the gap between the approval rating of the two parties has been 35 points.

So 100 days in, he has yet to bring people who were disaffected by the election over. His base is ecstatic. There are a lot smiles here at AEI--

[Laughter.]

--Among people who believe in the agenda that he has been putting forward. After all, a lot of the intellectual ideas, intellectual support for, came out of this institution and of others like it. Not many others; this stands right at the top, obviously.

But nonetheless, the base is very happy, but there are a lot of other folks who are disaffected out there right now. And he has not yet been able to bring them behind him. And I think that's going to be important in dealing with, say, the tradeoff between energy and the environment, which is going to be critical.

And if you go overseas and talk to people from other nations--I just came back from South Africa; I was there with representatives from several different nations. The feelings of resentment against the United States are at an intensity level. They were high before. They're at an intensity level now that I have not seen in a long time.

A real sense that this administration is laying down the law to them, not getting them to buy in. Not persuading them but telling them, "This is the way it is. My way or the highway."

And that is an issue that, it seems to me, from a leadership perspective, the challenge now it going to be to persuade others to come along, whether it be in America or overseas, to come along with the agenda that he's got.

I'll stop there.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Thanks, David.

Just a couple of observations of my own to extend some of these areas.

First, the beginning. If you had asked me, and I suspect a large number of people who followed presidents in the past, for a checklist of things that a new president should do at the beginning of an administration, it would start with choose your White House chief of staff very, very quickly. Make sure you have some clear lines of authority and a strong White House chief of staff.

Presidencies that have stumbled at the beginning have basically not chosen chiefs of staff. And the vacuum then gets filled with backbiting and backstabbing and palace intrigue as lots of your teamwork hard to make sure that people they don't like get shunted aside. It happened, for example, to Mickey Kantor at the beginning of the Clinton administration. It happened to Jack Watson at the beginning of the Carter administration. And you end up with a leadership vacuum.

What follows from that is, choose the rest of your White House team quickly, recognizing that the White House structure is probably more significant to the beginning of your presidency and maybe even the administration of your presidency than the rest of your team.

Right next on the list would be, choose your cabinet quickly. Get people in place. Get them named and work as hard as you can to make sure that you can get them confirmed and in place by the inaugural, at the inaugural, so that you're at least ready to rumble there.

Next, choose priorities early and quickly and make sure that you do not have too few or too many. Some new presidencies start without any articulated list of priorities, let things drift. Others, and it's not much different, basically say, "Everything that I've proposed is a priority."

When I quizzed Bill Clinton back in June of 1992 about what his first 100 days would look like, he immediately brandished "Putting People First," his campaign document, which included virtually everything, and said, "This is my first 100 days. We'll get this done." And obviously, it can't happen. And what often happens with presidents--this happened with Carter--is that virtually everything you want goes to the Ways and Means Committee and gets grid locked there.

The best plan is to pick two significant priorities, things that can move relatively quickly. And in an ideal world, one of them is going to be a little bit tough, where it's a battle, where you've got to fight, but then your victory is all the sweeter. The other matters but you can sweep through fairly quickly with a broad base of support and show that you're a winner and can accomplish something.

Bush did just that, picking one, education, where there was a fairly strong chance. Something he campaigned on, people care about, and a pretty strong chance that he could get a bill through with 80, 85 percent support of both houses of Congress and both parties. And the other that he picked, and there were other choices, but he picked the tax cuts.

What flows from that as well is, use every bit of political capital you have to achieve early victories that will both establish you as a winner, because the key to political power is not the formal power that you have. Your ability to coerce people to do what they otherwise would not do. Presidents don't have a lot of that formal power.

It's as much psychological as it is real. If you're a winner and people think you're a winner, and that issues come up and they’re tough but somehow you're going to prevail, they will act in anticipation of that. Winners win.

If it looks like you can't get things done, then you have a steeply higher hill to climb with what follows. And as you use your political capital, you have to recognize that for presidents, political capital is a perishable quality, that it evaporates if it isn't used.

That's a lesson, by the way, George W. Bush learned firsthand from his father. That if you use it and you succeed, it's a gamble, to be sure, you'll get it back with a very healthy premium.

Those would be right at the top of my checklist. And I think Bush has done virtually everything that one would want to do, including in addition to that establishing yourself as a leader early on.

I take issue a little bit with Tom. I think, just as with Jack Kennedy, who came through an election where he won by an eyelash and had negative coattails, losing seats in both houses of Congress, no strong sense of political momentum. Whether you win in that fashion or win by an overwhelming margin, if you don't say, "I'm the president and I have a mandate," then everybody else will make sure that you are not established as the president and that you don't have a mandate.

And if you immediately say, "Well, I don't have legitimacy here. Let's have a co-presidency," they will eat you alive.

So it's difficult and it's a gamble, but if you can establish yourself that way and then get victories, then you are a long way toward having a successful presidency.

And we are now in a position where there is a pretty strong chance that by that August recess, we'll have a major tax bill, on which he can declare victory. A signing ceremony in the Oval Office or, depending on the weather, the South Lawn, with a bid declaration of victory, including an across-the-board rate cut key to it.

We will have a signing ceremony with an education bill in which he will be flanked by Trent Lott and Ted Kennedy, which itself will send a signal and an important one.

Very possibly, a patients' bill of rights, and very possibly, bankruptcy reform along with the ergonomics measure.

Now, you can argue, and reasonably so, that on the latter issues, he had little or nothing to do with them, but that doesn't matter. It'll be his signing ceremony, and he'll be able to get credit. And on both bankruptcy reform and patients' right, if they come across, if they come through--they're still a little problematic--he will be flanked by a wide range of Democrats and Republicans.

Remember, the bankruptcy bill, which is still highly controversial in the House, passed with about 86 votes in the Senate. So he will show, basically, that he can in many instances govern by pulling together broad coalitions, and that he can play it both ways.

What's so interesting about the strategies that he used on his two top priorities--and he's had a single-minded focus on these two top priorities, no question. He has subordinated everything else. That bill will come due later on to those two priorities, but he's played them in radically different ways, trying as best he could with the tax bill to govern as Reagan did, by holding all of his Republicans, holding his bargaining position as he long as possibly could, not moving from it a millimeter, and letting the other side move before then moving to cut a deal.

