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When he sees no easy way out, Bush often just splits the difference, an inclination that frequently angers conservatives. Bush has repeatedly opted for this route as President. He decided to build both the MX and mobile ! Midgetman missiles, when either might suffice. He backed a boost in the minimum wage to $4.25 an hour, 30 cents less than Democrats and labor unions wanted. Bush supported a wage increase during the 1988 campaign, but after his Inauguration, White House economic advisers opposed it as inflationary. "He had to deliver on a promise," said a top official. "The easiest thing he could do was pick a number. So he did."
Bush also displays a sense of fairness that one adviser described as "an almost procedural due process." In February he reopened the complicated question of whether the U.S. should provide sensitive technology to Japan for that country's FSX aircraft after learning that the Reagan White House had ignored Commerce Department doubts about the deal. During Cabinet meetings, when political considerations are paramount, Bush often asks, half-seriously, "What should we do in case we just want to do the right thing?"
But Bush certainly is not innocent of political calculation. In Cabinet meetings, he is often the first to shoot down ideas that won't fly in Congress, as he did when aides suggested buying Democratic support of a capital-gains tax cut with a White House retreat from the campaign pledge not to raise other taxes. "We'll get clobbered for that," Bush said. When pressed on a political question, he has a playful stock reply: "If you're so damned smart, how come you aren't President of the United States?"
Bush can be defensive about admitting political considerations, as in his June decision -- largely unassisted by aides -- to propose a constitutional amendment against flag burning. "I've been accused of draping myself in the flag for a political reason," he told TIME in an unprompted aside. "That's not why I proposed a constitutional amendment. And now I'm reading that people aren't interested in that ((issue)) anymore. Well, my ((internal)) clock tells me that's wrong, and I don't need ((Republican pollster)) Bob Teeter to show me a poll to make me convinced it's wrong." Although Bush insists that he does not steer his policies by the polls, he loves to use survey data to silence skeptics. After he permanently banned imported assault weapons, for example, he privately brandished poll results showing support for his position in the home states of some of his congressional critics.
Bush may have less to fear from critics than from his sly habit of promising big things but providing few dollars for the tasks. He has called himself "the education President" but budgeted little more for schools than did Reagan. His proposals to cut violent crime by doubling federal prison cells sounded commendable, but even top aides acknowledge that the construction program will have almost no effect on the problem. This bait-and-switch game is considered clever in Washington but not in many other places. Democrats are sure to seize on the rhetoric-reality gap in next year's congressional elections.