PRESIDENT BUSH is doing his duty to keep spirits up. “The terrorists wanted our economy to stop,” he said at a printing company in Glen Burnie, Maryland. “It hasn’t. They wanted to diminish the spirit of America. It didn’t.” At a White House photo op, he assured reporters that the effort to spread anthrax “won’t succeed. This country is too strong to allow terrorists to affect the lives of our citizens.” He told kids at a Washington elementary school the one goal in fighting terrorism is “to make sure you can live in freedom in a great land.” And last Friday at an East Room signing ceremony for his anti-terrorism bill, he said law enforcement will now have more tools “to identify, to dismantle, to disrupt, and to punish terrorists before they strike.” In short, the president is determined not to lose the war at home. But the domestic front isn’t Bush’s biggest problem. The war in Afghanistan is. Wartime presidencies don’t collapse because of shortcomings or unrest at home. Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, got a pass from the public on the declining economy during the Gulf War. He suffered after the war when he still didn’t have an answer for the recession. When the country is at war, presidents are held accountable for only one thing: winning the war. If the military campaign goes poorly or there’s a stalemate, which is just as bad from a public opinion standpoint, presidents suffer. Truman’s reelection in 1952 was short-circuited by the Korean War. Johnson’s was undone by Vietnam. And in 1864, Lincoln’s reelection prospects also looked bleak–until the Civil War turned decisively in the Union’s favor. Media criticism notwithstanding, Bush is doing fine domestically. True, his underlings stumbled initially in confronting anthrax. Tommy Thompson, the secretary of health and human services, foolishly minimized the anthrax threat. And Tom Ridge, the new homeland security chief, couldn’t respond adequately to reporters’ questions. But Ridge quickly got up to speed, and now his almost daily briefings are crisp, informed, and unusually candid. If they weren’t, the press would fault the Bush administration on style points, but that wouldn’t do much harm. The simple fact is: Bush won’t be blamed for the anthrax scare. It’s widely understood as an unpredictable phenomenon he couldn’t control. There’s anxiety, of course, but no hysteria. People aren’t fleeing Washington or New York. If only the war itself–the shooting war–were going as well. The press has given the White House high marks for its marketing of the war. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is praised as a strong briefer (though he discloses few facts). Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell get credit for amassing an international coalition against terrorism. Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, was impressive in persuading the TV networks to keep terrorist propaganda from Osama bin Laden off the air. All this is ephemera, however, when compared with the war itself. The public’s expectations may be too high following the 100-hour victory in the Gulf War. People may be impatient. Nonetheless, if the war drags on, the public will be unforgiving. They want bin Laden, his network, and the Taliban–indeed, everyone responsible for the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks–waxed now. That seems unlikely at the moment. The Pentagon has become a fountain of discouraging words. Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, vehemently disputed a USA Today headline that quoted Rumsfeld as saying bin Laden may never be captured or killed. At his daily briefing, he cited Rumsfeld’s actual comments–and the point was lost. Any reasonable reading of what the defense secretary had said backed up the USA Today headline. Meanwhile, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem, the deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Taliban is a tougher foe than anticipated. And British Admiral Michael Boyce said commando raids into Afghanistan to find bin Laden may take far longer than planned. Nor was the assessment of the war last week by Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, terribly upbeat. “Success is yet to be determined, but we think we’re having some success,” he said. Echoing the brass, the mood of Washington turned negative last week for the first time. But still there’s been no serious second-guessing–at the White House or elsewhere in the administration and practically none on Capitol Hill. Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said a prolonged air war might anger Muslims, and his tepid dissent prompted criticism from House speaker Dennis Hastert. But Biden didn’t question the American strategy in the war on the right grounds. Muslims will grouse no matter what the United States does. The problem is that overwhelming force, championed by Colin Powell in the Gulf War, is not being applied in Afghanistan. Or anything like overwhelming force. Instead, the strategy from the Balkans has been adopted: bomb, bomb, bomb, but never massively and never in carpet-bombing fashion. And there’s not much of a ground forces component either. Call it underwhelming force. Yes, there are reasons for it. Allies in the coalition who don’t feel threatened by bin Laden or the Taliban fear excessive American force will rile the masses. Pakistan doesn’t want the Northern Alliance to end up controlling much ground, as it might with a quick American triumph. The U.S. military likes a war with few American casualties and no quagmire. And so on. Where does this leave Bush? He’s a commanding presence in Washington. His astronomical poll ratings, post-September 11, haven’t dipped a bit. He gained almost everything he wanted in the anti-terrorist bill, and there’s a better-than-even chance he’ll get an aviation security bill and an economic stimulus package that are mostly to his liking. When Karl Rove, the White House political adviser, surveys the political landscape, he’s bound to smile about Bush’s chances in 2004. And why not? If war in Afghanistan is won in a few months and, as is likely, the economy turns up, the president’s future will be all but secure. But if the war effort slips and slides for a year or two or more, then all bets are off. Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard. November 5, 2001 – Volume 7, Number 8
