TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/082189/08218900.042

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NATION, Page 16

COVER STORY: Mr. Consensus

Cautious and personable, George Bush is a President who listens,

leans heavily on advisers -- and usually comes down in the middle

By Michael Duffy


    Most evenings between 8 and 10, George Bush excuses himself
from the company of friends and family in order to be alone. As he
has done for years, he retreats to a private study, now on the
second floor of the White House, to read and write cards and
thank-you notes to friends, political allies and even perfect
strangers. This ever growing list of correspondents has served Bush
well in difficult times, and may soon do so again. Last week the
President added a new name to his address book: that of Iranian
President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

    The two men are hardly likely to become pen pals. But as the
U.S. Government once again searched for a way to free American
hostages held in the Middle East, Bush's communications with
Rafsanjani have moved from cautious feelers through intermediaries
to more direct, leader-to-leader messages. Working closely with his
top foreign policy advisers, the President personally authored
several of the diplomatic notes sent to Iran through Swiss embassy
channels.

    As his Administration explored this latest opening to Iran,
Bush was at pains to steer clear of the mistakes that toppled Jimmy
Carter's presidency and badly tarnished Ronald Reagan's. While
pointedly refusing to offer any quid pro quo, he stepped carefully
back from Reagan's stated policy of never negotiating with
terrorists. If the hostages come home, Bush hinted, he might
consider releasing Iranian assets -- principally undelivered
weapons paid for in advance -- that have been frozen by the U.S.
since 1979. "Goodwill begets goodwill," he said, quoting his own
Inaugural Address.

    George Bush's handling of the hostage crisis illustrates some
of the main characteristics of his decision-making style:

    He is a cautious, reactive President, whose first concern in
a crisis is to avoid mistakes.

    Bush cares deeply about a handful of core values -- family,
loyalty, service to country -- but regards almost everything else
as negotiable.

    He searches out advice and prefers to choose among alternatives
rather than devise his own solutions. "Have Half," his childhood
nickname, suits him: he still likes to split the difference.

    When persuasive leadership is required, Bush instinctively
reaches not for a TV camera but for a telephone, working his will
among fellow heads of state and Washington insiders rather than
through Reagan-like appeals to public opinion.

    Guided by an inner clock that sometimes frustrates his aides,
Bush decides at his own speed and rarely looks back in doubt later.


    After seven months as President, Bush has emerged as a much
more complex Commander in Chief than expected, a hybrid of
presidential personalities served and observed. Bush possesses
Lyndon Johnson's penchant for secrecy, without retributive sense
of justice. He has Richard Nixon's feel for foreign policy, but so
far lacks his mentor's grip on grand strategy. He shares Jimmy
Carter's fascination with the fine details of government, but
understands better which pieces are most important. Bush says he
learned from Reagan the importance of stubborn principle in
politics, but he sees more clearly than Reagan the sweet reason of
expedient compromise.

    Bush's cautious, calibrated style has made for largely
surefooted policy. Despite a sluggish first four months, the
President has launched initiatives on difficult issues -- savings
and loans, clean air, arms control -- that he might have ducked.
He has kept a Democratic Congress off balance and has mollified the
conservative wing of his own party. If he has hit no grand slams,
neither has he committed any egregious errors. "I'm reasonably
pleased where, at the end of six months, things are," Bush told
TIME. "I'm not relaxed about it. I'm not in an everything's fine
mode at all. But in terms of how the decisions are made, I'm very
pleased with the way our team is operating."

    His inherent prudence is now alloyed with what close friends
and aides say is a noticeably more sober demeanor. The presidency
has made Bush more circumspect than the sometimes loopy,
arm-flapping creature of the campaign trail. He assumed a grim
visage throughout the first week of the hostage crisis, despite
efforts by aides to play down the preoccupation with Lebanon. Says
an old friend: "The boyish enthusiasm is still there, but he's more
careful, more one day at a time." Bush himself acknowledges as
much: "Have I learned a lot? Sure. Do I think I'm maybe a little
wiser from the way things are here? Yeah. Do I still have a lot to
learn? Certainly."

    Even when Bush gambles, he does so only after carefully
researching the odds. His boldest move so far was his unexpected
proposal at the May 29-30 NATO summit in Brussels to slash U.S. and
Soviet conventional-force levels in Europe. Last winter and spring
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was beguiling European public
opinion with frequent disarmament offers while the President stood
pat, waiting for his aides' review of American foreign policy. NATO
allies were growing impatient, and Bush's popularity in some polls
was inching downward. By early May, despite his public denials of
concern, the President was feeling anxious. "I need something," he
told his aides. "I want to do something."

