This story was written by Peter Baker.

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For Michael Gerson, the pattern became discouragingly familiar. A proposal to help the poor or sick would be presented at a White House meeting, but Vice President Cheney’s office or the budget team or some other skeptical officials would shoot it down. Too expensive. Wrong priority.

By the time he left the White House as President Bush’s senior adviser last year, Gerson by his own account had grown weary of the battle, becoming an irritable colleague disillusioned by the conventions of a political party and a government that seemed indifferent to the plight of the downtrodden. Now he is back with a new book and a publicity tour intended to fight for the identity of the Republican Party.

“Traditional conservatism has a piece missing — a piece that is shaped like a conscience,” he notes in “Heroic Conservatism.” His ambition, he says, is to help “save conservatism from its worst instincts” and build “a conservatism elevated by a radical concern for human rights and dignity.”

Gerson, who now writes an op-ed column for The Washington Post, was best known as the speechwriter who helped a famously inarticulate Texan find words to define his presidency at key moments. He was also an apostle of “compassionate conservatism,” Bush’s effort to shave the harsh edges off the party of Newt Gingrich.

Gerson’s book, part memoir and part political treatise, opens a window on the internal debates that marked the first six years of Bush’s presidency, from the response to the mass killing in Darfur to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Time and again, Gerson depicts a lonely struggle to advance measures that would benefit AIDS patients, impoverished children or prisoners reentering society. He rues the Bush team’s failure to do more to stand up to autocrats in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to further its “freedom agenda.” And he laments that the war in Iraq has sabotaged the president’s efforts to redefine the Republican Party.

“Right now, there’s a significant backlash against these ideas,” Gerson said in an interview at his office at the Council on Foreign Relations last week. “If Republicans adopt a mean, anti-government message, they’re not going to be able to win.”

Gerson said he also wants to push Democrats to recognize genuine security concerns in an age of terrorism and the value of spreading democracy. But as he hits the talk-show circuit, including Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” his main message seems aimed at fellow conservatives.

A devout evangelical Christian, Gerson was a powerful if soft-spoken and sometimes dour presence in the Bush White House, more comfortable with the Bible studies of his alma mater, Wheaton College, than the towel-snapping Texas environment that surrounded Bush in the early days. Gerson talks in rapid-fire bursts, nervously doodling until his pen has literally ripped the page off a pad of paper.

He describes his initial, awkward relationship with Bush as the Texas governor assembled his campaign team in 1999. “He had a penchant for crude humor,” Gerson writes, “that made me uncomfortable; not blasphemous language, but the vulgarity of the locker room.”

Yet, he says he grew to admire Bush for his convictions and sincerity, and whatever blame Gerson has for the administration’s failings is focused elsewhere.

Gerson was widely — but not universally — admired within the West Wing. One of his top two speechwriting deputies, Matthew Scully, wrote a scathing piece in the Atlantic magazine this summer accusing Gerson of “foolish vanity,” “sheer pettiness” and “credit hounding.” Scully complained that Gerson had assumed authorship of speeches he did not write, at least not alone. The other top speechwriter, John McConnell, still works at the White House and has declined to comment, but he has shared similar grievances with colleagues.

In his book, Gerson has nothing but praise for Scully and McConnell in passages that a friend who had read the galleys said were in the text before the Atlantic piece came out. Gerson describes Scully as “an elegant writer with a gentle manner” and refers to the involvement of Scully and McConnell in key speeches at many points in his narrative.

“For seven years these two speechwriters would be my friends and partners, and hardly a cross word ever passed between us,” he writes.

Gerson is more critical of Cheney’s office, former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and two Texas Republicans who served as House majority leaders, Tom DeLay and Richard K. Armey.

Gerson writes that he urged Bush to fire Rumsfeld after the 2004 election, but that Cheney opposed the move. He recounts meetings in which Cheney’s office tried to kill proposals to increase training of death-row defense lawyers, transition assistance for prisoners and aid for Hurricane Katrina victims.

