How Bush Got There

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he White House is hoping that the Bush compromise will deflate moves in Congress to push through legislation that would override his decision. Majorities in both houses support federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells. The Bush compromise might be enough "to head them off at the pass," says Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, an opponent of embryonic stem-cell research. It helped that Bush timed his announcement for the summer recess, when members of Congress are scattered, making it harder for Democrats to offer a speedy, unified alternative.

For the most part, Bush also defused the fury from the right. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops--to whom he initially made his no-funding promise--blasted his decision as "morally unacceptable." Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council, said that by trying to distance himself from the destruction of the embryos, Bush was like Pontius Pilate, who "washed his hands of the blood" of Christ. But evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell and conservative radio host James Dobson called the compromise one they could live with.

If nothing else, it was not the outcome that pro-lifers feared most--the compromise developed last month by Republican Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the only physician in the Senate, who has been an important Bush adviser on medical and health-care issues. Frist's plan would allow stem cells to be extracted from surplus embryos currently in stock and due for destruction in clinics and labs around the country, a supply that numbers between 100,000 and 1 million. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle, who was mildly critical of Bush's compromise, says he will introduce a broad stem-cell funding bill that could embrace the Frist approach; in the fall Daschle will find out whether Bush has cut him off at the pass.

For months a White House working group led by Karl Rove, the President's top political adviser, had been taking views from all sides on the stem-cell question. Bush turned to the issue seriously three months ago. On May 8 he had lunch with Tommy Thompson, the pro-research Secretary of Health and Human Services. At the time Thompson was fairly certain that Bush would not budge from the position he took during the campaign, when the question had been turned over to aides who handled abortion issues, with predictable results. To Thompson's surprise, Bush insisted that he was looking for a solution somewhere between a total ban and the kind of green light that might encourage the spread of virtual embryo factories. "He made it clear that he was up in the air," says a White House aide.

Thompson was a major advocate of the idea that already existing lines of stem cells might serve as the basis for compromise. He spoke from time to time with James Thomson, the stem-cell pioneer at the University of Wisconsin (see America's Best), who had led him to believe there could be useful research with even a limited number of stem-cell lines.

Bush continued to seek views from everywhere. On an Air Force One flight to Philadelphia a few months ago, G.O.P. moderate Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania presented the case for a bill he had sponsored that would fund and control stem-cell research through the NIH. Bush listened attentively but gave no hint of what he thought. On July 11, Bush met with medical leaders to talk about the patients' bill of rights. Toward the end of the meeting, he broke away from health care to tell his audience that "the issue I am wrestling with is stem cells." Dr. Stan Pelofsky, president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, says he told Bush that "the genie was out of the bottle" and that federally funded research with oversight would accomplish the best of both worlds. "You would perhaps get spectacular benefits down the road," he said, "and you would also have governmental oversight." But again Bush gave no indication of which way he was leaning.

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."