    Early in the Administration, Bush and National Security Adviser
Brent Scowcroft mulled ways to bring Soviet troop levels in Europe
into rough parity with NATO's. At one point they even contemplated
a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe. But the national
security bureaucracy "absolutely hated it," said a White House
official. "The idea just sank like a stone."

    Unlike Reagan, Bush does not like to flout his own bureaucracy.
But now he had reason for boldness: Gorbachev had ponied up deep
cuts in Soviet conventional forces in Europe at a May 11 meeting
with Secretary of State James Baker in Moscow. "That was really the
green light," said an official. "If we didn't move then, we were
going to go to the NATO summit without anything." In a May 15 Oval
Office meeting, Bush, Baker, Scowcroft, chief of staff John Sununu,
Joint Chiefs Chairman William Crowe and Defense Secretary Dick
Cheney gathered to discuss ways to make a proposal with "punch."
Scowcroft suggested that Bush propose deep reductions in U.S. and
Soviet ground forces and combat aircraft in Europe. The President
liked Scowcroft's idea but wanted to make sure the Pentagon was on
board. "I just don't want to do anything militarily dumb," he said
repeatedly.

    Moving quickly, Crowe and Cheney formed a small task force to
study the force cuts in time for a May 19 visit to Kennebunkport,
Me. That session was followed by a Monday-afternoon meeting in the
Oval Office. There, Crowe told Bush the military could accept a 20%
reduction in manpower and a 15% cut in aircraft without
significantly weakening NATO's plans for fighting a European war.
Baker argued that 25% would sound more dramatic. The President
listened closely and asked a lot of questions. Finally, he settled
on the lower, safer number. "O.K., I think we can go to 20%," he
said. Turning to Cheney, he double-checked. "Now, is 20% all right?
You can live with that?" Cheney nodded. "O.K., that's consensus,"
Bush said. "Let's go."

    Bush generally feels more at home with foreign policy than with
domestic issues. Little wonder: in serving as U.N. Ambassador,
American envoy to China, CIA director and funeral-hopping Vice
President, he amassed a detailed personal knowledge of world
leaders. Like Nixon, Bush has a habit of adding intimate footnotes
when intelligence briefers provide him with thumbnail biographies
of figures making news overseas. "That guy isn't like that at all,"
he told an analyst who was profiling a foreign politician. "He goes
back a long way with some of these cats," a senior official
recounted. Two weeks ago, in a remarkable display of Rolodex
diplomacy, Bush telephoned Kings Hussein of Jordan, Hassan of
Morocco, Fahd of Saudi Arabia; Prime Ministers Turgut Ozal of
Turkey and Margaret Thatcher of Britain; Chancellor Helmut Kohl of
West Germany; Presidents Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Chadli
Bendjedid of Algeria; as well as the Pope -- anyone who might have
a direct or indirect line to Iran or the Iranian-backed terrorists
who were threatening to kill hostage Joseph Cicippio.

    On domestic matters, however, Bush relies on a highly
structured decision-making process that even has a name. Known to
government-school types as multiple advocacy, it is designed to
refine options and allow the President to hear his top advisers
argue them out. Bush's chief domestic policy adviser, Roger Porter,
wrote a book extolling the virtues of the system after watching it
work in the Ford Administration. Though multiple advocacy is time
consuming and difficult to manage, Bush has peopled his Cabinet
with the sort of collegial generalists necessary for success. The
President apparently sees little irony in the fact that he
campaigned against Michael Dukakis' "Harvard boutique" of advisers
but now has erected a system staffed by his share of Kennedy School
alumni: "I've known pretty well how I want to reach decisions --
get good, strong, experienced people, encourage them to express
their views openly, encourage them not to hold back."

    The recent clean-air proposal was a textbook case of multiple
advocacy. With Bush's campaign promise to reduce acid rain and
toxic waste as guidance, Porter assembled five Administration
officials: Energy Secretary James Watkins, EPA Administrator
William Reilly, Assistant EPA Administrator William Rosenberg,
Associate Budget Director Robert Grady and White House Counsel
Boyden Gray. They met 16 times during the spring, and on other
occasions with lawmakers, industry officials and environmentalists.
Gradually they fashioned a package they thought all parties could
support.

