The checklist so far shows major progress on some of Bush's top priorities while others are heating up on a back burner. Bush and Democratic leaders have reached some preliminary agreements on his education plan, though he is getting nowhere with his call for vouchers, the public money parents of children in chronically failing schools could use to send their kids to private and parochial schools. Social Security and Medicare reform have yet to get going in earnest. Also at square one is Bush's faith-based initiative, which would give federal money to churches and other religious groups that deliver social services. But overall, presidential scholar Martha Kumar sees a man in control.
Polls indicate that the public agrees.
Questions on individual domestic policy areas produced less satisfaction among respondents. And that leads to what could be the ultimate question for a president who fell short of persuading a majority of voters that he is some new breed of Republican. His Texas record offered definitive hints about this, but a campaign that featured education reform and racial inclusion may have given some voters reason to believe that compassionate conservatism was code for conservative lite. It is not, and it shows in Bush's early decisions, including his appointments, his stripping of the American Bar Association of its virtual veto power over judicial nominees, his ban on federal money to international family planning agencies that support abortion, his slow-growth budget and his opening of White House doors to conservative organizations such as The Federalist Society. At the Brookings Institution, presidential scholar Stephen Hess says all of this was predictable.