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The plan was presented to Cabinet officers whose departments would be affected. This second group narrowed down the options. The Cabinet postponed one meeting with Bush after the EPA's Reilly, in a move supported by Boyden Gray, argued for an idealistic plan that would have required half the cars in the nation's 20 largest cities to be powered by alternative fuels by the year 2000. Budget Director Richard Darman and Economic Adviser Michael Boskin worked for weeks to come up with the scaled-down version that eventually went to the President. Bush never saw the EPA's 50% proposal.
To help Bush think through an issue, White House aides stage debates, which they call "scheduled train wrecks." Aides once invited opposing sides to lobby the President separately, but quickly realized that Bush prefers -- and benefits from -- live skirmishes. Bush asks questions during the back and forth, takes copious notes on White House pads and often asks lower-level officials for their views. "He doesn't want filters," said a participant. "He actually wants to sit there at the table and listen to Darman fight with Reilly." Darman argued in one meeting that the clean-air proposals were too expensive for the health and safety benefits gained. "For the same amount of money," the Budget Director said, "we can buy everyone in America rubber- soled shoes, because the chance of being killed by toxic gases is about the same as being killed by lightning." Bush is proud of these bouts and prefers them to the staged-managed sessions held for Reagan. "I've been to Cabinet meetings when ((they have)) been a show-and-tell," Bush said. "We don't do ours that way."
After the Cabinet sessions, Bush repairs to the Oval Office and widens his net. He often invites Darman or Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady along to go over this point or that; sometimes he turns it into a working lunch. Bush is soon on the telephone shopping the options around to his "sources" on Capitol Hill: Senator Robert Dole on political matters, Ohio Congressman Willis Gradison on health care and economic matters, Tennessee Republican Don Sundquist on tax questions. Following the May Cabinet debates over which countries to name as unfair traders under the new "Super 301" section of the 1988 trade bill, Bush's consultations with key lawmakers stiffened his resolve to name Japan, India and Brazil. Telephoning "gets me more knowledge," the President explained. ". . . I try to keep in mind what's doable from a political standpoint."
It can also bail him out of trouble. Last March, William Bennett, the new director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, temporarily banned imported assault weapons. Bush, a life member of the National Rifle Association, kept his distance in public. Opinion polls backed Bennett's move, but gun owners did not. N.R.A. lobbyists complained bitterly and even withheld a pivotal endorsement of Dan Heath, a Republican congressional candidate from Indiana, just a week before the March 28 special election. Heath lost the race by 1,778 votes.