    The plan was presented to Cabinet officers whose departments
would be affected. This second group narrowed down the options. The
Cabinet postponed one meeting with Bush after the EPA's Reilly, in
a move supported by Boyden Gray, argued for an idealistic plan that
would have required half the cars in the nation's 20 largest cities
to be powered by alternative fuels by the year 2000. Budget
Director Richard Darman and Economic Adviser Michael Boskin worked
for weeks to come up with the scaled-down version that eventually
went to the President. Bush never saw the EPA's 50% proposal.

    To help Bush think through an issue, White House aides stage
debates, which they call "scheduled train wrecks." Aides once
invited opposing sides to lobby the President separately, but
quickly realized that Bush prefers -- and benefits from -- live
skirmishes. Bush asks questions during the back and forth, takes
copious notes on White House pads and often asks lower-level
officials for their views. "He doesn't want filters," said a
participant. "He actually wants to sit there at the table and
listen to Darman fight with Reilly." Darman argued in one meeting
that the clean-air proposals were too expensive for the health and
safety benefits gained. "For the same amount of money," the Budget
Director said, "we can buy everyone in America rubber-soled shoes,
because the chance of being killed by toxic gases is about the same
as being killed by lightning." Bush is proud of these bouts and
prefers them to the staged-managed sessions held for Reagan. "I've
been to Cabinet meetings when (they have) been a show-and-tell,"
Bush said. "We don't do ours that way."

    After the Cabinet sessions, Bush repairs to the Oval Office
and widens his net. He often invites Darman or Treasury Secretary
Nicholas Brady along to go over this point or that; sometimes he
turns it into a working lunch. Bush is soon on the telephone
shopping the options around to his "sources" on Capitol Hill:
Senator Robert Dole on political matters, Ohio Congressman Willis
Gradison on health care and economic matters, Tennessee Republican
Don Sundquist on tax questions. Following the May Cabinet debates
over which countries to name as unfair traders under the new "Super
301" section of the 1988 trade bill, Bush's consultations with key
lawmakers stiffened his resolve to name Japan, India and Brazil.
Telephoning "gets me more knowledge," the President explained."...
I try to keep in mind what's doable from a political standpoint."

    It can also bail him out of trouble. Last March, William
Bennett, the new director of the Office of National Drug Control
Policy, temporarily banned imported assault weapons. Bush, a life
member of the National Rifle Association, kept his distance in
public. Opinion polls backed Bennett's move, but gun owners did
not. N.R.A. lobbyists complained bitterly and even withheld a
pivotal endorsement of Dan Heath, a Republican congressional
candidate from Indiana, just a week before the March 28 special
election. Heath lost the race by 1,778 votes.

    Hours before Bennett issued his ban, Bush tracked down Heritage
Foundation president Edwin Fuelner by car phone and asked the
conservative for help. In a confidential memo to the President
three days later, Fuelner suggested that Bush could "retain the
support of your gun-owning constituency" by changing the subject:
propose the building of more prisons, hiring more prosecutors and
enforcing existing laws. Bush sent the ideas to his staff, and when
the Administration released its crime package two months later,
the initiative followed Fuelner's recommendations down the line.

    While Bush, like most people, makes up his mind gradually, his
strategy is to wait until the last minute to tip his hand. Bush
holds his cards so closely that his top advisers often do not know
what he is thinking. By playing coy, aides say, the President hopes
to prevent leaks, keep special interests and congressional
coalitions from forming in opposition, and give his eventual
decrees a thrust that White House announcements often lack.

    In the case of clean air, Sununu carried the final options to
Bush at Camp David to review each one and note the President's
preference. "Nobody knew which boxes he was going to check that
weekend," said a person involved. "Not Reilly, not Sununu, not
anybody. Bush never showed his hand."

    Sometimes Bush delays just to keep everyone guessing. In early
July he postponed a final decision on a pay raise for Government
executives until two hours before the planned announcement. That
morning, he thumbed through a decision memo prepared by Gray and
Darman. The memo barely camouflaged their impatience: pressing for
the pay hike, Gray and Darman wrote, "We would like to confirm what
we believe to have been your decision." They recommended raising
the salaries of some 200 high-ranking federal employees to
$150,000.

    In a surprise move, Bush balked at the suggestion. In felt-tip
pen, he scribbled instructions to pay the officials up to $124,400
instead. Aides scrambled to rewrite stacks of printed fact sheets
as the announcement neared.

