Now it seems as though George W. Bush might be paying more attention to former Secretary of State James A. Baker III’s Iraq Study Group than he initially let on. For starters, the president’s apparent about-face last week from his earlier rejection of meetings with Iran or Syria falls right in line with one of Baker’s chief recommendations.

Baker’s blue-ribbon panel, co-chaired with former Democratic Rep. Lee H. Hamilton of Indiana, unveiled 79 recommendations in December for salvaging Iraq. The 10 members of the group — five from each political party — checked their partisanship at the door to draw a comprehensive blueprint for improving chances of ending the war with at least a fig leaf of dignity. While their yeoman effort was much praised, the White House seemingly ignored their specifics.

Bush insiders say that, in private, the president first rejected the Baker-Hamilton findings with some coarse and unprintable language. But partly at the urging of Bush’s father, whom Baker served as secretary of State, the president gradually adopted a more receptive attitude.

Republican lawmakers who say they talk regularly and privately with administration officials insist that the president is more flexible than he comes across. “He’s changed his mind on quite a few things,” said Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

In addition to the surprising move to meet with Iran and Syria, the White House has taken to heart the Baker-Hamilton call for a stronger stand in Afghanistan and new approaches to pressuring the Iraqi government. Still, Bush firmly resists endorsing the group’s plan for phased withdrawal of U.S. troops to bases near Iraq by next year, even though others in his administration broadly hint that it could happen.

His early appearance of overlooking the study group might have been due to presidential pride — not wanting to appear to be yielding to others but quietly acquiescing in their ideas. It’s like a child who begrudgingly acts on a parent’s suggestion without openly endorsing it.

The president himself brought up the group’s proposals in his most recent formal session with reporters, ticking off several of them from memory and justifying his controversial “surge” of troops to Baghdad as a means to ultimately implementing what Baker and Hamilton suggested. “I thought the Baker-Hamilton made a lot of sense, their recommendations,” Bush said at his Feb. 14 news conference. “We just weren’t able to get there if the capital [Baghdad] was up in flames. That’s why I made the decision I made.”

Indeed, the surge’s defenders at the White House and on Capitol Hill frequently point out that the Baker-Hamilton commission had allowed for the possibility of a quick boost to stabilize Baghdad. Although the group did not include a troop increase among its recommendations, it did outline conditions under which one would be acceptable. “One is that it be short-term, and the other is that it be called for by the commander in Iraq,” Baker said in sketching the panel’s views to the the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January. He then lent his own support to Bush’s troop surge, saying, “The president’s plan ought to be given a chance.”

There was an intensely personal side to Baker’s initiative last year. While in public he was presenting an elaborate new strategy for the war, friends of the Bush family’s longtime lieutenant say he was also pursuing what amounted to a behind-the-scenes intervention to pry the president away from an addiction to Vice President Dick Cheney’s hawkish advice.

Indeed, Cheney has led the internal effort to set aside the Baker-Hamilton recommendations — especially the call for diplomatic talks with Iran and Syria. White House insiders say Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been Baker’s champion in trying to move the president toward more diplomacy in the Middle East.

Rice’s role in the White House debate over Baker’s ideas underscores the significance of last week’s announcement that the United States would join regional talks with Iran and Syria. Cheney is said to have been staunchly opposed to such a move — which means that, along with the ousting of his pal Donald H. Rumsfeld from the Pentagon, the vice president has now lost at least two major internal battles over war handling.

Baker himself was quick to praise the move toward the talks. “We need to recognize and accept that the United States will sometimes have to deal with authoritarian states,” he said while speaking at the Library of Congress just hours after Rice’s announcement. Perhaps sensing his rising influence, Baker urged more diplomatic initiatives, outlining a policy he called “pragmatic idealism” and advising a drawdown in the use of military options. “We cannot be, even if we wanted to be, the policeman for the world,” Baker said.

Many GOP lawmakers hoping to see the White House get on a better footing with the voters are quietly cheering Bush’s apparent moves toward Baker. But as one said, they do not want to make too much of it or the president will “get stubborn” again and back off.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for NBC, MSNBC and CNBC. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.