George W. Bush's administration hasn't taken long to establish an identity -- and it is strikingly more conservative than the moderate image Bush successfully portrayed during last fall's presidential campaign. Those who claimed that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between Bush and Democrat Al Gore look even more ridiculous today than they did last fall.

On the environment, the economy, foreign policy and an array of social issues, the new president has staked himself out as a hard-edged conservative, even though his rhetoric still serves to soften those edges. John Mitchell, who served as attorney general under Richard Nixon, admonished critics of that administration to judge it by what it did, not by what it said. In Nixon's case, tough rhetoric often masked a relatively progressive agenda. In President Bush's case, just the opposite may be true.

In some respects, the priorities of the new administration are consistent with the issues Bush stressed as a candidate. For example, he emphasized a $1-trillion tax cut then, and he is emphasizing a $1.6-trillion tax cut now -- although he turned the rationale for those cuts on its head as the economy soured. Also, no one can fairly claim to be surprised by the president's support for an unproven missile defense shield and for opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration. Bush made those views clear last year.

In many other respects, however, the Bush White House has made priorities of issues that candidate Bush intentionally soft-pedaled last year.

Bush downplayed the issue of abortion throughout the presidential campaign, but his first substantive act as president was to reverse Clinton administration policy and reinstate a ban on federal money for organizations that promote abortions overseas. Bush promised during the campaign to regulate power plants' emissions of carbon dioxide, which have been found to be a primary cause of global warming. But the president reneged on that promise this month -- publicly embarrassing his Environmental Protection Agency administrator in the process. Bush promised during his debates with Al Gore to seek bipartisan consensus on a patients' bill of rights. But he said in Florida last week that he opposes the most popular bipartisan legislation on the issue.

Bush acted swiftly to reverse Clinton administration efforts to limit the levels of arsenic in our drinking water, curtail road-building and mining on national lands and make our workplaces safer. He has pushed ahead with a new partnership between government and faith-based groups, despite concerns raised by some civil libertarians and religious organizations. The White House announced last week that the president's budget will slash funding for child care, child abuse prevention and training of doctors at children's hospitals. It also announced that the president will end the American Bar Association's traditional role in evaluating candidates for federal judgeships. Right-wing groups have long advocated that change, but Republican presidents from Eisenhower through George H.W. Bush chose to make use of the ABA's unique role in the legal community.

In foreign policy, Bush has heartened hard-liners who haven't noticed that the Cold War is over. He appeased anti-Castro activists in South Florida by choosing a controversial veteran of the Iran-Contra affair to lead administration policy in this hemisphere. And he humiliated South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, during a White House meeting by rejecting efforts made by Kim and President Clinton to strike a deal designed to limit North Korea's development of offensive weapons. In the process, Bush contradicted Secretary of State Colin Powell, who had publicly advocated continuing those negotiations.

These and other early actions of the Bush presidency have surely delighted the conservative base of the Republican Party, but Bush had promised to be something more. Throughout his campaign, he promised to be a consensus-builder who would break the partisan gridlock in Washington. And in his inaugural address after winning a close and contested election, he offered words designed to heal those partisan divisions: "I want everybody to hear loud and clear that I'm going to be the president of everybody. Whether they voted for me or not, I'm their president."

Barely two months later, those words sound more like a taunt than a promise.

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