URL http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01E2D71730F937A35752C0A9619C8B63

DATE/ AUTHOR None	AUTHORS: Jim Rutenberg

H Bush Reaches Out, but Keeps One Hand on the Wheel

S1 In an article published on a friendly op-ed page, and from the regal confines of the White House, President Bush greeted the incoming Democratic leadership of Congress on Wednesday with a message of bipartisanship.

S2 But he also sent another message: I'm still the guy with the big plane, the big office (the oval one) and the presidential seal.

S3 With the op-ed, in The Wall Street Journal, and in the Rose Garden appearance, Mr. Bush sought to set the governing agenda one day before Democrats were officially to take control of Congress and alter the balance of power that has favored Mr. Bush's party for nearly his entire presidency.

S4 In doing so, Mr. Bush mixed calls for unity in governing with a series of red flags on his signature issues.

S5 Tax increases?
S6 Forget it.

S7 ''The elections have not reversed the laws of economics,'' Mr. Bush wrote in The Journal.
S8 ''It is a fact that economies do best when you reward hard work by allowing people to keep more of what they have earned.''

S9 The war in Iraq?
S10 ''We now have the opportunity to build a bipartisan consensus to fight and win the war,'' he wrote.
S11 In other words, we're staying.

S12 That new Democratic majority?
S13 It isn't really so big.

S14 ''The minority party, especially where the margins are close,'' Mr. Bush wrote, ''has a strong say in the form bills take.''
S15 And the president, he added -- lest anyone forget -- has the constitutional authority ''to use his judgment whether they should be signed into law.''

S16 Several Democrats said Mr. Bush's words on Wednesday had raised questions about what kind of president would show up when they get down to the business of governing side by side.

S17 Some Democrats may have hoped it would be the George W. Bush who contritely acknowledged a ''thumpin' '' for his party the day after the elections in November.
S18 But the evidence suggests it is more likely to be the man who all but ignored the disputed circumstances of his election in 2000, governed from then as if he had an expansive mandate and who -- even as he has employed soothing tones in speaking to and about Democrats for the last two months -- has gradually but firmly reasserted himself on both foreign and domestic policy.

S19 ''I think what the op-ed showed was the fundamental division within the White House and probably within the president's head whether to stick to the old issues and just talk bipartisanship versus really doing it,'' said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the new vice chairman of the Democratic caucus in the Senate, in an interview.

S20 The first few weeks of January are traditionally when the White House carefully rolls out new or repackaged policy initiatives before the president's State of the Union address, a period when he can set the agenda.
S21 But for the first time since early 2002, when Democrats controlled the Senate, Mr. Bush has to share power and the national microphone.
S22 He also has to show that he has a domestic agenda at a time when his presidency is largely consumed by Iraq.

S23 Both sides were making some effort on Wednesday to play nice.
S24 White House officials noted that the president had highlighted several areas in which he has shown a willingness to work more closely with Democrats, like on a new minimum wage and a new immigration law.

S25 And the White House arranged for a plane to bring the incoming Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, back to Washington from Gerald R. Ford's funeral in Grand Rapids, Mich., in time for a reception with Mr. Bush and the other Congressional leaders.

S26 In a memorandum that Mr. Reid issued Wednesday to fellow Democrats, he wrote, ''I'm encouraged that President Bush said today that he wants to work in bipartisanship.''

S27 But, he added, ''I hope he means it.''
S28 And in defining his own approach to bipartisanship, Mr. Reid went on to praise Senator Gordon H. Smith, Republican of Oregon, saying Mr. Smith's commentary last month on the administration's war policy -- in which Mr. Smith said it ''may even be criminal'' -- had ''signaled a sea change over how Congress will address the Iraq war.''

S29 Mr. Reid promised to work with Republicans to ''bring oversight and accountability to the Bush administration's conduct of the war and ensure a new policy that meets conditions on the ground'' but also ''allows our troops to come home.''

S30 Democrats were moving quickly to hold the administration accountable, in their view, for its mistakes, promising to hold as many as a dozen oversight hearings on the war alone in the next few weeks.

S31 In interviews, White House officials did not hesitate to acknowledge that they were taking advantage of the last day before the Democrats take control to assert some presidential power.

S32 Nor did they dispute Democrats' suspicions that the White House placed Mr. Bush's opinion piece in The Journal to reassure a target audience of nervous fiscal conservatives -- and the financial markets -- that he remained philosophically opposed to any tax increases.

S33 But administration officials disputed Democratic assertions that the president was trying to upstage them before their big day.

S34 ''It's an appropriate time to say where we are on these things and to again reiterate the president's view that we can work together to find common ground,'' said Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman.
S35 ''It also doesn't mean that a Democrat-controlled Congress passes whatever they want and we sign it -- that's not bipartisanship.''

S36 But it was clear that as both sides spoke about bipartisanship, they were defining it on different terms.

S37 Mr. Fratto acknowledged as much, saying, ''We'll have to see as we go forward over the next six months, in particular, if everyone has the same understanding of what bipartisanship means.''

S38 THE 110TH CONGRESS: WHITE HOUSE MEMO

