USTIN, Texas - As he read the big, shrill advertisement in his hometown newspaper one spring day in 1997, state Representative Paul Sadler had the feeling that he had been stabbed in the back.
Sadler, an important Democratic committee chairman, thought he had reached an understanding with Governor George W. Bush on a plan to reform the state's creaky tax structure. But then the Texas Republican Party launched a barrage of ads accusing Sadler of plotting to raise taxes.
What happened next, Sadler said, gave him a window on Bush's political soul. The governor enlisted a group of eminent Republicans to run ads of their own, hailing Sadler and urging the voters in his conservative East Texas district to ignore the state party's screed.
Bush ''understood the political consequences of that kind of behavior at a time when we had entered into negotiations,'' Sadler said. But more importantly, the governor displayed ''a sense of fairness'' and ''a willingness to buck his own party structure,'' Sadler said.
Impressed by the governor's savvy and loyalty, Sadler collaborated with Bush on taxation and education, helping him to score key victories in the Texas Legislature. He is proud, he said, to call Bush ''my friend.''
And the GOP state chairman who ran the offending ad? He ran for attorney general in 1998, and was defeated by a candidate whom Bush promoted for the job.
Clues from a record
Bush's remarkable gesture of comity and political pluck marked the rough midpoint, and captures much of the spirit, of his 51/2 years as governor.
It is a slender public record by the standards of most modern presidents, too brief perhaps to support a definitive portrait of Bush's talents as a leader. Yet his record as governor, from the day he won his first election in November 1994 to his decision to launch a presidential campaign last year, does provide broad hints of how he might function as president.
Should he govern in Washington as he has governed in Austin, Bush will be conservative, but not reactionary. He will favor corporate America, but will not turn his back on the plight of the needy. He will be cautious, but capable of surprise.
Given the opportunity, Bush is likely to reach across party lines and work with moderate Democrats in Congress. He will be willing to compromise, happy to claim less than total victory if it moves him toward his goal and if it maintains or replenishes his political capital.
On many key issues he will be an orthodox Republican president: against gun controls; against abortion; reflexively tough on criminals, welfare cheats, and juvenile offenders. He will display a disdain for Ivy League experts despite his Ivy League education, and also will scorn liberal elites, teachers' unions, and trial lawyers. He will support voluntary measures to preserve the environment, rein in government regulators, lend a sympathetic ear to American business, and support free trade.
Like Ronald Reagan, Bush will set his administration's priorities, chart a general philosophical course, and delegate authority to his staff and Cabinet secretaries. He will be colorblind when sizing up potential friend or foe, and when carrying out his will to do away with traditional forms of affirmative action. He will demand loyalty from his lieutenants, reward his contributors, flatter the White House press corps.
Bush will be cocky, likeable, a bit of a wise-ass, and sometimes cruel. He may, at some point in his first term as president, roll the dice with a daring initiative, heedless of the political risk.
''What does emerge from Bush's record is that he has real political skills, and those are not to be despised,'' writes Molly Ivins, the liberal columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and no great fan of the man she dubbed ''Dubya.''
Caveats must accompany such predictions. A president can grow into, or be crushed by, the Oval Office. The Democratic barons on Capitol Hill may prove far more determinedly partisan than the moderates whom Bush wooed in Austin.
And perhaps most important, a future war or recession may offer sterner tests than the prosperity that has buffered all the choices Bush has made as governor.
Yet it is his record in Texas that the man who will be nominated by the Republican Party for president this week cites as the rationale for his candidacy. And it is Bush's record that will give many voters, as it did for Sadler, a window on the candidate.
Faith in a father
Bush was elected in 1994 as an orthodox Republican whose campaign was summed up in its slogan: ''Take a Stand for Texas Values.'' The young man with the famous name and daddy, the managing general partner and part-owner of the Texas Rangers, beat the Democratic governor, Ann Richards, by 54 percent to 46 percent.
Across the nation, it was a Republican year, as the GOP took control of the US House of Representatives for the first time in four decades and elected Newt Gingrich speaker. Bush also cashed in on the lingering sympathy in the state for his father, who had been deposed (despite carrying Texas) by Bill Clinton in 1992.
