WASHINGTON – President Bush and House Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, perhaps the biggest loser and winner on Election Day, pledged over lunch Thursday to bury the hatchet and cooperate. When possible.
At the White House, where Bush had invited Pelosi for lunch, presidential aides joked that there was no crow on the menu for Bush to eat.
Bush ate a little anyway, and he saluted Pelosi, not only as Tuesday’s victor but as the first woman who will ascend to the position of House speaker, next in line to the presidency after the vice president.
“The elections are now behind us, and the congresswoman’s party won,” Bush said. “But the challenges still remain. And therefore, we’re going to work together to address those challenges in a constructive way.”
Said Pelosi, like Bush all smiles: “We both extended the hand of friendship, of partnership to solve the problems facing our country.”
She was accompanied by Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House’s second-ranking Democrat. Bush was accompanied by a stony-faced Vice President Dick Cheney.
Later in the day, Bush telephoned Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to congratulate him on the Democrats’ takeover in the Senate as well. Reid, likely to be majority leader in the new Congress, was getting his own meeting with Bush at the White House today.
Though Bush and Pelosi sought to show they were putting the barbs in the past, they did not ignore the differences that they debated so hotly before the voting.
Pelosi has made clear that House Democrats will move immediately on their agenda, much of it opposed by Bush, which includes cutting student loan interest rates, funding embryonic stem cell research, authorizing the federal government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare patients and imposing a national cap on industrial carbon dioxide emissions.
She also has said that the election results mean Democrats not only want – but expect – Bush to make a change of direction in Iraq .
“I look forward to working in a confidence-building way with the president, recognizing that we have our differences and we will debate them,” Pelosi said at the president’s side. “We’ve made history. Now we have to make progress.”
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