To Still Midterm Waters, Bush's Agenda Is Cautious

WASHINGTON — Chastened. Deferential. Modest.

These are not words that have typically described President Bush's agenda or his approach to advancing his ideas, at home or abroad.

But they capture the distinctive elements of the State of the Union address Bush delivered Tuesday after a grueling 2005 that sent his public approval ratings plummeting to the lowest levels of his presidency.

Bush was as resolute and confident as ever in defending his strategy for fighting terrorism, his determination to promote democracy in the Middle East and his decision to invade Iraq. Although he did not threaten military action, he was also firm in warning Iran against continuing to move toward nuclear weapons.

But on domestic policy, the president struck the tone of a man searching for a fresh start. With his own job performance numbers and approval ratings for the Republican-controlled Congress sagging only 10 months before the 2006 elections, Bush mostly advanced a cautious agenda that seemed to aim less at transforming the political debate than at helping the GOP survive a hostile political environment.

After unabashedly defining himself as a "wartime president" in his reelection campaign, Bush on Tuesday stressed his commitment to kitchen-table economic concerns such as healthcare and the availability of good jobs.

After building his 2005 State of the Union around an ambitious effort to remake Social Security, Bush offered modestly sized proposals that might be much easier for Congress to digest.

It spoke volumes that he now proposed not to remake Social Security but to restudy it, with the appointment of a bipartisan commission to examine the structure of all federal entitlement programs for the aged. Nor did Bush say a word about fundamental restructuring of the tax code, which the administration once envisioned as its next great overhaul after Social Security.

"It looks like he's trying to move a little away from the high-concept ideas toward things he might actually be able to deliver on," said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank.

The speech also was noteworthy in urging more bipartisan cooperation, after a year that saw party-line voting in Congress reach some of the highest levels in the last half century, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Quarterly.