“The storm had also revealed a political and moral chasm in the Republican Party,” he writes. “The president and I saw Katrina as an opportunity to open a debate on race and poverty. Anti-government Republicans saw Katrina as an opportunity to cut off medicine to old people. It confirmed the worst image of Republicans as the party of shriveled hearts.”

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President Bush’s nominee for attorney general told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that an interrogation technique called waterboarding is repugnant but that he did not know if it is legal.

Michael Mukasey’s four-page letter did not satisfy Democrats, many of whom said their vote hinges on whether he’s willing to say that the technique, which simulates drowning and is banned by the military, is illegal. Mukasey was widely expected to be confirmed by the full Senate, if by a narrower margin than the White House expected.

Mukasey, a retired federal judge, called the technique “repugnant to me” and pledged to study its legality if confirmed.

“If, after such a review, I determine that any technique is unlawful, I will not hesitate to so advise the president and will rescind or correct any legal opinion of the Department of Justice that supports the use of the technique,” he wrote to the committee’s 10 Democrats.

Elsewhere in the letter, Mukasey said that he did not know if the technique is still being used by U.S. personnel because he is not yet cleared to receive such classified information. Still, he pledged to stand up to Mr. Bush if necessary and to seek ways to protect the nation from terrorism.

“I would leave office sooner than participate in a violation of law,” Mukasey wrote.

Before Mukasey sent his letter, Democrats and a few Republicans had said they were concerned about his refusal to say whether waterboarding is illegal. Some senators also focused on a Mukasey comment that appeared to indicate he believes that the president in some circumstances is not constrained by the law.

“I remain very concerned that Judge Mukasey finds himself unable to state unequivocally that waterboarding is illegal and below the standards and values of the United States,” said Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who said Mukasey still owes the panel answers to other questions.

Leahy, who was one of several Democrats who said their votes depend on Mukasey’s answer on torture, did not say whether he would support confirmation.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., earlier this week said he would not vote for confirmation if Mukasey did not answer definitively that waterboarding amounts to torture. Durbin, the chairman of the human rights subcommittee, found Mukasey’s statement unsatisfactory.

“Judge Mukasey spent four pages responding and still didn’t provide an answer,” Durbin said in a statement. “Judge Mukasey makes the point that in the law, precision matters. So do honesty and openness. And on those counts, he falls far short.”

Not immediately commenting was Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., usually lightning-fast with media comment on virtually any topic. The Senate’s Democratic campaign chief suggested Mukasey to the White House as the successor to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and has said he has concerns about Mukasey’s initial answers to the waterboarding question.

Other senators, particularly those Democrats running for president, had made up their minds hours or days before Mukasey issued his statement.

“We cannot send a signal that the next attorney general in any way condones torture or believes that the president is unconstrained by law,” said front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.

Her chief rival for the nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., also criticized Mukasey.

“We don’t need another attorney general who believes that the president enjoys an unwritten right to secretly ignore any law or abridge our constitutional freedoms simply by invoking national security. And we don’t need another attorney general who looks the other way on issues as profound as torture,” Obama said.

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said he would not vote to confirm Mukasey. “We cannot have a United States attorney general who will equivocate and dissemble on this matter. Too much is at stake,” he said.

Another presidential hopeful, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., also has said he would vote against confirmation.

On the Republican side, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said Mukasey’s letter left him less concerned about voting for confirmation but wanted to raise a few more issues with Mukasey in private.

“I’m favorably inclined to support him,” Graham said in a telephone interview. “I think he did himself a lot of good.”

Mukasey’s letter was expected to boost support for his confirmation, which in the last week had shifted from nearly unanimous to troubled.

In his four-page letter, Mukasey said he would try to balance constitutionality with “our shared obligation to ensure that our nation has the tools it needs, within the law, to protect the American people.” But he declined to take a stand on waterboarding because, he said, the question is hypothetical.

It’s not known, Mukasey said, whether waterboarding or any other specific harsh interrogation technique is being used, or in what circumstances.

