Bush never discusses "agreements, compromises, finding common ground"

"If the White House idea of bipartisanship is that we have to buy whatever partisan ideas they send us, we are not interested," Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) told the National Press Club last week.

"He is really creating a truly robust second-term agenda. In some ways it is more interesting, certainly more controversial than the first-term agenda," said presidential scholar Stephen Hess of the Brookings Institution.

But for all Bush's talk about bipartisanship, Hess wonders whether Bush will be willing to make the compromises likely needed to pick up enough votes to advance his policies.

"Even after the election, when he has talked about bipartisanship, he talks about those folks coming aboard for his programs. He never talks about agreements and compromises and finding common ground," Hess said.

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