Governor Bush had had a front-row seat to learn from his party's triumphs and defeats during the Reagan-Bush years in Washington. Like Reagan, he chose a few well-defined priorities, which he pursued single-mindedly. Like his father, Bush sought to put a ''kinder, gentler'' face on conservativism's themes of individual self-reliance and governmental restraint.
''I think he is going to be a hybrid'' of the two former Republican presidents, said the Texas secretary of state, Elton Bomer, a former Democratic legislator who served as insurance commissioner under Bush. ''He will chart his own course. He will listen; he's a good listener. He is a conservative, but he does have compassion, and I don't think that is a hollow phrase he uses. I've seen him operate.''
Bush promised the voters to focus on four problems in his first year as governor: to cut the welfare rolls, to crack down on crime, to improve the state's schools, and to make it harder for people to file and win big lawsuits. He was no innovator: The Democratic-controlled Legislature had been working on these issues for months.
But if he did not make his mark as an innovator in his first year in office, Bush would impress as an implementer.
The Texas Legislature meets for 140 days every two years, giving governors two narrow windows in each four-year term to get their programs enacted.
Bush's challenge was compounded by the Legislature's status as a powerful institution that writes the state's budget, that approves or rejects the governor's appointees, and that sets its own agenda. A Texas governor can veto bills, but otherwise must rely on popular appeal or personal persuasion to work his will.
To fulfill his campaign promises, Bush had to reach a rapprochement with his lieutenant governor, Bob Bullock, a Democrat, and the speaker, J. E. ''Pete'' Laney, the Democrat in charge of the Texas House.
Laney was a shrewd West Texas cotton farmer. Bullock was a Texas legend, a larger-than-life figure in the mold of Lyndon Johnson. ''The lieutenant governor is the most powerful elected official in the state, or at least was when Bullock was alive,'' said Suzy Woodford, the executive director of Common Cause of Texas. ''He controlled the flow of legislation to the floor of the Senate.'' Bullock died in June 1999.
A payoff from pragmatism
Bush's pragmatism, and individual touch, reaped dividends. He made the most of his personality, adopting a relaxed style, schmoozing with the legislators on their own turf, having regular breakfast meetings with Bullock, whom he nicknamed ''Bully,'' and with Laney, and showing a willingness to compromise.
Bullock and Bush became particularly close. Bullock endorsed Bush over the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Garry Mauro, in 1998, even though the lieutenant governor was godfather to Mauro's daughter. Bush ''had an outstanding relationship with Lieutenant Governor Bullock,'' Bomer said. ''They were fast friends. In fact, Bush gave the eulogy at his funeral.''
At the end of the 1995 session the headlines gauging the new governor's performance read, ''Four for Four.'' Bush didn't get all he wanted, but with his support the Legislature increased school accountability, cut the amounts awarded in lawsuits, demanded more work from welfare recipients, and changed the juvenile justice system, lowering the age a youth could be charged with serious felonies from 15 to 14.
It is hard to say if Bush could repeat the performance of his freshman term should he get to the White House. Because the Texas Legislature meets for such short periods, said Margaret LaMontagne, a top Bush adviser, the state's elected officials cannot afford to indulge in contentious partisan gridlock. ''We have to get our work done down here. ... There is a sense of purpose. Things don't get put off,'' she said.
Bush was aided by Bullock's and Laney's conservative Democratic views. He may discover that a style well-suited for Austin does not translate to Washington, where the partisan forces play a much tougher game.
Bush ''has the ability to reach across party lines and build a consensus, but the ability to do that depends on the willingness of all the parties to try to build something, to be successful,'' Sadler said. ''The viewpoint in Washington is not to be successful, but to destroy the other party and shape election politics as opposed to taking an issue and trying to resolve it.''
The 1997 session of the Texas Legislature gave Texans a look at a different side of their governor, when Bush stunned the state by announcing that he was wagering his political capital on a sweeping tax overhaul plan.