And on educational reform, from the get-go, moving to compromise with not just a couple of Democrats, as on the tax bill, not just trying to get Zell Miller, John Breaux and one or two others, Ben Nelson, but immediately starting out negotiating with Ted Kennedy and other key liberals on that issue.

If he can keep that up, basically choosing a negotiating strategy that depends on the circumstances of the issue and the politics of the moment, he may have some greater successes.

Having said all that, let me look at the other side of the ledger.

The real test for him is going to come with September and what comes next, because you can't move from having two top priorities to then having 100 top priorities. You have to move to having two more or three more.

What will those priorities be? What will the timeframe be there? How will he use the political capital, the substantial amount that he will have if he has these successes that I've suggested in the next wave? Will the next wave include Social Security?

He's taken it up. And while he's done it in a fashion that at first blush looks like it's being put off for two or three years, the commission that he created, in fact, is very much pointed toward a confrontation earlier rather than later over what he views as the key issue: private accounts.

I frankly don't think that is the crucial issue. The crucial issue on Social Security as on Medicare and Medicaid is whether you can restrain the future growth of programs that if left unrestrained will move from being 42 to 43 percent of the federal budget to double that in less than 30 years and double the share of the GDP and will leave nothing else for government to do.

But that may be one of those issues. And what will the other issues be?

Well, he may find that rather than having the ability as he has had in the first 100 days to dominate the agenda, to choose issues that were important to him, and make them important in the political arena, that he is being driven by an agenda not his own.

And that obviously includes energy. And there's a real possibility, indeed, by the summertime that some of what we now have on the agenda, including taxes and education, may be sidetracked if we end up with rolling blackouts spreading, rolling past California and moving toward the Midwest with disruptions, with $2.50 to $3 a gallon gasoline.

And I would throw in another set of scenarios in a related vein. The piece by Elsa Walsh in the last New Yorker, which has gotten attention mostly because of its breach between Louis Freeh and Bill Clinton, is important for another reason, and it really is that Freeh postponed bringing what appears to be a set of indictments in the bombing in Saudi Arabia that goes right to the top of the chain in Iran, right to Khomenei.

If indeed he does so, it will push this administration to a confrontation with Iran. Freeh, according to Elsa's article, believed that the Clinton administration, for its own foreign policy objectives, wanted to avoid that, wanted to encourage the moderates and so on, and believed he would get a different reaction in this administration.

Well, add Iraq, where we're pointing toward a confrontation, to a possible confrontation with Iran, to our being drawn, against the desire and will of the administration but inexorably into a more active role in the Middle East, and throw into that combustible mix and energy crisis with an administration that is clearly not only tilting toward production, but is obviously much in tune with producers and you have a very, very difficult--

[Tape change.]

Presidents can control things they can control, but sometimes lose control, and that at least is a possibility.

I want to add just one or two other points. We mentioned the Cabinet. We have not yet mentioned obviously all the other people in the administration.

It's very difficult when you lose half your transition. It's very difficult when you're confronted with a reality built up over 40 years of or more of what the 20th Century Fund a few years back aptly called the obstacle course of getting people nominated, confirmed and set in place for the appointments.

Some of the things that the administration could have done at the beginning to make things easier, which would have required using some of that precious political capital, they did not do, including, for example, an executive order changing the FBI field investigation process. The requirement that all Senate-confirmable nominees go through a full FBI field investigation, from the head of the CIA to the assistant secretary of education for public affairs, is set by executive order not by law. And it would have made life easier for him.

They didn't do it. And the reality is that it will be a year or more, a full quarter of the Bush term, before they have their people in place. And the further reality is that right now, 115 days into this administration, in virtually every Cabinet department, we have a Cabinet and maybe one other person.

It's already had an impact. It had an impact on the decision-making on China with the plane and Hainan Island. It had an impact on their decision-making in the Middle East when they decided to come out with a condemnation of Israel when they first went to Gaza without thinking through the policy because they didn't have their team in place. And it's clearly having an impact almost everywhere else.

It's a hollow government once you get past those first couple of priorities. Career people are sitting there, waiting for direction, and they get them. And in some areas, in energy, where you have a Cabinet officer who is not an expert, it becomes even more difficult if you don't have your infrastructure and team in place.

So they've moved to extraordinary process with task forces headed up by the vice president. How much can the vice president do when he's got to spend most of his time pinned down in the Senate, when he's heading up the energy task force as a crisis emerges, and is really designated to play a major role in foreign policy among other issue areas?

And how can you run your foreign policy with four major, strong-willed, strong-minded players in decision-making positions? A secretary of state, a secretary of defense, a national security adviser, and a vice president--it doesn't work. Something has got to give there. And then what role will the president play there?

And finally, let me just echo and embellish for a minute a point that several of my colleagues have made, which is the matter of Bush's leadership style.

This is, as I think we have all seen, not a dumb person, the stereotypes not withstanding. He is not an intellectual, certainly.

The joke of last week was that upon the death of the creator of Cliffs' Notes, the president issued his strong condolences saying, "He was my favorite author."

[Laughter.]

But the most interesting question is, how does a personal style, which has focused on a few things, and focused intently, and shown, as he focused on those things in the past, including Mexico and education, that he can be as knowledgeable and adroit at dealing with them as anybody could, but has done so to the exclusion of almost any focus on other issues, a style of leadership that can work as a governor but can't work as a president where you have to become knowledgeable across a wide range of areas and over time somewhat more deeply knowledgeable.

Can he adapt himself to that? So far, the signs are good. But we don't know the full answer to it.

And finally, I would argue that his problem is not reaching out to those who opposed him, that ultimately George Bush's challenge is his base. He is building up, he believes, all kinds of capital with his base by many of his early actions, so that as time passes and the Republicans, moving each day closer to the 2002 election when their necks are on the chopping block, not his, and one day further from 2000, will no long have as much unity.

As we move from issues where the hurdle in the Senate is 50 votes to the much wider range of issues where its 60 votes and he can't count on capturing on one, two or three Democrats but has to capture 12, 13 or 14 or more, he's counting on his base cutting him the slack to move not just center-right but center-center and in some instances even beyond this education bill, center-left.

What we know in the past from party bases is that their attitude is not just "what have you done for me lately," but "what have you done for me this morning." And it is not likely, even as we see the grumbling increase on the education bill, and as we're likely to see an increase on patients' right, that they will give him all kinds of leeway and show that understanding.

