No Time for Partisan Pleaders

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, September 21, 2001; Page A37

The collapse of partisanship after the atrocities of Sept. 11 is real. President Bush needs to keep party feelings at bay. There are pressures on him to do just the opposite.

How different is the political atmosphere? Consider this conversation with a Democratic consultant, a happy warrior who loves to defeat Republicans and has no particular sympathy for the president.

Asked about his attitude toward Bush after the attack, he replied: "I actually went into church and knelt down and prayed that he'd be successful. He's ours. He's all we've got. Pray God that he's going to do what's best for our country."

This attitude runs deep among Democrats. House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt and House Speaker Dennis Hastert broke with an acrimonious past to shepherd a $40 billion antiterror appropriation. In both houses, Democrats worked with Republicans to pass a war resolution.

Initially Republicans hoped to ram through their own versions of both measures. Instead they made concessions. "They could have rolled over us," said a very loyal and partisan Democratic leadership aide who resented the initial approach but appreciated the spirit of compromise.

In the Senate, where Democrats are in control and have the power to make trouble, the party's leaders have reciprocated, drawing back from a battle over Bush's missile defense system and minimizing fights over a Bush budget they plainly dislike.

Bush needs to nurture this attitude. His popularity soared after the attack because the whole country, like that prayerful Democratic consultant, wants him to succeed against terrorism. That does not mean that divisions on domestic policy -- so palpable when Bush's approval ratings hovered around 50 percent before the attacks -- have disappeared. Maintaining support for the long haul requires that Bush not grab quick victories on domestic issues where the parties are sharply at odds.

That's why it's depressing that some Republicans used the slaughter in New York and at the Pentagon -- and the economic fears that followed -- as an excuse to push a capital gains tax cut and the rest of the economic agenda they have been advocating for the past decade. Rep. John Spratt, a South Carolina Democrat and budget committee leader, was incredulous: "We've lost 5,000 people and now we need a capital gains tax cut? It's unconscionable that they'd even bring it up."

Rep. Bill Thomas, a California Republican who chairs the Ways and Means Committee, is appalled that anyone would see his party as using the crisis to push its favorite policies. This, he told National Journal, reflected a "level of cynicism beyond anything I want to engage in."

Assume Thomas's goodwill. But then try to explain a Wall Street Journal editorial on Wednesday urging Bush to advance his whole conservative domestic agenda now because "the bloody attacks have created a unique political moment when Americans of all stars and stripes are uniting behind their president."

Drill for oil in the Arctic, the Journal insisted, speed up the tax cut -- this while the country is spending tens of billions more than anyone anticipated before this crisis -- and even insist on pushing through confirmation of conservative judges. What do judges have to do with this war? Nothing, but the Journal's editorial writers see political opportunity: "Democrats in the Senate will hesitate to carry out borkings that clearly undercut Mr. Bush's leadership." Bush, they concluded, should "use the moment to press a broad agenda that he believes is in the national interest."

The Journal's editorial page has a history of speaking for important forces in the conservative movement. You can be sure that it is not alone in giving Bush this advice.

It is bad advice. It refuses to acknowledge the new political circumstances created by Sept. 11, and would slap in the face every American who opposes Bush on domestic issues but desperately wants to support him in fighting terrorists. "To use this crisis as a launching pad for objectives that are unrelated" to the war on terror, says Rep. Sandy Levin, a Michigan Democrat, "would unravel the bipartisanship that's needed even before it had a chance to work."

We have domestic disagreements that should be fought out -- but not now. The president must be tempted to use our desire to stand with him on behalf of his domestic purposes. My prayer is that he resists the temptation and remembers the Democrat on his knees in that church.