How Bush Got There

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As the President peppered people with questions, his staff suggested a series of Oval Office meetings with representatives from all sides of the issue. One of them, in early July, turned out to be pivotal. Bush met with conservative bioethicists Daniel Callahan, co-founder of the Hastings Center, a bioethics institute, and Dr. Leon Kass from the University of Chicago. (Bush named Kass last week to head an advisory panel that will monitor stem-cell research and recommend guidelines.) At the July meeting, the two ethicists reinforced Bush's growing conviction that he should not fund research on newly extracted stem-cell colonies. Now it only remained for him to find a way to make the narrower compromise work. When the NIH discovered the larger number of existing stem cells, the shape of the policy was locked in.

Meanwhile, pressure was building in Congress. On July 25, Rove huddled with 43 moderate Congressmen of the Republican Mainstreet Partnership at the Capitol Hill Club. Minnesota Representative Jim Ramstad, whose mother suffers from Alzheimer's disease and whose first cousin died from juvenile diabetes, stood up and made an impassioned plea for stem-cell research. In reply, Rove recounted how on a trip he took to Georgia a young couple came up to him and pleaded for stem-cell research to continue for another six months so it might save their ailing child. The President, Rove told the Congressmen, considered the consequences of a stem-cell decision "no less important than a decision to commit troops to war."

The next weekend, when both men were attending the G.O.P.'s Midwest Leadership Conference, Ramstad informed Rove that a letter would soon be delivered to the White House with the signatures of 202 Congressmen backing the research. Forty were Republicans. "And I have 15 other Republicans," Ramstad warned, "who have committed to us but who didn't want to go public with their support."

Pressure also came from stem-cell opponents on the Hill. In early July House majority leader Dick Armey, majority whip Tom DeLay and Republican Conference chairman J.C. Watts had issued a joint statement demanding that Bush prohibit funding. "It is not pro-life to rely on an industry of death," they argued, "even if the intention is to find cures for diseases." House Speaker Dennis Hastert, though he opposes stem-cell research, refused to join his three top lieutenants in the statement.

For all his consultation on the subject, Bush did not talk much with members of Congress. Even Senator Frist did not have an in-depth talk with Bush after Frist floated his own compromise. "He was searching more for moral authority than political counsel," says Senator Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican who opposes funding.