Will he be as adroit as Ronald Reagan was to keep his base inside the tent, believing partly as Reagan did that it's not him? He doesn't know what's going on. He's with us. It's all these other people around him. I'm not sure that will work for George Bush.

And if he does lose that base in any significant fashion, if they come to believe that he's too willing to compromise, too much like his father and not enough like Reagan, then he will have much greater difficulty pulling these victories off further down the road.

And with that, let's open to questions or comments. Please identify yourself and please wait for the microphone, which is on its way.

We'll start with Paul.

MR. PAUL MANN: (OFF-MIKE) To what extent to do you sense that foreign capitals and lawmakers are concluding that this president isn't just after national missile defense per se, but he is in fact after the militarization of space?

And if foreign capitals and Congress are concluding that, could the support of the militarization of space as a long-term strategy boomerang against the missile defense program itself? In other words, gin up a lot more opposition to it.

MR. GERGEN: Well, it's a very, very good question. There are, as you know, editorials now appearing in the European press asking that question, raising the specter of the militarization of space.

The administration had made progress with allies. The Bush administration is in better shape with the Blair government, for example, on missile defense than it was a few months ago.

But the case has yet to be closed with our allies. And it’s going to take considerable effort on the part of the administration to rally other nations behind this or to at least get them to close ranks and to accept this, because it's going to be seen as part of a wider set of issues of militarization of space could be very threatening.

But I think it's going to go to some other issues in which there are going to be some tradeoffs, which other nations are going to be looking for. "If we come with you on this, what are you going to trade us on that?"

And at the moment, the mood overseas is one that is quite nasty. He's being caricatured. The administration is caricatured in ways which I think are oftentimes unfair. But if you're in the business of being a world leader, you have to put up with a certain amount of that. You get beat up a lot in public opinion, and your job is to is to bring people around; that's the landscape you have to deal with.

And I think that they have--there's almost an (inaudible) in some of these nations to working with the Bush administration in a constructive way. There's an emotionalism now that's gotten into this which is pretty intense.

And how they overcome that, I'm not sure. It's going to take a lot of work. And it goes to this notion of what Norm was saying in part, you have to have a team in place, you have to have your second, third and fourth level folks who have the time to go travel and spend time with their counterparts and can afford to be away from Washington or can afford to sit down and talk in a constructive way.

And right now without that team in place, it's really hard to deal with this, not only missile defense, but a range of other issues that I think are out there.

QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)

MR. MANN: Listen, the national missile defense faces its own set of problems, quite apart from the militarization of space. That complicates matters, by all means.

But your question provides an opportunity for me, no doubt unsuccessfully, to once again suggest that the substance of policies ends up being as important if not more important than the political skill with which those policies are pursued.

On national missile defense, the problems are technology, budget and diplomatic difficulties and constraints. There is room almost certainly for a limited national missile defense, but we're years away from putting into place.

But NMD is to the conservative base like tax cuts are in domestic policy. And therefore, it's embraced almost as an article of faith with--and the substance is underplayed.

The president's tax cut as it emerges perhaps from the Senate has the risk of costing $4 trillion in the second decade. If you combine realistic spending numbers, we're going to find that our wonderful surpluses haven't been present to pay down the debt to prepare the way for the retirement of the baby boomers.

I wonder if that happens and we look back sort of assessing the ability of the skill of the administration to pursue its vision for a tax cut, whether that was a good idea. And maybe Bill Clinton blundering in process terms, but settling onto a deficit reduction package that set the conditions for moving deficits to surpluses and giving us a choice now as to what we might do will end up looking pretty good in retrospect.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Let me add a few words, Paul.

The key to the space side, it seems to me, is Putin and the meeting that will come up shortly with Putin. And it will test in a larger sense the philosophy that not everybody in the administration but that is becoming a more dominant philosophy, namely we are the world's sole superpower. We're going to keep it that way, but the way you lead as a superpower is you take your position and you argue it forcefully and credibly with allies and adversaries alike. Make it clear to them that you're not sort of putting this out there tentatively. This is where you are.

And they will, because you're the superpower and they're not, find ways to accommodate themselves to it or at least start negotiating with you from that point.

Now in the initial reaction that the administration has gotten to missile defense, both Tony Blair when he first came over to Camp David, and from Putin, there's some confirmation that that may not be just crazy.

Blair took a different position than he or any of the Europeans had taken, partly, obviously, because he wants to start out on a good foot with the new president.

And Putin basically said, "Well, maybe we can work something out."

If we have as a model here--maybe there are two models here--the cooperation that we worked out with the Russians in space otherwise, staring with the Mir and continuing--and in a broader sense with the International Space Station, which has been a model of international cooperation involving a wide range of other countries.

We had components from Italy go up in one of the last missions. The arm that the Canadians built. I mean, it's all over the place. You could perhaps make the case that if we do things in space but they're done in a cooperative way maybe you can make it work. That remains to be seen, obviously.

My guess is that just as combustible is the sea-based component here, because nothing challenges the Chinese more than a sea-based component, and any argument that you're going to have ships of North Korea, because what you're really worried about is a rogue missile from the Koreans, when they can move very quickly down towards China and pose a threat involving Taiwan, will have a more difficult time getting by.

And it may be even that it if you worked out some kind of cooperative relationship on space exploration, the Chinese wouldn't feel brought into it either. So this will be tough.

In the broadest sense though, that foreign policy vision has yet to be fully tested. And I would argue that the rebuff with the U.N. Human Rights Commission is a direct response to that, that it involved many things, including many countries hostile to our own pursuit of human rights. But it wouldn't have happened the way it did if we didn't have our European allies wanting to send a signal to us that this is a two-way street. Unilateral actions on the part of the United States can just as easily be met by unilateral actions on the part of others. And of course, they had a wonderful opportunity with a secret-ballot vote where they didn't have to be held accountable at all.

MR. GERGEN: Let me make one last point. The importance of the technology is critical, as Tom has said. Why this is also an important challenge, a difficult challenge for the Bush administration as a political matter, in Europe especially, I think the analogy is to what Reagan faced with the deployment issue back in the early '80s with the intermediate range missiles.

And he had to launch an effort to persuade European publics to come along in order to fortify the governments in order to get to, in effect, an agreement, a buy-in, from the European governments on what he was doing.