    Once Bush finally decides, his aides seem to fall in line
rather than make their complaints public. After all the trouble the
President has taken to hear them out, Bush's Cabinet and staff,
unlike Reagan's, feel obliged to support him even if they disagree.
"You haven't heard much carping about this or that," says Commerce
Secretary Robert Mosbacher, "because we do all our yelling ahead
of time." Aides also know Bush is almost never willing to
reconsider. "Once he's decided," says Peter Teeley, Bush's former
press secretary, "you'd better have some bombshell of a reason why
he shouldn't do it."

    Bush seems to know his limitations as a decision maker, and
has attracted advisers who can compensate for his shortcomings.
White House aides say the President is adept at reducing policy
questions to their essentials. But Bush rarely redefines an issue
or proposes a novel solution. Instead, he relies heavily on
counselors like Baker, Darman and Scowcroft, who, as a staffer put
it, "see Door No. 3 when everyone else sees only Doors Nos. 1 and
2." Just before Bush decided to extend restrictions on imported
steel, Roger Porter called on the President in the Oval Office and
said, "I think I've got this figured out." Replied Bush: "I
certainly hope so."

    When he sees no easy way out, Bush often just splits the
difference, an inclination that frequently angers conservatives.
Bush has repeatedly opted for this route as President. He decided
to build both the MX and mobile Midgetman missiles, when either
might suffice. He backed a boost in the minimum wage to $4.25 an
hour, 30 cents less than Democrats and labor unions wanted. Bush
supported a wage increase during the 1988 campaign, but after his
Inauguration, White House economic advisers opposed it as
inflationary. "He had to deliver on a promise," said a top
official. "The easiest thing he could do was pick a number. So he
did."

    Bush also displays a sense of fairness that one adviser
described as "an almost procedural due process." In February he
reopened the complicated question of whether the U.S. should
provide sensitive technology to Japan for that country's FSX
aircraft after learning that the Reagan White House had ignored
Commerce Department doubts about the deal. During Cabinet meetings,
when political considerations are paramount, Bush often asks,
half-seriously, "What should we do in case we just want to do the
right thing?"

    But Bush certainly is not innocent of political calculation.
In Cabinet meetings, he is often the first to shoot down ideas that
won't fly in Congress, as he did when aides suggested buying
Democratic support of a capital-gains tax cut with a White House
retreat from the campaign pledge not to raise other taxes. "We'll
get clobbered for that," Bush said. When pressed on a political
question, he has a playful stock reply: "If you're so damned smart,
how come you aren't President of the United States?"

    Bush can be defensive about admitting political considerations,
as in his June decision -- largely unassisted by aides -- to
propose a constitutional amendment against flag burning. "I've been
accused of draping myself in the flag for a political reason," he
told TIME in an unprompted aside. "That's not why I proposed a
constitutional amendment. And now I'm reading that people aren't
interested in that (issue) anymore. Well, my (internal) clock tells
me that's wrong, and I don't need (Republican pollster) Bob Teeter
to show me a poll to make me convinced it's wrong." Although Bush
insists that he does not steer his policies by the polls, he loves
to use survey data to silence skeptics. After he permanently banned
imported assault weapons, for example, he privately brandished poll
results showing support for his position in the home states of some
of his congressional critics.

    Bush may have less to fear from critics than from his sly habit
of promising big things but providing few dollars for the tasks.
He has called himself "the education President" but budgeted little
more for schools than did Reagan. His proposals to cut violent
crime by doubling federal prison cells sounded commendable, but
even top aides acknowledge that the construction program will have
almost no effect on the problem. This bait-and-switch game is
considered clever in Washington but not in many other places.
Democrats are sure to seize on the rhetoric-reality gap in next
year's congressional elections.

    For now Bush seems genuinely to enjoy being President. He works
as hard at the job as Carter did, yet wears the office as lightly
as Reagan. He takes unusual pleasure in secretly arranging small
parties for staff and Cabinet officers in the Rose Garden, in his
horseshoe pit or around the White House pool. After a twelve-hour
workday last April that began in San Jose and ended in Los Angeles,
Bush had completed his scheduled events but, in a typical burst of
spontaneity, summoned four Chinook helicopters to ferry him, his
staff and reporters to a baseball game in Anaheim.

    Most evenings, though, Bush retires to his note writing,
thanking friends and advisers for help or requesting more
information on a particular topic. He carries this correspondence
to work the next morning, having already scanned six newspapers*
in bed, while sipping coffee and watching the television news shows
with Barbara.

    Bush is often in the Oval Office before 7 a.m., talking with
intelligence briefers and later with Scowcroft. He meets with
Sununu for an hour each morning, quickly working through a notebook
of "action items." These can range from learning the results of a
new statewide poll in Kentucky to approving a compromise position
on the savings-and-loan legislation.

