Tom Daschle may not have a majority in the Senate, but he has a trump card that he is prepared to play. If, that is, President-elect George Bush's commitment to bipartisanship proves to be worth less than we have been promised. The Democratic Senate Minority leader is blunt. "It would be a mistake for them to think that on strictly party line votes they could accomplish anything," he warns.
"Make us partners," he says. "The more we are partners, the more we're invested, the more we are going to get done."
Is it really possible? Can the two parties really collaborate when the Republicans have achieved both a majority in both Houses and their man in the White House for the first time in a generation? After that election? But Daschle's card is a powerful one - the little known "cloture" rule under which a Senate debate on a measure of consequence or controversy cannot be closed without 60 votes. In other words, if President-elect Bush is to see any legislation pass through the Senate he must have the support of at least 10 Democrats. (In the House the Republican majority is likely to be sufficient for most purposes, but all legislation must pass through both chambers.) Daschle, like his Republican and Democratic counterparts in both houses, met Mr Bush this week and the result was inconclusive. The President-elect came out of their meeting pledging a willingness to work together but strongly reiterating his determination to see through $1.3 trillion tax cuts that he insists he has a mandate for.
It takes two to tango and it's too early anyway to expect Bush to be signalling concessions yet. But Daschle is still holding out an olive branch. "The degree to which the president and the leadership in the Congress can unite is the degree to which we can avoid divisiveness involving cloture. But if we have no other choice, obviously we are prepared to do so." In his campaign for the presidency, George Bush often spoke as much about how to govern as what he wanted to do. He spoke of the need for bipartisanship, of the corrosive bickering of Washington, of the need to reach across party lines as he had done in Texas.
Undoubtedly part of his electoral success lay in precisely that. Bush had seen the Gingrich revolution rise and fall and understood that the crippling weakness of the Republicans lay in their rank and file's fundamentalism. To win back power he had to Clintonise the Republicans, dragging the party back to the centre and making them electable again. He did that.
In power, can he continue? Some observers say that although deeply conservative by inclination on issues ranging from abortion to the role of state regulation, Bush is less interested in big ideas and more in the fact of power and its retention. That is what drives him. And his appointments this week have not been about ideology but all about repairing gaping breaches in his personal defences, the deficiencies in vision and intellect which the election exposed so vividly, and the political weaknesses of a man firmly of the right but dependent on a deeply divided Congress in which only the centre can prosper. He is reaching out to constituencies where he has done poorly, or in the case of African Americans, abysmally, with the nominations of Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Mel Martinez. Similarly, to women.
And to those convinced he lacks intellectual gravitas, he offers up tested political heavyweights like Powell and Paul O'Neil in the critical posts of State and Treasury. Democrats would give their eye teeth for them. Neither is an ideologue. Both are pragmatic problem-solvers who would fit comfortably in a centrist Democrat-led cabinet.
Paul O'Neil is a particularly interesting appointment. A self-confessed maverick who revels in confronting conventional wisdom, he is a passionate believer in free trade and the power of markets. But he comes highly recommended by the president of the United Steelworkers of America, George Becker, with whom he developed a strong personal relationship after they brokered an end to the adversarial industrial stalemate in Alcoa, the aluminium giant with 140,000 employees worldwide O'Neil has led successfully for 13 years.
"This man would make a great treasury secretary in any administration, Democrat or Republican," Mr Becker said the other day.
O'Neil served in the Nixon and Ford administrations and Carter unsuccessfully asked him to stay on in the Office of Management and Budget.
And although he has made it clear he now sees his role as implementing Bush's policies, he has been publicly critical of the idea of massive tax cuts, preferring, like his friend Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, to see surpluses also used to reduce the country's colossal debt. Last year he also spoke out in favour of energy taxation, anathema to the Republicans.
O'Neil's rapid appointment contrasts with the delayed announcement of a Defence Secretary. The New York Times yesterday suggested Bush has doubts about the widely flagged front-runner, the former Republican Senator Dan Coats, a conservative hardliner who is backed by the Senate Leader, Senator Trent Lott, and by the right of the party.
Bush advisers told the paper the President-elect was disappointed when the two men met on Monday, and that he has been casting around for another name.
Bush has played his hand cleverly. His imaginative nominations have been fed carefully, drip, drip, drip, to a largely enthusiastic press which has been reassured. They suggest a pragmatism that will irritate the hard right of the Republicans. They suggest a good faith on the President-elect's part which bodes well if he can also resist the temptation to fill the second rank of nominations with ideologues.
But Daschle would be wise not to discard his trump card too quickly. These are early days.