But Reagan faced a Europe which was to a large degree governed by right-of-center governments.

Geoffrey Smith is here, and I think he can speak to this much more precisely than I can.

But that made a huge difference to have Thatcher there and to have Kohl there. Whereas Bush faces a situation, even with Berlusconi's victory yesterday, I think now with the EU governments, it's still 12 of the 15 governments I think are left of center. That's a very different proposition for an American Republican president to persuade people to come along.

MR. GREENSTEIN: Let me just add a speculation, because I haven't heard it anywhere. I think there has to be another player in the foreign policy process of this administration. And I take it partly externally from the fact that, let's say on the matter of the interned airmen.

The initial rhetoric had an air of bellicosity to it. Then there was a real backing off from that. It was prudent. Now, who was famous for prudence? George Herbert Walker Bush.

Does George W. Bush never talk to his father, the father who he says is the greatest man he's ever known? Very unlikely. And in fact, I know that at a recent gathering on Korea, the future of Korea, George Herbert Walker Bush commented to a few people he was sure his son would do the right thing.

So I think that there is another strand here. It's hard to believe there isn't anyway.

MR. LEUBSDORF: Karl Leubsdorf for the Dallas Morning News.

The question that Norm raised up front, and has to do a little bit with what Newt was talking about yesterday, about whether Bush is going to be a transformational or managerial president. His point was that if Bush adopts a wide-ranging change in defense strategy, that Rumsfeld that is now studying and along with his Social Security proposals, that will give him a start to being a transformational president.

My question is, do you agree that he has that potential? And, B, can our system tolerate such change?

MR. MANN: I think this is an ambitious president, in policy terms and political terms. And I think you've identified the two elements that have the greatest potential for transformation: the military and Social Security reform.

The problem is that there's not much of a public market for policy change in these times. These are not times demanding departures in policy. In some respects, I would argue Clinton found the political center in this country and the public was very comfortable with the policies that emerged between him and the Republican Congress, but not with him individually and his personal behavior.

Rumsfeld's effort thus far has been largely independent of the chiefs in the Congress. And the probability of success, therefore, is limited.

Similarly, Social Security privatization, I would argue the forces in the short and medium term are not supporting any such departure.

So I think the president is up for it. He's ambitious. He's in no sense a caretaker. He's identified some areas where he would like to pursue and transformation, but for these two different sets of reasons, I think he will encounter obstacles that make it unlikely for him to succeed.

MR. GREENSTEIN: The problem with the dichotomy of transformational versus whatever you want to call the other one is that it is dichotomy and the real world is continuous. And everybody wants to be one thing, the first one, very transformational and therefore its freighted. And then very substantial changes happen from very small things, like the indexing of Social Security.

So I know that, Tom, that you're dealing with this, but I think it's just not useful to make that a very heavy preoccupation.

MR. GERGEN: I'm having a hard time figuring out in my own mind what the system will adapt to right now. I think it will adapt to a lot of change. More than perhaps we might have assumed.

Remember some years ago, Jim Fallows [ph.] wrote this piece about the Carter presidency, calling him the passionless president, and to some extent what I think we see now is a passionless public. With the exception of the environment, the public, it seems to me, have been extraordinarily disengaged from many of the conversations that have been taking place in Washington, the dialogue during the last few months, and that that follows a pattern that we saw in foreign policy when Clinton was president.

There were many times when Clinton came to deploy American troops, and you would have thought there would have been a great big argument in the country about Bosnia or whatever it might have been, Haiti. And it turned out, it wasn't a big argument. People sort of said, "Well, just go ahead and do what you need to do. Just don't screw things up. And don't bother me in my life."

So there may be a lot of things that Bush could actually get done that are not going to whip up the public that will go beyond what we might have imagined just a few months ago.

I hesitate to use the word transformational because it has a significance that Newt I know appreciates. But within political science terms--James MacGregor Burns came up with this notion of a transformational versus a transactive leader.

Now, transformational is a very rare bird who really transforms the way people think and their aspirations. And I have to tell you, I don't think I see that in t he works here.

Now, I think he may change the agenda. I think he may achieve significant changes in legislation. But I would hesitate to use the word transformational.

I do think this is more of a managerial president, but in his approach to management, he may get more done than anyone ever expected.

MR. ORNSTEIN: It raises all kinds of really interesting questions about presidency style and leadership.

In this administration, the model as articulated, and as Newt articulated, is very much the same one that Clinton picked, and Theodore Roosevelt. And really, the idea is, during a time of peace and prosperity, what model do you have of a president who, through energy and vision, managed to do some very significant things that reshaped America, including really creating the modern regulatory state, and that's Roosevelt.

Now, Clinton started out with much greater ambitions, got burned badly, obviously in the health care area, drew back and picked a different approach. And that approach was a belief that he could move miles in policy by moving inches at a time.

Increments here and there. Break the policy down into bite-sized, very tasty morsels. Focus on them. And then after Congress got done, each morsel seeming to be so seductive you couldn't turn it away, you have an extremely full meal.

And I think that was a reasonable approach and would have worked better if it hadn't sidetracked in the last couple of years. Indeed, I think we were poised towards some serious engagement on Social Security and Medicare in '98, '99, before the scandals threw it off course.

Bush is starting with an approach that is not quite the ambitious one that Clinton had with the health care plan, but along those lines. And very different, I believe from his father's.

His father didn't really have great ambitions. His father we used to call, in Bill Schneider's terms, the in-box president. And I used to refer to it as the Paul Mason style of leadership.

[Laughter.]

"I will make no decision before it's time."

It really was wait for the problem to ripen and then erupt. And then we can always make a decision that will deal with it.

But not what are the little problems that we solve before they become big problems, what are problems around the corner that if we act swiftly, we can deal with them now.

During the campaign, one would have said that he'll be just like his father, partly because he mused that, "Well, this just sort of fell into my lap. I never thought I'd be running for president. And here I am. And if I win, that'll be great. And if I don't, well, I'll find something else to do down the road."

But clearly he does have larger ambitions and is a much more proactive leader. And the fact that in taking on Social Security, he's decided to move towards a confrontation over private accounts, not put it off for a couple years, not sort of treat it as a campaign issue, look out there and say, "This ain't gonna happen with a tied Senate and a five-vote margin in the House, so why even bother using capital on this," suggests that he is going to try and push the envelope a little bit more.

