Web Video: George W. Bush’s first days in office

GWEN IFILL, host: The week started with a dance. The bride wore red; the groom looked awkward; but, oh, what a honeymoon. What else can you say about a Republican president whose new best friends seem to be Ted Kennedy and Alan Greenspan, Alexis?

Ms. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER (National Journal): Well, as you were saying earlier, that--this started off with a lot of Democratic support this week, a lot of nice words from some unlikely spots. This week was education week for a compassionate conservative president who really wanted to start off to his strength, education. It's something he campaigned on, something he feels passionately about. He thinks he has a record in Texas on that.

And the interesting thing about the education plan was that he really stuck very closely to what he had campaigned on but made a slight moderation to appeal to some Democrats to really split it down the middle. And in this case, the centerpiece of an expanded role for the federal government in education happens to be testing, accountability. This is something that George Bush thinks that federal dollars should be tracked. You should be able to do testing in the states, allow the states to do the testing themselves, figure out what they want to actually set as the benchmarks, but you should do that testing every year from third to eighth grade and then measure how the federal dollars--7 cents out of every dollar from the federal government are going to the states.

The moderation that he made was in vouchers. This is the issue that is really the make or break for Democrats, something that he doesn't call vouchers; he calls it parental choice or parent choice. And this is an option that he would give to folks. He moderi--moderated it slightly by saying that he wasn't going to stick to that three strikes, three years, and then send people off to private schools with their federal dollars, but actually he'd look for some Democratic support elsewhere.

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (Fortune): Yes. Actually, his first action had more to do with abortion than education, sort of a surprise to a lot of folks. Was it a surprise and should we be shocked that abortion came, really, first out of the chute?

Ms. SIMENDINGER: I don't think anyone thought that George Bush was not going to come back to a Reagan era--executive orders or actions that he could take to come back to the more conservative stance on abortion, mostly because his conservative base r--very much expected it. The interesting thing was that the Roe v. Wade anniversary fell on his first day in the office. And the thing that he actually put out was largely embodied in statute, went a little step further by making sure that the idea is that no US dollars, even abroad, can go to anything related to abortion services. It appealed to conservatives. Obviously, it caused a dust-up among Democrats and the liberals who, obviously, were revved up and expected George W. Bush to do something like this. And then it died down as he went into education week.

Ms. JANET HOOK (Los Angeles Times): Alexis, how would you compare this as a first week to Clinton's first week in office in his first administration? As I remember, it was controversy over his position on gays in the military; you know, his Cabinet nominees were under fire for hiring illegal aliens. How would you compare it?

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Well, he--he, obviously, was under fire for his attorney general. I covered the first week of--of Bill Clinton's campaign, and there were lots of folks who were paying a lot of attention to the chaos and the sort of lack of understanding...

IFILL: It was kind of hard to ignore, as I remember.

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Gwen was there, yes. It w--it had a little rough edges around the--every aspect of the White House in the first week. And this week the Bush administration really went out of their way at the White House to indicate that they could be punctual, they could be tidy, they could be rule-oriented, they were going to have appropriate attire in the Oval Office, that they were going to be friendly to reporters, they were going to produce these gleaming documents on the second day. So all of that cast a--definitely a new tone.

With Congress, it came down to courtship. George W. Bush invited them over, awarded a few of them some old nicknames and told a lot of lawmakers exactly what they wanted to hear. A charm offensive, wasn't it, Janet?

Ms. JANET HOOK (Los Angeles Times): It was quite a charm offensive. And actually, you know, we usually talk about whe--a--ask whether a president is going to get a honeymoon. Well, this actually was more like a first date, 'cause--'cause Bush doesn't know a lot of these members of Congress, and a lot of them don't know him. So it actually made quite a lot of sense. It was a very good thing for him to do to spend the first week just bringing in the House members and senators. They should have put a revolving door in the White House to get all of these members in.

Ms. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER (National Journal): I think 90 of them came in this week.

Ms. HOOK: It w--I--I stopped counting the number because there were so many of them. And the key--he understands one really cold political reality, that Congress is very deeply divided. He nominally controls both of them, but he's going to have to reach out to Democrats as well as Republicans if he's going to get his way on Ca--Capitol Hill.

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (Fortune): Well, how did it--how did it go? Did--did the Democrats buy this courtship?

Ms. HOOK: Well, you know, there was some good news and bad news. The good news is, actually, George Bush has proven himself to be a very charming man, and a lot of these Democrats in particular have only seen him on TV giving big speeches, and that is not George Bush's strength. His strength is small-group meetings; and he--he kind of--he--he really--a lot of people came out saying, `What a--what an interesting guy.' More concretely, you know, what Gwen mentioned before, one of his Cabinet secretaries who was thought to be one of the most controversial, Gale Norton, at Interior, was approved by a committee with only two Democrats voting against it. So they're kind of softening up there.

GWEN IFILL, host: Well, for all of us at this table this week, it was impossible to watch this first week of the second Bush administration without thinking--at least as I did at one point--`We're n--just not in Arkansas anymore.' There was Clinton residue everywhere: controversial pardons; dubious last-minute gift-giving; mischief-making in White House offices. They stole all the W's off the computer keyboards--Get it? And there was George W. Bush, ser--seemingly determined to send a new message: formality, organization, possibility. So what do we make of all of this?

Ms. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER (National Journal): Well, if you were a new president coming in and a new party, and you wanted that big broom to sweep the other guy out of town, all of the things that we just talked about were gifts to Bush, President Bush, I think, in terms of rapidly trying to make us feel glad that Bill Clinton was out of town. He--Clinton, obviously, did some things to himself and George W. Bush took ad--advantage of it this week.

Mr. PETER GOSSELIN (Los Angeles Times): And to give Bush credit, besides the breaking of events in his direction, he's done a--he's marched through a really quick transition in a very orderly fashion. It's pretty impressive.

Ms. JANET HOOK (Los Angeles Times): And, you know, you can just feel the difference, y--you know, on Capitol Hill and around town, just how much everybody else is sort of noticing that things are really different here. Tom DeLay, who is the majority--the Republican whip of the House, apparently, in one of his White House meetings with Clinton, said, `You know, for eight years I would wake up and think, "How am I going to frustrate the president today?" But I don't have to do that anymore.'

IFILL: How frustrating that will be for Tom DeLay.

Ms. HOOK: Right.

IFILL: Whatever will he do with his time?

Mr. JEFFREY BIRNBAUM (Fortune): There--there really is a complete change in tone in--in the city. We can no longer expect a scandal every week, though there may well be some. And it's dawning on people that there really is a change afoot. I think w--because of the lingering Clinton scandals, the pardon, the--the pardons, the deal at the end with prosecutors, Clinton's--still is sort of hanging on here. But pretty soon, he's going to fade away and it's going to dawn on people that Republicans are actually in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress and that the Democrats are going to have to start acting quite differently.