    Later, between greeting dozens of visitors, Bush will peruse
articles, mail and briefing papers on a variety of subjects. He
prefers that "backgrounders" not exceed five pages, but he often
asks for details that demand twice as much space. He seems to edit
almost everything presented to him; he made several revisions in
the fact sheet and speech announcing his crime package, saying,
"Here, this reflects my decision better than the other way." At
4:30, Sununu returns with "the p.m. agenda," a second notebook full
of items for Bush's O.K.

    Underlying this process is a lack of ideological conviction
that has helped Bush cut deals on policy matters like the
Nicaraguan contras, clean air and the savings-and-loan crisis that
have stalemated the capital for years. Bush's "ideology," as it is,
can be summed up in a few words: hard work, family, country, public
service, loyalty. These priorities have allowed Bush to change his
views on many controversial subjects -- abortion, gun control,
"voodoo economics" -- during his 25-year political career. They
explain why he stuck by John Tower, his choice to run the Pentagon,
long after others had abandoned him. "George Bush is very loyal to
people," says a close adviser, "more than to ideas."

    Bush doesn't directly deny this. "I think there's an
ideological underpinning to what we as an Administration are trying
to do," he told TIME. "But I think I would give much more credit
to able advisers, in that I don't sit down and tell those who are
wrestling with the S & L problems, `Do it this way.' They're
telling me, and that's why they are in their jobs."

    This problem-solving approach to government has proved
effective in the short run; long term it could signal a leadership
vacuum. In a study of presidential decision making, Porter notes
that the White House, no matter how it is organized, rarely
anticipates problems well. Within the Administration, there is some
concern that Bush is often tied to his In box, dealing with crises
and other immediate matters. A senior adviser admits that Bush's
long service in the Federal Government has left him overdependent
on the Congress and the bureaucracy to set his agenda: "He is a
prisoner as well as a product of that experience."

    Roger Ailes, Bush's campaign media adviser, exhorted the
President before his NATO trip to show the American people that
"you can knock one out of the ball park every now and then." Bush
did just that in Brussels, but the former Yale first baseman was
always valued more for his defensive play and team spirit than for
his batting. To help nudge the Administration from its reactive
mode, Sununu, Darman, Bennett, Vice President Dan Quayle and HUD
Secretary Jack Kemp have begun meeting for breakfast every few
weeks in the White House mess in what has become known informally
as the "forward strategy group."

    Several members of this gathering played a key role last month
in urging Bush to support a U.S. mission to Mars as a way to
restore vision to his Administration. (After he did so, the
President complained that he was criticized for earmarking too
little money for the program.) "We've got this competence thing
knocked," said an Administration official. "Now we have to figure
out how we're going to leave our mark on the country."

    But if Bush does not anticipate every problem, it may not
matter. Most Presidents ultimately are measured not as visionaries
but by how well they perform under fire. So far, Bush has responded
ably to his few minor crises, mostly by staying calm and remaining
steady. Moreover, after eight years of the Reagan revolution,
Bush's modest pragmatism seems more welcome than unwavering
single-mindedness.

    While Bush has not addressed the nation's festering social
problems and has all but ignored the federal budget deficit,
American voters seem to reckon that at least he will do them no
harm. Most polls put Bush's approval ratings at around 65%, typical
for this point in a President's first year. One can at least make
out a cogent political strategy in his performance to date: his
broad proposals on clean air, education, ethics in government,
crime and child care may promise more than they deliver, but they
have co-opted the Democrats' best talking points. Tougher tests lie
ahead.

    Bush seems both impatient and amused by examination of his
motives and methods. One day after talking to TIME about his
decision-making style, the President posed for a gag photo showing
him rubbing his hands over a crystal ball, with smiling aides
hovering nearby. Says Bush: "Hey, listen, right now things are
going pretty good, but tomorrow it will be another kind of ball
game. So just keep doing your best. Back to my mother -- do your
best. Do your best."

    That sounds like a nascent -- and ironic -- re-election slogan.
Last year Dukakis declared that the contest for the White House was
about "competence, not ideology." Bush won the election by
campaigning on "values." After seven months as President, however,
Bush seems to be betting that what he accomplishes will matter more
than who he is or what he stands for. As Reagan fades from the
public's mind, a clearer portrait of Bush is emerging, and his
problem-solving style and relentlessly cautious decision making
suggest that he is already positioning himself to run on the
Dukakis slogan in 1992.


-- Dan Goodgame/Washington