The defense case is the one that I find most interesting, because with Rumsfeld, you have an extremely strong, tough leader who does not look forward to another large chapter in his career after this. He's going to take an enormous monetary hit in this position, larger than anybody else has.

By the time we're said and done, to take on the role of secretary of defense will cost Rumsfeld I mean staggering sums of money, partly because of the complicated nature of his own business, partly because as secretary of defense, you have to divest yourself of virtually everything because there are conflicts in so many places.

And he is doing this not just to manage. He is doing this because he really does believe that we are spending $300 billion wrongly, that it's not that we need an extra $100 billion a year, that if we redirect our defense to fit the threats of the post-Cold War world, and if we think through what we need, we can have a much better, leaner and meaner defense.

But it means taking on the Congress, which has a deeply vetted interest in the status quo, taking on not just the Joint Chiefs but all kinds of people in the military who have a vested interest in programs of which they are a heavy part, and they are so tied into the Congress.

The idea, the fact that at this early stage, Republican senators would hold up four key Defense Department positions clearly is a signal to Rumsfeld that they're not going to stand for a radical change in defense, is a sign of what's there.

But I don't think he's going to back off. And my guess is that Bush will support him in this. And he's not likely to succeed; I don't think any of us would bet a lot of money that he'll succeed in the end.

This is a very different approach towards a radical change in the way in which we do business. Putting Marshall in charge, I mean, the whole way in which he has gone about this is a suggestion of something done very differently.

And Bush picked him with that in mind.

MS. HALL: Mimi Hall from USA Today.

I wanted to see if you could expand a little bit on the notion that there's such skillful political operation in this White House. You talked about the permanent campaign, which of course is something that Bush and Cheney derided the Clinton administration for during the campaign, and said the permanent campaign is over.

I wonder if you can talk about some more examples that you see of that and whether you think they can sort of get away with that and do it successfully in this White House without getting their hands dirty.

And maybe, David, you could also comment from what you've seen since you worked in the Clinton White House, if you think this is a more sophisticated political operation or a more intense operation than what you saw.

MR. MANN: I mean, I think the skill has been evident in the planning process for the beginning of the administration, a planning process that began well before the election but intensified in the week before the inauguration, the way in which they unfolded--in which the administration unfolded was as skillful as I have ever seen.

The second are the numerous examples of political damage control. It's not that they're not making mistakes. They are making the normal number of mistakes, whether it's in the environmental arena or it's associated with talk on California and the energy problem or there, you could even say going to the mat on the initial budget resolution vote in the Senate.

But in each case, what I've seen is very quickly Cheney is told to change the tone on conservation. And speeches started highlighting the conservation side of the argument. The House Republicans from California get through to Cheney on what damage they're doing to their future in the state, and suddenly you see a more accommodating public response.

I think the whole speech writing operation is in many respects designed to convey images and positions that help to dull the sharp edges of some of the policies being pursued.

I mean, I think that is really good, skillful politics. And I am impressed. I think Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, from as best I can tell, are as valued members of the staff as anyone in the White House. And I think they're bright and tough and they're very focused. 2002, 2004, 2008. I mean this is an administration, a presidency that wants to build a new Republican majority.

So I think there are ample signs of it. Will it work? Listen, presidents' fates are determined by matters out of their control, as my colleagues were talking about--the fate of the economy, sort of energy problems. They're determined in part by the skill with which they operate.

They're also determined in part by the wisdom of the choices they make and the policies they pursue. Political skill is one important element. It's by no means the only one. Therefore, you can't forecast success based on the quality of the political operation.

MR. GREENSTEIN [?]: Let me pick the torch up for a second and develop the point that Tom has been making several times with an example. The most skilled person I think to operate in this city in the modern era was Lyndon Johnson. And some of the domestic policies that he brought about I think could not have come to pass without somebody who had his capacity and experience and background.

But that skill was not wed to skill about choosing substance, particularly in foreign policy. And if you look at the year of 1965, which begins with 20,000 American advisers who are not committed at all to do anything necessarily, other than give advice on how to fire weapons and so on, and by the middle of the year, we've crept into an open-ended ground war without any serious deliberation of where that policy would go.

It's a perfect example of how skill can turn to disaster without a realistic vision. And there's a lot of things in the whole fuzzy math are here which could go awry apart from the things that will go--the equivalent of meteors and asteroids in the form of expensive gasoline.

And then another piece that relates to skill and that is very Teddy Rooseveltesque is bully pulpit. And when Reagan made a critical move on--one of the critical moves on Reagan's tax cut, it was the point at which the conservative Democrats were not providing enough votes, and he spoke from the Oval Office and generated pressure from the districts and they really went into retreat.

I mean, this is Reagan without rhetoric.

MR. GERGEN: I don't share this total skillful political management. I believe they have been very disciplined. They thought through their opening days with enormous care and political sagacity. They are extremely good at damage control.

I think they're very good at tamping down things. And I think they're very good at working within the system. The inside game of politics I think they're very good at, working within the beltway.

They have an enormous challenge still out there to manage the larger public and to manage the politics of the larger public. And at that, I think they're still not there yet. They're making progress, but let's take the tax bill.

They defined victory as $1.6, and when he got 75 percent of what he asked for, the AP plus a number of newspapers immediately wrote--the AP lead was he had a stinging defeat. A number of newspapers defined it as Democrats hand Bush defeat.

He got 75 percent of what he wanted. To me, that's better than what Reagan often got. And yet, because of the way it had been defined by the White House, it looked like a defeat.

Has the environment been well managed as a political matter? Yes, they have taken off some of the rough edges, but the environmental community is up in arms. The left is mobilized, the money is pouring in, because, it seems to me, they were wrong-footed on a number of the environmental stories, whether it be arsenic or the CO2 or Kyoto.

In terms of managing the political environment with the allies, I have to tell you, I think that has not been as well managed as they would have liked. I think they're getting a bummer rap than the substance suggests.

In a variety of ways, I think their capacity to manage their public communications and manage their persuasiveness is, I think, not yet all that they would like to have.

Building a coalition for the future? There are many in California that think they're being written off. And for a Republican president at this point to be seen as writing off California, that's not where you want to be. People from New York think they're being written off, by and large.