This was not the Bush who, in 1995, had stepped out to lead an ongoing parade. The tax bill was his baby, a bid to help low- and middle-income families with their property tax bills while improving the public schools.
''I believe you have to spend political capital or it withers and dies,'' Bush has said. This time Bullock was on the other side, taunting him in public that the idea was ''dead.''
The problem in Texas, as in other states, was one of equalization. The state's public school system was largely supported by property taxes, so that students in wealthy districts got a better education than those in poorer areas. As the costs of improving the state's schools rose, so did the hardship on working families paying property tax bills.
`Doing it backward'
`We're doing it backward in Texas - funding our schools locally but governing them centrally,'' Bush told the voters.
The state had been sued by representatives of the poorer districts, and had been ordered in the courts to put a fiscal patch in place: a ''Robin Hood'' plan that shifted money from the wealthier to poorer school districts. The makeshift fix offered near-term relief, but did not address long-term problems.
Bush's solution was daring. He proposed that the Legislature shift most of the burden of financing education from local school districts to the state government, and that the Legislature make up for the resultant $3 billion cut in local property taxes by increasing the state sales tax and enacting a new and expansive ''Texas Business Tax.''
Of winners and losers
The governor's plan had winners and losers. Middle-class homeowners and poor school districts would find relief, but so would giant oil companies with sizable property holdings. Lawyers, doctors, engineers, and many small-business partnerships would find themselves paying a business tax for the first time. Democrats griped that the poorest Texans, who generally rent their homes, would face higher sales taxes with no guarantee that landlords would share the property tax relief.
The aggrieved interests let their views be known in Austin, and the governor's plan was chewed on and spat out. The Texas House dumped Bush's business tax. To finance its own proposed $4 billion cut in property taxes, the House passed a package of sin taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, and other items.
Bush endorsed the House plan, largely because it preserved his goal of shifting the school financing burden from local school boards to the state. But his own Republican senators, griping about the tax hikes and responding to the complaints of small-business owners and professionals, joined with Bullock and enough conservative Democrats to kill the plan in the Senate.
None of the governor's schmoozing and grins and personal appeals could save his tax plan. As a sop, the legislative leaders offered him a $1 billion cut in property taxes by increasing the homestead exemption - the amount of each home that is exempt from taxation.
''Bush is respected by the Legislature and can get things done. He has worked with both sides of the aisle effectively, and used his limited powers and power of persuasion to do so,'' said William Stouffer, a political science professor at Southwest Texas State University. ''But in this case he could not get it past the leaders of his own right wing.''
Bush had lost his bet, revealing the limits of his ''aw, shucks'' brand of leadership. Yet he emerged, remarkably, as strong and popular as ever. The voters and legislators respected Bush's gumption and vision.
''I think it speaks volumes about his character,'' said Sadler, the Democratic representative, who chaired the special House committee that dealt with the issue. ''He was extremely successful in his first session, riding high in the popular opinion polls, and so chose,'' in his second legislative session, ''to take on the most controversial tax and school issues in the state.
''When you combine the property tax and schools,'' Sadler went on, ''you reach everybody. Everyone had a stake. And he didn't have to do it, but he recognized we had a problem and chose to deal with it.''
In the end, when all attempts at compromise had failed, Sadler and Bush had a private meeting to discuss their options.
''Who are you trying to help?'' Sadler asked Bush.
''I'm trying to help the poorest of Texas homeowners,'' the governor answered.
''Then pass the homestead exemption. ... It will mean the most to them,'' Sadler said.
Looking back, Sadler said, ''I would have passed anything he asked. We had been through a war - I would have done it for him. But when given that choice I thought his response, immediate and personal to me, said a lot about the person.''
An ability to `straddle'
N one of this is to say that Bush is unable to dish out red meat to his right-wing constituents when he must, or that Democrats will not complain that he is long on conservativism and short on compassion.
Among the bills Bush has signed into law are measures to require that parents be notified before a daughter, 18 years old or younger, can get an abortion, to limit the liability of gun manufacturers, and to allow Texans to carry concealed handguns in public.
