President Bush’s political honeymoon with newly empowered Democrats continued Friday as he and Vice President Dick Cheney met with Senate leaders at the White House.
“The elections are over; the problems haven’t gone away, ” Bush told reporters. “There is a great opportunity for us to show the country that Republicans and Democrats are equally as patriotic and equally concerned about the future, and that we can work together.”
Presumptive Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid added: “The only way to move forward is with bipartisanship and openness, and to get some results.”
The Nevada Democrat has long called for a change in Iraq policy, although White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said that “at this point, I think this is more just an opportunity for both sides to express goodwill and to talk over a series of issues. But it is not a time in which there are concrete proposals being floated.”
But Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said he and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., had a substantive discussion with Bush and Vice President Cheney in the Oval Office.
“We talked a lot about Iraq,” said Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat. “We talked about our agenda, moving forward on an agenda, finding things that we can agree on to start off on the right foot.”
Publicly, none of the participants mentioned topics of disagreement, including several measures that Bush would like to enact before Democrats take over control of Congress in January. These include affirming the legality of Bush’s terrorist surveillance program and confirming John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Since Democrats oppose both measures, Bush is trying to enact them during a lame-duck session of Congress, during which Republicans will remain in charge.
Snow said the measures are “constructive and important” and not “necessarily provocative” to Democrats. He was particularly forceful in defending Bolton, whose confirmation is opposed by Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware and outgoing Republican Sen. Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island.
“What complaint do you have with a man who’s been so successful in pushing through vital national Nation Security Council resolutions through the United Nations and has been awfully effective?” Snow asked.
He added: “When it comes to the terrorist surveillance program, the president doesn’t think that we ought to wait, in terms of developing a system that has congressional support for being able to conduct surveillance on terrorists in the United States, talking with their terror-masters overseas.”