So I think there are substantial questions. If you're a president with 48 percent in your first term, less than the majority, what is it you really need to do? You need to go for a blowout in your reelection. You need to go for 60 percent, because that gives you the power to get things done in a second term when normally power is not there.

And that means that you've got California, and you've got to really win those states that you hadn't been wining, and you've got build up your vote elsewhere. That's hard to do, but that's what gave Johnson the capacity to get done what he got done in '65, '66, because he got his blowout.

That's what Nixon was all about. Nixon got 43 percent first election. He thought he had very little power. He got some legislation through, but his whole notion was to get up to 60, which he did. But of course, the means he got there with were what did him in.

But the notion of going for 60 percent, it seems to me, is very, very powerful.

So I think they have done many, many things well in political management. But in my judgment, the political management question is one of the central challenges they still face in order to build an administration--this is not Teddy Roosevelt seizing the country by the collar. That's not what we're seeing today.

I think many Americans appreciate the fact that he's not in their faces all the time. But in terms of building up a political coalition and gaining momentum, it's not clear to me--Norm had an enormously interesting analysis of the second wave and how do you get to the second wave.

The foundation for that was building momentum out of the first wave. When he signs all these bills, will his numbers go to 60 or 65 percent, and you get this big coalition? I'm not so sure. I think that's the challenge.

I'd be really interested in hearing--Andy is here--I'd be interested in hearing, because they may have very different views and maybe think this--I don't know where they are. But it would be helpful to us I think to hear from both of them.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Let's do that.

Let me just add one other point before me move on, which is back to perhaps a root part of your question.

The Clinton administration, in contrast, is viewed as this totally political operation, completely captured by the permanent campaign. Looking at polls all the time, and the contrast drawn during the campaign and since with this administration, which is very much overdrawn.

This is not an apolitical administration. And if I had to guess, we only have anecdotal evidence. They are looking at polls at least as intensely and on almost every issue and tailoring their rhetoric and in some instances, their positions to what they see.

Now, let me add a little footnote here you should keep your eye on. If we do get campaign finance reform, that will change, as it would change for an administration because one of the primary uses of federal soft money is to pay for consultants and polls. And all the White House polling is paid for out of soft money. And you will find, if we really do get close to this point of having this occur, Republican and Democratic consultants will unite, using everything they've got to keep it from happening because their Mercedes are on the line here.

[Laughter.]

But it will change because they're going to have to rely in a very different way on polls. They won't be able to get day-to-day surveys. But they're using them.

And they are as intensely interested in politics and looking at electoral votes and looking at coalitions as anybody. They may have a different approach. Certainly, it is an approach that I think at this point is focusing on states that were close. We're going to see them go to Pennsylvania every other week at least.

I would be surprised to find that they try to move the border around Camp David to Pennsylvania, if they can figure out a way to do it.

[Laughter.]

But otherwise, they're looking at coalition groups. And obviously, he's focusing on Hispanics as a group more than he is on California as a state, and hoping that his legacy in part can be with the burgeoning share of the vote that will be among the Hispanics, to move the national Hispanic vote to the same level that his Texas Hispanic vote was.

And if he does, Republicans may be able to build an enduring majority. If he doesn't, they won't be able to do so.

But it's just as political. And a part of their success has been that they've been able to keep from anybody to write the stories that they're a political administration.

And that's partly because, as David said, they have tremendous discipline inside. They also have discipline with the leaders of the base. And that's Karl Rove, who is as talented as you will find here. And they're keeping their base together for the most part. Just a few stray comments about education.

But if they lose that sense, that aura that they're winners, that they're moving along, that they're in charge, that they're setting the agenda. And, as we move forward, I will reiterate, he's forced to compromise more towards the middle. And they can't keep those people inside--they're out there writing columns or speaking all the time in harsh terms about the administration, then they will have a real challenge as things start to unravel a little bit.

MR. : There's been no reference at all to an important chunk of time allocation on the part of the new president, and that is he's taken probably more than 30 permanent campaign swings to states, focusing on states where ostensibly votes could be changed on the tax bill.

And these have been interesting because although there's been discussion about them blanketing the regional media, nothing has happened that added to the public presence of George W. Bush. But a big chunk of presidency time that has been allocated to something which so far doesn't seem to have panned out in any serious way.

So that's another sign of--my sense is that with Dick Cheney at the nerve center of this presidency, you have one of the most competent Washington operators, and able and skilled and smart, that we've ever seen, but someone who is not an outside politician. And then the image-makers tend to be people with Texas experience and not national experience. There's no Deaver here.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Andy Kohut, do you want to say something? And then we'll get Karlyn in as well, if she's willing.

MR. KOHUT: Hi, David, I read the public opinion polls about Bush just a little differently than you do. Clearly, the Republican base is backing him to the hilt. But I'm struck by how well Bush is doing among Democrats.

Bush is getting much better ratings from Democrats than Clinton got 8 years ago. And I think part of this is that there are no voices of opposition. Obviously, there are no Democratic leaders who are high profile, but where is the Rush Limbaugh of 8 years ago, the equivalent, today?

Democrats aren't hearing much criticism, and the Democrats are surprisingly open to Bush, in part because of style and in part because, as you said, in difference.

But I think the larger question is looking at what Bush is doing now and what he will do over the next 1-1/2 year, and how that will play against the very high probability that he will be seen as a president whose party lost Congress. The odds of the Republicans losing control of one or both of the houses of Congress are very great, and that's the prism through which much of this stuff will be seen.

And I'm answering your question with a question: What can he do to insulate himself, let alone put off this--I guess it's not an inevitability but it's certainly a high probability that one or both of those houses are going to go, and he will be defined in those terms.

MR. GERGEN: That possibility certainly has shaped the schedule of the agenda of this administration. I think certainly the worry of losing control of the Senate in April or May sort of helped speed the tax cut through and, frankly, the concern about a possible loss of one or both houses in 2002 I think has shaped the timing of the introduction of the energy program, the Social Security, moving ahead on national missile defense.

Since this is a president who doesn't want to play defense as Clinton did so skillfully with Republican Congress after '94, but wants to embrace and pursue new policies, he would be damaged considerably by a loss. So he's going to, A, try to get as much done as he can; and, B, not accept the inevitability of losing both houses of Congress.

There are enormous resources and energy going into recruiting the right candidates, framing issues for local races, and seeing if they can't beat the odds on the normal midterm loss.