“Legal opinions should treat real issues,” Mukasey wrote.

“I have not been briefed on techniques used in any classified interrogation program conducted by any government agency,” he added. “For me, then, there is a real issue as to whether the techniques presented and discussed at the hearing and in your letter are even part of any program of questioning detainees.”

Waterboarding cannot be used by the military under the Army field manual and a 2005 law on detainee treatment. But Congress has not passed additional legislation banning certain harsh interrogation techniques in all circumstances, Mukasey noted, and he also placed some onus for the uncertainty on Congress.

Mukasey said that after being briefed on current practices as attorney general, he would evaluate whether they would violate the Constitution or U.S. or international law.

Specifically, he said, he would decide wither a technique is torture based on two factors in the U.S. criminal code: whether it was intended to cause severe physical pain or suffering or prolonged mental harm.

In more than 170 additional pages of questions and answers released late Tuesday, Mukasey said that presidential signing statements should not be used to create “unnecessary” confrontations with Congress. He also pledged not to approve the transfer of any detainee to a country where there is a realistic possibility of torture.

Mukasey supported immunizing telecommunications companies that may have turned over secret information about customers to the government in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The companies involved, he said, “did so at the government’s request and in reliance upon the government’s representation that their assistance was lawful. Under these circumstances, retroactive immunity in my judgment would appear appropriate.”

Some Democrats say they want to know what information was gathered before they immunize anyone from prosecution.

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Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards sharply challenged Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candor, consistency and judgment Tuesday in a televised debate that underscored her front-runner status two months before the first presidential primary votes.

Obama, the Illinois senator, began immediately, saying Clinton has changed her positions on the North American Free Trade Agreement, torture policies and the Iraq war. Leadership, he said, does not mean “changing positions whenever it’s politically convenient.”

Edwards, the former North Carolina senator, was even sharper at times, saying Clinton “defends a broken system that’s corrupt in Washington, D.C.” He stood by his earlier claim that she has engaged in “doubletalk.”

Clinton, standing between the two men, largely shrugged off the remarks and defended her positions. She has been the focus of Republican candidates’ “conversations and consternation,” she said, because she is leading in the polls.

She said she has specific plans on Social Security, diplomacy and health care. “I have been standing against the Republicans, George Bush and Dick Cheney,” she said, “and I will continue to do so, and I think Democrats know that.”

It was the Democrats’ first debate in a month, and during that time Clinton has solidified her front-runner position, gaining in polls, taking the lead in fundraising and dominating the agenda. The Iowa caucuses are scheduled for Jan. 3, and the New Hampshire primary could be even earlier.

Clinton defended her Senate vote in favor of designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group. Obama, Edwards and others have said President Bush could interpret the measure as congressional approval for a military attack.

Edwards caustically challenged Clinton’s claim that she stands up to the Bush administration. “So the way to do that is to vote yes on a resolution that looks like it was written literally by the neocons?” he said.

“In my view, rushing to war - we should not be doing that - but we shouldn’t be doing nothing,” Clinton said. “And that means we should not let them acquire nuclear weapons, and the best way to prevent that is a full court press on the diplomatic front.”

Clinton also was the main focus during a discussion of the Iraq war. Again, Edwards leveled the toughest charges against the New York senator.

“If you believe that combat missions should be continued in Iraq” without a timetable for withdrawal, Edwards said, “then Senator Clinton is your candidate.” Edwards vowed to have all combat troops out of Iraq “in my first year in office.”

Clinton replied forcefully, saying “I stand for ending the war in Iraq, bringing our troops home.” She added, however, that “it is going to take time,” and some troops must remain to fight al Qaeda in Iraq.

“I don’t know how you pursue al Qaeda without engaging them in combat,” she said.

Edwards, drawing a link between Iraq and Iran, pressed on. “What I worry about is, if Bush invades Iran six months from now, I mean, are we going to hear: ‘If only I had known then what I know now?”‘ He was alluding to comments Clinton has made about her 2002 vote to authorize military action against Saddam Hussein.

