LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Bush: Democratic Congress
built 224 days ago
Becoming vice president with Reagan's decisive victory over incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter in 1980, Bush proved to be a loyal, hard working supporter of the president. Careful to demonstrate his loyalty and to accept the largely ceremonial public responsibilities of the vice presidency, Bush provided quiet counsel to the president and thereby gained his respect. Renominated in 1984, Bush retained the vice presidency with the resultant Reagan landslide. Bush's record of demonstrated loyalty and competence, and the series of important administrative offices he had held since 1971, nonetheless had not created for him a broad-based nationwide constituency. As such, he was not assured the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. Despite his nationwide campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in 1980, Bush remained an untested vote getter, his only electoral victory coming as a candidate from a safe Republican congressional district.
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For the first five years of Bush's presidency, his legal claims attracted little attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act.
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Bush did not withdraw from politics... and in 1966 he won election to the House of Representatives from a Houston suburban district. A two-term congressman, serving from 1966 through 1970, Bush compiled a conservative voting record (earning a 77 percent approval rating from the conservative Americans for Constitutional Action), specifically championing "right to work" anti-labor union legislation and a "freedom of choice" alternative to school desegregation. In an exception to an otherwise conservative record, in 1968, despite opposition from his constituents, Bush voted for the open housing bill recommended by President Lyndon Johnson.
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Bush was determined that this wouldn't be a repeat of his failed Congressional bid. And he believed that he had solved the problems that plagued him in 1978. Even though he was still a wealthy, well-connected, white guy with an Ivy League education, Bush was certain that voters would relate to him the way they couldn't before.
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President Bush and Vice President Cheney continue to dishonestly claim that trial lawyers are to blame for skyrocketing health care costs. President Bush said Friday that "frivolous lawsuits...run up the cost of medicine" and that solutions to health care problems were stopped in Congress "because the trial lawyers are powerful in the Senate."1 Similarly, Cheney said last week that "medical liability reform" is the key to "control the cost of health care."2 But, according to undisputed government and academic data, lawsuits have little -- if anything -- to do with health care costs.
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Bush began his third year with the highest ratings since public opinion pollsters began gauging Presidential popularity. Bush's popularity went into the 90 percent range, yet he offered almost no new domestic programs to Congress, refusing to capitalize on his standing with the public. He pressured the Soviet Union to accelerate its pace of economic and political reform, a strategy that culminated in a strategic arms reduction agreement signed in Moscow in August 1991. He pressured Israel and its Arab neighbors to come to an international peace conference, which began meeting early in 1992. He dropped sanctions (trade restrictions) on South Africa and refused to call for sanctions on China to protest human rights violations. Both moves were unpopular with Democrats in Congress.
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