Politics

Across The Great Divide

February 2, 2001 / 1:08 PM EST / CBS/AP

Just as President George W. Bush steers his White House toward a partisan tussle over tax cuts, he is making an unprecedented gesture to congressional Democrats: joining their annual closed-door retreats.

President Bush took a half-dozen questions from the opposition at the opening of Friday's Senate Democratic retreat at the Library of Congress before venturing back onto Republican turf in the afternoon at the House-Senate GOP retreat in Williamsburg, Virginia.

"Some may think I'm naive to rid the system of rancor, but that's my intent," the president told Senate Democrats, according to White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who sat in on the private, 50-minute session.

As he walked across the White House South Lawn to board his helicopter for the trip to Virginia, President Bush flashed reporters a thumbs-up and reported the meeting was "Good."

Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, described the session as congenial but "all form and no substance. It will all be talk until we get the specifics."

After an abbreviated weekend at Camp David with national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, his first visit to the presidential getaway as president, President Bush will fly on Sunday to a town near Pittsburgh, where House Democrats are meeting at a mountain resort.

The president "hopes that by going to the retreats of the other parties, as well, of course, as his own party, that people across the country will see our government works together well," said Fleischer. Americans want to see Washington "focus less on bickering and more on working," he added.

Whether that focus can hold will be tested next week when President Bush sends Congress his $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax-cut package . Democrats have already mounted a campaign against the plan, saying its massive size risks a return to Reagan-era deficits.

White House and congressional officials could not recall a president ever dropping in on the opposing party's private team huddles.

"It's without modern precedent," said Fleischer. "It may be without precedent entirely."

By the latest White House count, President Bush has, in his first 13 days as president, welcomed a record number of congressman, between 150 and 160, from both parties to the White House. President Bill Clinton extended such an invitation to just 17 lawmakers during his first week in 1993, and aides said former President George President Bush tallied under 10.