Edwards and Obama achieved at least some of what they wanted to do coming into this debate and that was to exploit some of Clintons vulnerabilities with the Democratic base, especially on Iran and Iraq, said CBSNews.com Senior Political Editor Vaughn Ververs. Clinton defended herself well, but the criticism may play well with voters already uneasy with her past support of the war in Iraq.”

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Dick Cheney’s latest hunting expedition has produced controversy of a different sort for the vice president.

Cheney became the butt of jokes for shooting a companion during a Texas hunting trip in 2006. This time, two New York newspapers, the Post and the Daily News, reported that a Confederate flag was hung from a garage at the Clove Valley Rod and Gun Club, where the vice president went bird hunting on Monday.

The photo was shown to New York City civil rights activist, the Rev. Al Sharpton, who issued a statement demanding that the vice president “leave immediately, denounce the club, and apologize for going to a club that represents lynching, hate and murder to black people.”

The Post reported that the flag was clearly visible, but Cheney spokeswoman Megan Mitchell said neither Cheney nor anyone on his staff saw such a flag at the hunt club.

It was Cheney’s second visit to the Dutchess County club, about 70 miles north of New York City. The previous trip was in the fall of 2001.

In 2006, Cheney peppered attorney Harry Whittington with birdshot while quail hunting in Texas. The vice president came under fire for not going public with the incident for four days.

The vice president later called it “one of the worst days of my life” and said, “The image of him falling is something I’ll never ever be able to get out of my mind.”

The shooting was ruled an accident. Whittington was hospitalized for six days.

Cheney has gone hunting at least a couple of times since the accident.

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Rocks being cleaned in April 1989 at a beach on Naked Island, Alaska. The Exxon Valdez spill spread oil over 1,200 miles of coastline. (Rob Stapleton/The Associated Press)

WASHINGTON: The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear an appeal from Exxon Mobil, which is seeking to overturn an order for $2.5 billion in punitive damages from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska.

The justices agreed to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that awarded record punitive damages to about 32,000 commercial fishermen, Alaska natives, property owners and others harmed by the worst tanker spill in U.S. waters.

The court rejected a separate appeal by the plaintiffs seeking to reinstate the jury's original award of $5 billion in punitive damages against Exxon Mobil.

The supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound in March 1989, spilling about 11 million gallons, or more than 41 million liters, of crude oil. The spill spread oil to more than 1,200 miles, or 1,900 kilometers, of coastline, closed fisheries and killed thousands of marine mammals and hundreds of thousands of seabirds.

In 1994, a jury in Alaska awarded $5 billion in punitive damages. A U.S. District Court judge later reduced it to $4.5 billion. A U.S. Appeals Court in December further cut the amount to $2.5 billion. Exxon Mobil then appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the $2.5 billion award still was too high.

Lawyers for the company called it the largest punitive damage award ever affirmed by a federal appellate court, larger than the total of all punitive damage awards upheld by federal appellate courts in American history.

The appeal argued that maritime law did not allow the imposition of such a large award of punitive damages, that the award had been improperly calculated and that it represented an unacceptably high multiple of actual compensatory damages.

Exxon Mobil said it had already spent more than $3.5 billion for compensatory and cleanup payments, settlements and fines. “We do not believe any punitive damages are warranted in this case,” it said. “It is also important for the Supreme Court to uphold longstanding maritime law that provides that ship owners are not liable for punitive damages based upon conduct by the ship master who disregarded the owner's rules and policies.”

Lawyers for the plaintiffs disputed the company's argument that the award was too high and said the $2.5 billion judgment represented a little more than three weeks of Exxon Mobil's current net profit. “After 18 years of litigation, Exxon now seeks additional review from this court and relief that could prolong the case for many years to come,” David Oesting, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, told the justices.

While Exxon's challenges have been pending since the jury's verdict, he said, about 20 percent of the plaintiff class members have died.