Bush is a favorite of the National Rifle Association. As has been widely noted, he has presided over more executions than any other American governor in the modern era. He has pushed, unsuccessfully, for a Texas school voucher plan, in which parents would be reimbursed for sending children to private schools.
The governor has supported a measure that banned gay couples from becoming foster parents or from adopting foster children. He vetoed a bill that would have boosted patients' rights in their dealings with HMOs. He has fought to limit the number of poor children eligible for Medicaid.
And Bush took a walk when, in the aftermath of the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr., a black man who was dragged behind the pickup truck of three white racists in Jasper, Texas, he was asked to endorse a law against hate crimes.
''All crime is hate,'' Bush said, explaining his reluctance to endorse the legislation. One of his objections, Bush said, was the sponsors' inclusion of homosexuals as a group that would be protected by the law. It failed to pass the Legislature.
Yet even the governor's critics acknowledge that Bush's success with ''compassionate conservativism'' shows a master politician at work. His most masterful ''straddle,'' the columnist Ivins said, ''has been keeping a moderate face on the Texas Republican Party while keeping the Christian Right happy.''
LaMontagne, the Bush aide, a specialist in education policy, sees it differently. Bush may have pushed for measures like the voucher program, she says, but that was a matter of the governor's personal philosophy, not a sop to the Right.
Bush has never satisfied the social conservatives on the Texas Board of Education, she says, a group with whom he has feuded for years.
''We had conservative experts helping us write our state curriculum, but many of the archconservatives on the state board refused to support us,'' LaMontagne said.
A parting tug of war
Bush's final tug of war with the Texas Legislature took place in 1999, as he organized his presidential candidacy and began to build a phenomenal war chest, with huge contributions from industries regulated by the Texas state government.
The governor's task was made somewhat easier by his landslide victory over the Democrat Mauro in the 1998 gubernatorial race, which helped to carry a host of Republican commissioners and legislators into office. The state Senate went Republican, and a GOP lieutenant governor replaced Bullock, who was dying.
On issues that were important to Republican primary voters, Bush had mixed results. He scored when the Legislature passed another billion-dollar cut in property taxes, cut hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, oil, and business taxes, imposed tougher requirements on schoolchildren for promotion to the next grade, and approved his bill requiring parental notification for minors seeking abortions.
But Bush was unable to get the Legislature to pass more stringent limits for welfare recipients, and he lost one of his top priorities: the school voucher program.
Bush's maneuvering on one major issue, air pollution, was particularly revealing. It offered a glimpse of how he attempts to balance principle and ambition.
In part because of a loophole in the state's Clean Air Act, the smokestacks of the Houston-Galveston petrochemical corridor have joined the booming number of cars in the growing metropolitan areas of Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, and San Antonio to give Texas what, by some standards, is the nation's dirtiest air.
The US Environmental Protection Agency and Texas environmentalists have demanded that the state crack down on polluters. But many of the governor's top campaign contributors represent industries that pollute the air.
Like most politicians, Bush has been solicitous toward those who finance his career. He has appointed big contributors to the state boards and commissions that regulate business and the environment in Texas, and to the entities that make investment decisions for the huge state employee pension funds and university endowments.
So Bush's solution to the air pollution problem was to call in the state's major industrial interests and ask them to draft a voluntary compliance program. At the same time, he endorsed a plan, also requested by big contributors, to deregulate the Texas energy and power industry.
The clean-air forces in the Texas Legislature saw an opportunity and did what Bush would not: They offered energy deregulation as a tradeoff to industry in return for cleaner air and higher fines on polluters.
The bargaining went down to the session's final hours. The final legislation was far tougher than Bush had proposed, but earned the governor's support, and passed.
Bush got to have it both ways: He had kept the voluntary system alive, but he was able to claim on the campaign trail that he had signed a law that cleaned up Texas' air. It is an approach to governing he will bring to Washington, should the voters elect him in November.
''The governor's style is to move the ball down the field,'' LaMontagne said. ''There are outliers on both sides that don't join. But we have been able to assemble a consensus.''
