WASHINGTON – Barack Obama is emerging as a president who avoids confrontation where possible, yields ground strategically and prefers the soft sell to the hard.
The chief executive, on the job just two months, is still refining his presidential style and voice. But as he prods Congress to embrace his ambitious budget plan, he is distancing himself from several predecessors, especially the last two who spent time in the Senate as he did.
After his closed-door meeting with Senate Democrats on Wednesday, Obama clearly is no overbearing, in-your-face coercer, as Lyndon B. Johnson often was. Nor is he the secretive, ill-at-ease Richard M. Nixon, who divided political players into enemies and loyalists.
By contrast, Obama woos lawmakers from both parties with the same smile and comfortable-in-his-skin style that appealed to millions of voters in 2008.
In negotiations, he assumes a bend-but-don't-break posture. He will compromise on certain details when necessary but not on the heart of his main proposals.
Granted, it was a friendly audience of Democratic senators that Obama visited Wednesday in a wood-paneled room on the Capitol's second floor. But some were committee chairmen who have criticized his bids to curb farm subsidies, trim tax deductions for the wealthy and auction permits to emit greenhouse gases, among other things.
Rather than confront, chide or cajole those senators, the president minimized his differences with them, several participants said. Turning necessity into a virtue, he breezily agreed they can find different ways to achieve his overarching goals.
But the gist of those goals — spending more on education, subsidizing clean energy sources, making health care more efficient and affordable — are nonnegotiable, he told the senators.
"Whatever is put together has to reflect (those) core values," Sen. Ben Nelson, a Nebraska Democrat who differs with Obama on several points, told reporters later. Rather than bristle at Obama's willingness to cede only thin strips of ground, Nelson called the meeting a "very realistic, friendly discussion about where we are, where we need to go, and how we need to get there together wherever possible."
"It was vintage Obama," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "He made us all feel content and inspired by where we need to go."
"This budget will protect President Obama's priorities," Reid said.
One drawback to Obama's collegial style is that it glosses over differences that may prove extremely difficult to resolve. Behind Wednesday's happy talk were great uncertainties about how or even whether the Democratic-controlled Congress will limit greenhouse gases, expand health coverage and protect millions of upper-income Americans from the bite of the alternative minimum tax.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., caused a stir Tuesday when he said he would scrap Obama's signature tax cut after 2010 and make other changes to the administration's budget blueprint. But after Wednesday's meeting he minimized his differences with Obama, and said the president did not ask him to back away from any of his comments.
Conrad, Obama and the others are almost surely underplaying the tough compromises they will have to reach at some point. As Nelson noted of the president's vow to combat climate change: "There are a variety of different ideas about what to do. And they are substantially different."
Obama skated over the same issue at his Tuesday news conference, leaving difficult choices for a later day.
"When it comes to cap and trade," he said of a bid to reduce greenhouse gases, "the broader principle is that we've got to move to a new energy era."
Perhaps Obama and lawmakers can agree on how to achieve "broader principles" on many issues with a minimum of fighting. If not, the president may find that his easygoing style makes him a pushover, and he will have to assume a new political persona.
Johnson, after all, didn't twist arms for the sheer pleasure, but because he was desperate to break the political will of those who opposed him. Nixon's dark, suspicious side eventually destroyed him, but only after his relentless drive helped him win numerous legislative battles, and four national elections.
Perhaps Obama will alienate some fellow Democrats, as former President Bill Clinton did with his "triangulation" strategy that split Republican and Democratic differences. Perhaps he will move closer to former President George W. Bush's polls-be-damned attitude in which he made decisions with little regard to world or U.S. opinion.
For now, Obama's style of patient listening and gentle prodding is getting rave reviews from congressional Democrats. The mood in Wednesday's meeting at the Capitol was "very, very supportive," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who calls the president "Barack."
"Very upbeat," he said. "Very positive."
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EDITOR'S NOTE — Charles Babington covers the White House for The Associated Press.
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