The Supreme Court will most likely hear arguments in February or March, with a ruling expected by the end of June. Justice Samuel Alito recused himself from the case, so it will be decided by the other eight members. Alito owns $100,000 to $250,000 in Exxon stock, The Associated Press reported.

If the justices split evenly on the case, then the appeals court's ruling against Exxon Mobil would be affirmed.

Appeal on jailing is rejected

In another decision, the Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by Martin Armstrong, a former trader and financial adviser who had been jailed for more than seven years for contempt of court.

Armstrong, the founder of Princeton Economics International, an economic forecasting firm, was held in a New York jail from January 2000 until April 27, when a judge ended the contempt proceeding because it no longer was serving its purpose.

Armstrong was jailed after failing to produce millions of dollars in gold and antiquities related to a civil lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Armstrong had long argued that he did not have the items that the government was seeking.

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NEW YORK: Caterpillar, the world's biggest maker of bulldozers and excavators, says the U.S. economy may fall into a recession next year. Ford, DuPont and Intel disagree.

On Oct. 19, Caterpillar cut its profit forecast because of the U.S. housing slump and said the economy would be “near to, or even in, recession” in 2008, helping to U.S. stocks fall that day the most in two months.

But Caterpillar remains an outlier among U.S. companies. Many company executives have said that while near-record oil prices, a plunge in housing prices and continued mortgage defaults will cause the U.S. economy to slow, they will not push it into a recession.

“The consumer is concerned about rising energy prices, what's going on in the credit cycle and the real estate market,” said Joseph Moglia, chief executive of TD Ameritrade Holding, a major online brokerage firm.

“I don't believe they can have those concerns and not have some impact on what they're doing. That does not mean we're headed for a recession.”

Yet many U.S. consumers say they are worried about the economy. Almost two-thirds of Americans said a recession was likely in the next year, and a majority said the economy was already faltering, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll taken from Oct. 19 to 22. The survey showed the gloomiest view of the economy since February 2003.

A survey of chief executives released this month by the Business Council predicted that U.S. growth would slump to 2 percent or less next year but that the economy would avoid a recession, defined as two successive quarters of declining gross domestic product.

The group, which includes the heads of Fortune 500 companies including American Express, Procter & Gamble and General Electric, forecast that the U.S. economy would expand by 3.1 percent in the third quarter from a year ago, down slightly from the 3.8 percent pace recorded from April to June.

For 2008, “we're assuming global GDP growth at about the same rate as 2007, strong agricultural business and no U.S. recession,” Charles Holliday, the chief executive of DuPont, said during an earnings conference last Tuesday. “We have no expectations of an uptick in demand from U.S. residential housing market this quarter or even next year.”

U.S. buyers of computers do not seem concerned about the economy, either, Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel, said in an interview last Tuesday. “People are buying notebooks like they're hot cakes, and companies tend to invest in technology in downturns,” he said.

Intel, the world's biggest maker of computer chips, reported a 43 percent rise in third-quarter earnings on Oct. 16.

Jeffrey Immelt, chief executive of General Electric, appears just as sanguine about prospects for the U.S. economy. “Global: strong. U.S. housing: tough. But the rest of the U.S. seems fine to us,” he said in a conference call on Oct. 12.

Still, executives say they are counting on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates to stimulate the economy. The Federal Open Market Committee, which is to meet Tuesday and Wednesday, lowered the target rate for overnight loans between banks by half a point on Sept. 18, more than most economists had forecast, to 4.75 percent. The cut was the first in four years.

“I am very optimistic on some of the actions taken recently, like the Fed,” Alan Mulally, chief executive of Ford, said this month in Wayne, Michigan. “Hopefully, the subprime will improve and housing will stabilize again. We also have a good, growing U.S. economy. There's a lot to be positive about.”

Caterpillar remains pessimistic about the U.S. economy.

“We don't expect big improvements in North America any time soon,” Caterpillar's chief financial officer, David Burritt, said.

The worst U.S. housing recession in at least 16 years will lead to a 12 percent decline in North American machinery and engine sales this year, Caterpillar said.

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