PRESIDENT BUSH isn’t flummoxed anymore. He talks with self-assurance, in private and public, about foreign leaders, whether they should be taken seriously, precisely how their countries fit into his plans for making the world safe for America. He chuckles about transparent efforts by Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to placate, through newspaper interviews, the American public’s animosity toward his country. He’s concluded both Saudi Arabia and Egypt aren’t critical to America’s strategy in the world, and says so. In his State of the Union speech last week, the president left Syria out of the “axis of evil,” figuring President Bashar Assad is so fearful of U.S. power he may rid Syria of terrorists on his own. On domestic matters, Bush’s views are settled. Give Congress a list of energy company officials who conferred with Vice President Dick Cheney? He’s more adamant than Cheney in rejecting that idea. Let polls influence his war policies? “I don’t care about polls,” Bush says. That’s easy to say when your poll numbers are as high as Bush’s. But popularity has its benefits. It’s given Bush the luxury of defining his presidency, deciding exactly what he wants it to be about. And now we know: It’s about war and security and sustaining the spirit of America produced by the September 11 terrorist attacks. Bush is ready to be judged, up or down, on how well he thwarts America’s enemies. Sure, he mentioned several dozen domestic issues in his State of the Union speech. But he did so fleetingly, reflecting how concerned he is about them. Not very. What matters most is “how he handles both fronts of this war, the international one, the one at home,” says adviser Karl Rove. “The international is the one that’s more important now.” Bush’s extraordinary first year in the White House culminates in his emergence as a full-blown war president. He began as a more conservative and populist copy of his father, President George H.W. Bush. What James Fallows once wrote about President Jimmy Carter could have been said about Bush: He had 50 ideas, but no one idea. September 11 may not have changed him, but it transformed his presidency. Now it’s about one thing, the war. As Isaiah Berlin would put it, he’s a hedgehog, not a fox. He’s grown more and more like another president, Ronald Reagan. Reagan, too, had one big idea: defeating communism. For him and for Bush, everything was subordinated to a single goal. A prominent feature now of Bush’s governing style is presidential power, exercised baldly, boldly, and worldwide. More than ever, he’s convinced his manner of dealing with allies is correct. He informs them of what he’s planning to do and invites them to come along. He doesn’t negotiate over strategy. This contrasts with the style of President Bill Clinton, who talked to allies about a problem and asked their opinion on what to do. At home, it’s the same. Bush pays minimal attention to congressional input on the war. He believes Congress has no business asking for the names of outsiders who consulted on his energy policy. He didn’t hesitate to give recess appointments to two nominees, Otto Reich and Eugene Scalia. Inside the administration, Bush relies far more on his own instincts. The State of the Union speech, with its call to widening the war and emphasis on America’s continuing vulnerability, was total Bush. Substantively, he got exactly what he sought from his speechwriters. The only change he required was in the speech’s structure. As Michael Gordon wrote in the New York Times, the State of the Union speech could not have been drafted at Colin Powell’s State Department. And as Daniel Henninger wrote in the Wall Street Journal, there “isn’t a single Democrat holding elective office now who would have spoken those lines.” Not many Republicans either. The only adviser who might have steered Bush toward a more conciliatory approach was Cheney, and he didn’t try. As a war president, Bush won’t engage in public dogfights with Democrats. True, the Bush administration will, but not with the president out front. Instead, he’s tried to seize the mantle of bipartisanship and has largely succeeded. “Is he down there talking on the same level as [Senate Majority Leader Tom] Daschle?” a White House aide said. “No.” In last week’s speech, Bush went out of his way to laud two Democrats, Sen. Ted Kennedy and Rep. George Miller of California, for working with him on the education reform bill. And when Bush takes a position most Democrats oppose, he’ll lure as many renegade Democrats as he can and then claim he’s being bipartisan. The bipartisan posture fits perfectly with the theme of the last third of Bush’s speech, the part that Bush himself thought was the most important. The theme was the “unique moment of opportunity” for the country that September 11 brought about. “We must not let this moment pass,” he said. The “true character of this country” emerged, he said. “It was as if we looked into a mirror and saw our better selves. . . . We have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like.” Bush talked of selflessness and public service and spreading American values around the world. He sounded a bit ethereal. But he touched on what most Americans like about post-9/11 America and hope to keep alive. Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
