Bush begins tour to sell '06 agenda

NASHVILLE -- Kicking off a weeks-long campaign to sell his 2006 agenda, President Bush was received at the packed Grand Ole Opry House yesterday with cheers, popping flashbulbs, and enthusiastic whistles -- hearty greetings normally reserved for country music superstars.

But the friendly setting in a state he captured during his reelection campaign spoke to the diminished goals Bush has set for the second year of his second term, after the roughest year of his presidency.

Last year, seeking momentum for his plan to remake Social Security, Bush followed up his State of the Union address with a brash tour through the backyards of Democratic senators whose states he carried on his way to the White House two months earlier.

In Tennessee, Bush and his wife, Laura, traveled to a state that will be a major battlefront in the Democrats' bid to take over Congress. Republicans will be defending the seat being vacated with the retirement of Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader.

Yesterday, Bush delivered an extended, folksy pep talk to an invitation-only audience of political backers. Acknowledging deep anxiety in the nation over the war in Iraq and the country's economic footing, the president said he is making the right decisions to keep America strong.

''My job's as much educator in chief as it is commander in chief," Bush said. ''And during times of uncertainty, it's important for me to do what I'm doing today, which is explain the path to victory, to do the best I can to articulate my optimism about the future."

Gone, however, was such powerful talk as last year's call to overhaul Social Security. And in a speech that clocked in at slightly longer than Tuesday's 51-minute State of the Union address, Bush made only passing references to the list of priorities he touched on a night earlier: health savings accounts, ethics and lobbying overhaul, the need for conservative judges, and weaning the nation from imported oil.

Bush's trip to Tennessee signals national Republicans' worries about holding on to their electoral base in November's midterm congressional elections, said Michael R. Fitzgerald, chairman of the American studies program at the University of Tennessee.

''He's trying to reset the compass, and there is a basis here for the rebuilding for the rest of his term, of holding on to the base and building off of it," Fitzgerald said. ''But at the same time, if this Tennessee seat cannot be held, what can be?"

Appearing chastened by his setbacks in Congress last year, Bush said yesterday he wants bipartisan solutions on issues such as Social Security and other entitlement programs. He urged Democrats to join Republicans in a task force on financial strains brought on by the retirement of baby boomers -- a call more reminiscent of his first-term pledge to be a ''uniter, not a divider" than his 2004 declaration that he was about to spend the ''political capital" he earned with his reelection.

''There's ways to make [bipartisanship] work, but it's going to require a new attitude in Washington, D.C.," Bush said yesterday.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said the president will keep talking about ''the importance of elevating the tone in Washington and working together to get things done." Asked about recent partisan attacks by top presidential advisers Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman, McClellan said the advice goes for members of both parties.

''The president believes it's his obligation to call on all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, who are in elected office to do our part and focus on the priorities of the American people," McClellan said.

Back in Washington, congressional Democrats with their eyes on this fall's elections, were skeptical, a sign that the president lacks a reservoir of good will to tap. Party leaders rallied outside the Capitol to slam Bush's proposed expansion of tax-free savings accounts used to pay for healthcare.

Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, said Bush's appearance in Nashville was a display of ''recycled rhetoric and tired policies," and he concluded that only a Democrat-majority Congress can fix what's wrong in Washington.

''He took the same show on the road today, but has yet to offer a single real solution to the problems facing the American people," Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said in a statement.

Representative Edward J. Markey, a Malden Democrat, noted that Bush on Tuesday declared that the nation is ''addicted to oil." If that's so, Markey said, the president, his White House advisers, and his friends in the oil industry are the ''pushers."

''For the past five years, his administration has pursued policies [that] have fed this addiction with tax breaks and other federal subsidies" for oil and energy companies, said Markey, a senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Bush will hit the road again today and tomorrow, with stops in Minnesota -- which also has a race for an open Senate seat, currently held by a Democrat -- as well as New Mexico and Texas.