Bush meets Pelosi for lunch
George Bush and the House of Representatives’ Speaker-in waiting Nancy Pelosi pledged over lunch to stop squabbling and cooperate.
Pelosi, celebrating the Democrats’ success in Tuesday’s US Congressional elections, will become the second in line for succession to the presidency and one of the most powerful people in the United States.
Bush invited her to the White House after his Republican party suffered at the hands of the Democrats, who took control of the Congress for the first time in 12 years.
“The elections are now behind us, and the congresswoman’s party won,” Bush said. “But the challenges still remain. And therefore, we’re going to work together to address those challenges in a constructive way.”
Pelosi said: “We both extended the hand of friendship, of partnership to solve the problems facing our country.”
She was accompanied by Steny Hoyer, the House’s second-ranking Democrat. Bush was accompanied by Vice President Dick Cheney.
The president and his guests sat down for a meal of pasta salad and chocolate in Bush’s private dining room off the Oval Office.
Later in the day, Bush telephoned Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to congratulate him on the Democrats’ takeover in the Senate as well.
The switch in power in that chamber became sure on Wednesday night, when enough votes were counted to confirm the defeat of Virginia Republican George Allen.
Reid, likely to be majority leader in the new Senate, will have his own meeting with Bush at the White House today.
Meeting reporters in the Oval Office, Pelosi and Bush shook hands for the cameras.
The president and the woman whose party beat his this year promised cooperation in a government that, in January, will be divided between a Republican White House and a Democratic Congress.
Pelosi has made clear that House Democrats will move immediately on their agenda, much of it opposed by Bush, which includes cutting student loan interest rates, paying for embryonic stem cell research, authorising the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for those covered by the government-financed Medicare system and imposing a national cap on industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
She also has said the election results mean Democrats not only want but expect Bush to make a change of direction in the Iraq war.
“I look forward to working in a confidence-building way with the president, recognising that we have our differences, and we will debate them,” Pelosi said at the president’s side. “We’ve made history. Now we have to make progress.”
For his part, Bush has said that he will listen to all suggestions about Iraq except for those that would involve pulling troops out before the mission is completed. He also says he still wants congressional approval for war-on-terror tools that Democrats have questioned vigorously.
As Bush’s press secretary, Tony Snow, put it, echoing what Bush said a day earlier, the White House’s intention is to cooperate but “don’t trim back on your principles”.
Bush and Pelosi talked briefly about Iraq, without exploring specific policy changes. They discussed at length the degenerating situation in Sudan’s violence-wracked Darfur region.
Pelosi told reporters later that she suggested targets for initial compromise that are favourite subjects of the president: increased production of alternative energy, an immigration policy overhaul and ways to make American workers more competitive in the global economy.
Both have much to lose if they do not find agreement somewhere.
Democrats are getting a chance to control Congress, and they believe voters could take that privilege away in two years if they do not use it well.
For his part, Bush will lead with a Congress entirely in the other party’s hands for the first time in his presidency. It could have him reaching back to his experience as governor of Texas, when he cultivated friendships with top Democrats in the state Legislature, and to his 2000 campaign promise to be a “uniter not a divider”.
