VP Watch

On a late September afternoon, about five weeks before Democrats won control of Congress, White House budget director Rob Portman huddled in the Rayburn House Office Building with three prominent black Democrats to talk about federal funding for the planned African-American history museum on the National Mall.

The congressmen -- James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, Melvin Watt of North Carolina and Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland -- asked Portman to use the fiscal 2008 budget to send a strong signal that the Bush administration intends to see the museum completed sooner rather than later. Such an effort, they said, would help attract private funding for the project.

GOOD COP AND . . . Portman with Bush at the White House in June. (GETTY IMAGES / CHIP SOMODEVILLA)

For any other member of the Bush team, the meeting would have been unusual. The president has, at times, opted against meeting with the Congressional Black Caucus, and Democrats have had few ongoing, meaningful relationships with senior White House officials in the past six years.

But Portman's accessibility, his eager pursuit of bipartisanship and his command of complex policy details have won him trust in Democratic circles on Capitol Hill, where he represented southern Ohio in the House for 12 years. And his job running the Office of Management and Budget has the capacity to put him at the center of almost any issue.

After six years in which the administration generally turned a cold shoulder to the minority congressional Democrats, Portman stands to be perhaps the White House's only solid link to the newly empowered party for the last two years of this presidency. Indeed, if Bush hopes to burnish his domestic policy legacy -- and particularly if he tries to update entitlement policy, as he has indicated -- Portman will almost surely be his foreman on Capitol Hill.

Among administration bigwigs, "he's the only one, to be very candid, that I really know," said John Lewis of Georgia, a chief deputy House Democratic whip.

Portman is a confidant of the Bush family, having served the current president as trade representative and Bush's father as a congressional liaison; a protégé of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, serving as a liaison between the White House and House Republicans; a debate-prep partner of Vice President Dick Cheney; and a former House member who forged bonds with Democrats even as most in his party were burning bridges.

"Portman's a very special man," said Cummings, a former chairman of the Black Caucus. "He's just a decent human being, and I don't think you get so caught up in the party label with him because you feel he is pretty much coming from his heart."

Portman's principal challenge will be to translate the good will he has built among Democrats into results for an unpopular president -- and to do so without infuriating his former Republican colleagues by giving away too much. "He's still got to be careful," said a Republican business lobbyist, who declined to be named for fear of annoying the White House.

There are also those who say that Portman's desire to please all sides and protect his image as an honest broker hamper his ability to close deals. No matter how much the Democrats say they like and respect Portman, making friends is not the same thing as making policy. They suggest that Bush will have to be heavily engaged politically and personally to work with them.

Republicans and Democrats alike say the administration soured relations with Congress by first ignoring then bullying lawmakers.

On the Central American Free Trade Agreement, for instance, there was "virtually no engagement" before Portman took over as trade representative in April 2005, said Ellen O. Tauscher of California, who chairs the centrist New Democrat Coalition. By then, "CAFTA was already, unfortunately, too dead to resuscitate from my end."

Tauscher and other Democratic leaders continued to oppose CAFTA despite Portman's efforts in behalf of the agreement, but she gives him points for trying.

"Geniality only goes so far, but he has it. Being smart only goes so far, but he has it. It's really about being present in the relationship, and he has been present," she said.

Portman assiduously worked his BlackBerry from outside the chamber during the tense CAFTA vote, subtly respecting the separation between Congress and the White House even though, as a former member, he has floor privileges. "I just felt when I was a House member it was not always appropriate when people would come on the floor to lobby," he said at the time.

The decision to remain outside during a nail-biter of a vote -- the implementing legislation passed, 217-215 -- exhibited a sensitivity that the White House has seldom followed. In 2003, for instance, Tommy G. Thompson irritated some lawmakers, particularly Democrats, when he used his floor privileges as Health and Human Services secretary to lobby lawmakers during the three-hour vote on Medicare prescription drug legislation.

Portman's good relations with Congress will be crucial to Bush if he proceeds with his plan to overhaul entitlement programs -- the two-thirds of the federal budget the White House cannot expect to change without help from Democrats.

In his most recent State of the Union address, Bush called for a commission on entitlement reform, and since then he has installed Portman at OMB and installed former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry M. Paulson Jr. as head of the Treasury Department. Both have been examining entitlements.

When Bush attempted to change the Social Security system last year by allowing private investment accounts, it "completely fouled the nest," said Rep. Earl Pomeroy, a North Dakota Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee. Having Portman and Paulson in place, he said, "is a starting point" to revisit the issue.

Even some Bush allies see the president's plans as too ambitious in the current environment. But history shows that achieving similar feats is not impossible. "Many of the really difficult things that we have done in the last couple of decades have been done with divided government," said Alice M. Rivlin, who ran OMB under President Bill Clinton.

Though Portman's contacts among Democrats are far-ranging, perhaps his most important -- particularly for Bush -- are the relationships he built during a decade on Ways and Means, which has jurisdiction over trade, taxation, Social Security and Medicare.

The committee's Republican chairman, Bill Thomas of California, paid little attention to Democrats and sometimes locked horns with them, such as when in 2003 he called Capitol Police to evict Democrats from the committee's suite after a disagreement. Portman, in contrast, consistently worked with the Democrats to advance bipartisan bills.

"All of us had a tremendous amount of respect for him," said Lewis, a senior member of the committee. "I don't think he ever looked down on us as Democrats with disdain. He treated us as equals, and I can't say that about all members of the other party."

But good intentions only go so far.

Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who will shortly take over as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said he likes Portman, but he liked former Bush OMB directors Joshua B. Bolten and Mitchell E. Daniels, too. He is is waiting to see if pleasantries are followed by productive engagement by the White House, since every line item can become a budget battleground.

Funding for the African-American history museum, for example, could come at the expense of maintenance of other Smithsonian institutions, creating conflicting pressures for the budget director. But Portman, at least, will be able to work from a foundation he has built before. After the meeting about the museum, Portman said he was "very interested in being supportive."

"I've worked with these guys before, and I know 'em and trust 'em," he said.

The feeling from many House Democrats is mutual. "When Rob Portman calls, he will get a return telephone call," Lewis said.

Portman background, CQ Weekly p. 1110; CAFTA (PL 109-53), 2005 Almanac, p. 17-3.