MR. ORNSTEIN: Certainly this is an administration that not only is keeping the public's pulse but keeping Strom Thurmond's pulse--

[Laughter.]

--On a regular basis as well.

Let's go to Karlyn.

That was Andy Kohut of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, and this is Karlyn Bowman of AEI.

MS. BOWMAN: I would like to start with a question for both Fred Greenstein and David Gergen, and that is the issue of press coverage of this presidency.

Both I think the Center for Media and Public Affairs and Pew Research Center, the press center, have suggested that this president has gotten about half as much coverage in the national media as Clinton did in this point in time. Clearly, part of that is by design, in terms of the White House's strategy, but I wonder whether you think that that's going to be a plus for this administration in the long run, this very different press strategy.

MR. GERGEN [?]: I don't. But I think--I don't think it's advantageous for a modern president to be the little man who wasn't there. I don't understand why there are not George W. Bush stories that are more conspicuous on Sundays and Mondays and other days when the news columns are open.

And what strikes me--perhaps some of this is coming from a gubernatorial style; some of it must be sort of ingrained in his personality. There have been many, many things that a president could do, including the sorts of things that are captured by FDR's line that the presidency is preeminently a place of moral leadership. There have been school shootings; there have been lots of occasions when a voice might be heard.

It also strikes me--well, this may sound too much like political cosmetics--that this someone who is simply not being brought up to speed in terms of his potential as a communicator, that he often seems sort of programmed to the TelePrompTer, whereas his extemporaneous style is quite engaging. There's some disconnect there in terms of making--

[Tape change.]

MR. GERGEN: --covering things other than political Washington. And that's out there for any number of news organizations.

He's caught in this downdraft, I think, on the economic side, in terms of what the coverage is.

The favorable press that he's getting now, as you know, can whip around in an instant when something goes wrong. And for him, the most important thing is to build up this largeness and also the likeability quotient so that he can get through the storm or can deal with some of these more difficult issues that are probably down the road ahead of him.

So I don't think the press is doing him any favors, contrary to some of this coverage, while he's getting this very laudable press.

MR. ORNSTEIN: This is a conscience strategy on the part of this White House to be a counterpoint to what Bill Clinton's presidency was, a very conscience strategy to be the anti-Clinton in this case. And so far, it has worked, because I think there was a public desire not to have a president in your face every day.

But that's true for a short period of time. Then you get to the basic issue that Fred has suggested.

To whatever degree a president can shape the agenda--because there will be stories about the White House, what's going on in Washington and the president. And either you decide what those stories are going to be or somebody else will.

Sometimes, if somebody else does, it can work to your advantage. I mean, we got a number of days of coverage of the China issue. It wasn't what they anticipated. In the end, I think it was to Bush's advantage.

The energy business has not been. It may be a good to a small degree to have T-ball be the story coming out the White House a couple of days running, but if that's what you get, after a while, it may reinforce the notion that you're not serious enough.

It's worked to the point where if you're not in the faces in their everyday but you still have the tax cut issue, which is not, as Tom said, right at the top of people's agenda. Nevertheless, right at the top of Congress' agenda--it doesn't fit the normal pattern that a president has got to go out and use the bully pulpit and grab the issue that way.

Three or four months from now, I'm not sure you'll be able to get your top issue if it's not driving the public. And they'll have to reassess that strategy, I think, very seriously.

Karlyn, how about some observations--

MS. BOWMAN: Just a few quick comments.

I, too, am struck by how quiet the public mood is. And just to give you one indicator, at about this point in 1981, 75 percent of those surveyed spontaneously responded to Gallop that the most important problem facing the country was inflation, and today you can't get anything to hit 20 percent.

You've got the economy around 15 or 16 percent, but that's a very different environment in which to govern.

It seems to me that polls can measure very easily the impact of political controversy, but it's very hard for them to measure the absence of controversy. And it's hard for me know, looking at the polls, how much political capital Bush is accumulating with the absence of any controversy, and particularly when you have, as Dave suggested, a passionless public. And that appears to be what we have right now.

He may be putting some capital in the bank by this very quiet mood overall.

Those are just a few quick observations.

MR. LONG: Drew Long, Federal Human Resources Week.

Could you all address the administration's seemingly negative policies so far toward the civil service that began on Inauguration Day?

MR. : I wasn't aware of them.

MR. LONG: Okay, the 3.6 percent salary increase; that's different from Congress' budget of 4.6; the Daniels memo to cut 40,000 managers after the 9 years of downsizing; and the hiring freeze, which was implemented by Andrew Card on the first day inauguration, which was lifted about a month ago.

MR. : I mean, all of those are pretty standard fare. I don't see the relentless attacks on the government bureaucracy that came out of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. I think what we're getting from George W. Bush is something akin to what we got from Al Gore operating out of the vice presidency.

The one qualification I'd put on this is this budget was constructed for one purpose, which was to create the political space for a tax cut. That required doing some things on the spending side, like not having any real increases and some real decreases in the science budgets, for example, outside of NIH. And it also entailed showing cost savings in the operation of federal programs, meaning staff costs.

Frankly, I don't think there is any strong philosophy against the civil service.

I actually think a number of people, including Clay Johnson and others coming in on the management side of OMB, are quite conversant with recent critiques of the civil service and the need for reform, the problem of layering.

So I see some potential, once they get beyond their immediate objective of achieving whatever tax cut they can, or returning to more normal budgeting and fewer signs of that kind of hostility that you seem to have perceived.

MR. GERGEN: Let me just say, I welcome the fact that there has not been a lot of bashing of the civil service, the bureaucrats, in this administration. It's been healthy.

And indeed, in the case of Colin Powell at the State Department, we see someone who has embraced the people there in the civil service, and that's been very healthy.

My hope is that the administration itself will gradually come to see that it has a very strong interest in addressing the very issues that Norm has been talking about, the breakdown of the appointments process for political appointees; and secondly, the looming crisis that's coming in the civil service as we try to recruit people to fill all these jobs.

The numbers that I've been hearing--I'm trying to pin them down--are 50 percent of the civil servants are up for early retirement in the next 5 years; 65 percent of the senior executive service are eligible for early retirement in the next 5 years; and we don't have people coming through the pipeline at the other end of how--both the pay, the stultification.

I mean, Rehnquist is talking about this with judges.

And this is a real issue for society now that we're going to have to come to grips with.

And I keep wondering, the 3,000 pages or so that were misplaced at the FBI, is a reflection of what's happening within the government, the civil service. If that is, because there is some suggestion it is, it's a stark illustration of how much we need competent people.

We may agree or disagree about the size of government, but certainly within the group we have, we ought to have a very competent group of people. And we're going to be badly hurt, you know, if that's an illustration of what's really--the deterioration that's occurring.

MR. ORNSTEIN: That actually raises one of the most interesting points that Newt Gingrich mentioned yesterday.

It seems clear that a significant share of the problem with the FBI is an outdated computer decision, and it was conscience decision made by Louis Freeh and his top managers not use their resources to upgrade the computer systems.

Part of visionary leadership now is getting ahead of the curve when it comes to information technology, which has changed so rapidly. And government is way, way behind that curve.

And in this budget, there is the tiniest increase for information technology, and that's an area where clearly they are behind by a substantial margin.

Otherwise, if you have a budget that has a 4 percent increase in discretionary spending compared to the last few years, double that, and you take a pay increase and move it from 4.6 to 3.6, that's not hostile. Freezing pay is hostile.

One last question, right here.

QUESTION: I wanted to go back to something that Tom brought up right at the beginning in terms of the perception of Bush, both abroad and domestically, of whether or not it's really a questioning of the ideas that are being put out there in terms of national missile defense or domestically in terms of energy, which is seen as many to be sort of retro ideas--retreads, to put it in a certain way. And whether or not these are rather than a question of style and the way that they're going to erupt, whether these really are land mines waiting for the passionless public domestically to get mobilized about.

And abroad, once people see the details of the national missile defense, which nobody has at the moment, whether that's the point at which you're going to see the nastiness that you, David, saw in South Africa, really erupt.

MR. : That only cost me $10, so you guys answer it.

[Laughter.]

MR. : Could you rephrase that question--

[Laughter.]

It had a lot of threads to it. I'm not sure--

QUESTION: You've spoken a lot about the style of the leadership, but Tom's point at the beginning was that underneath all of this is a question of substance. And it seems to me that both abroad and domestically, the issues are not there in a ready form for people to really vote or decide on this presidency.

Energy is one that obviously is going to be a big one domestically. And national missile defense in terms of all the allies--

MR.GERGEN [?]: I do believe that he's on stronger ground on the substance than he is on the politics of some of these things.

I think that there--

[Laughter.]

I think there's a very strong case to be made for some form of missile defense. Democrats agree on that. Republicans agree on it. What the disagreement is on is over the robustness of that defense, whether it be a limited defense that protects us against particular threats, whether through troops or from rogue nations, or whether this ought to be a very big defense, which triggers an arms race with the Chinese and the Russians and is much closer to the original Reagan notion of a national shield.

And I don't think the administration has been very adroit at sort of working through that with the allies and, indeed, with the public on where you start, how you get technology in place. "Let's start here, and then we'll move on to these other things." But I think that is a question of political management.

On energy, there is an overwhelming case to be made for increasing production. The blackouts in California have a lot to do with the fact that they haven't built any power plants out there for a long time. But the way you get at that is not to get into a holy war with the environmentalists, because then they come down on you and they're going to take everything you do and caricature it in a way so that it becomes very difficult in a way to get that done.

It seems to me that a political management of that issue, which took into account not only production but also was serious substantively about conservation issues, that didn't slash the budget for conservation issues while you're trying to go forward with production, would have gotten buy-in from a lot of the mainstream environmental groups. You can't satisfy them all, to be sure. But they would have come along.

Every Republican administration, the last three Republican administrations have gotten off bad-footed with the environmentalists. But you go back to Nixon. Nixon turned out to be a very good environmental president. Reagan turned out to do some things on the environment that were positive. Bush himself, Sr., Rio, Clean Air Act, there are some important thing that Bush Sr. did on the environmental front.

Bush Jr. is in a position to build on that record and work with mainstream environmentalists. After all, Bill Ruckleshaus [ph.] is out there as someone--if he came on board with the energy plan, saying this is a balanced plan, that would be an enormous asset. I think that's possible to do and still deal with the substance, in a very, I think, wise way.

Vouchers. I think there's a very powerful argument to be made for school vouchers. But yet this has been politicized in such a way that I think the argument is being lost in so many different ways where more forms of choice make an awful lot of sense in our schools. And black communities support vouchers.

MR. GREENSTEIN: Actually, there is a kind of vouchers that have been agreed upon, and have gotten very little press, and that's vouchers as proposed by the Democrats for after-school tutoring within the inner cities. And as Ron Brownstein [ph.] pointed out in a recent column, this would almost immediately generate a whole coaching industry in the inner cities.

It really is early to get all these pieces together. What has been described as damage control in this presidency may also be learning curve. The Kennedy presidency went from the Bay of Pigs--it was a very well managed and orchestrated set of events as compared with the chaos of the Bay of Pigs.

So it's hard to see where it's all going, how many of these policy pieces will be corrected along the way, or whether things will come in from outer space that will make everything moot, whether international crisis or some ecological disaster or something like that.

It's just very hard to say.

MR. MANN: David and I aren't going to agree on this, but I think it's sort of important to acknowledge the possibility that the substance of policies is as important as their political management.

In this particular case, I come down on all three of the major initiatives--on national missile defense, on energy and tax cuts--as saying it's the policies that cause the political problems rather than inadequate political management sort of not allowing the natural strength of the policies to carry forward.

I think, for example, there was a case for a limited national missile defense, but this administration is at least for allowing for the possibility of a very ambitious national missile defense, including the space-based issue.

On energy, I think all the talk about energy independence is nonsense. You know, we live in a global energy market and much of what the administration is saying, I think, doesn't reflect the reality that we had lower refining capacity because we had low energy prices and we didn't get investments. But markets are beginning to clear already. And way too much blame has been put on environmental regulations.

And I've said enough about the tax cuts.

[Laughter.]

MR. GERGEN: I actually think that policy is more important than political management. But if you don't get management right, you're not going to get policy.

MR. ORNSTEIN: And we'll be back in 100 days to see who was right.

[Laughter.]

Thank you very much. We're adjourned.

[Applause.]

One more time, we've got some great books here, if you haven't read them.

[END OF TAPE RECORDING.]