Bush Turns the Other Cheek

Schumer may be a partisan hack, but as the Democratic point-man on the firings, he is carrying the day. He guided Democrats as they transformed the perfectly legal and quite normal removal of federal prosecutors into a raging scandal. They’ve done this for raw political reasons: to mortify and cripple the president. And Bush, with his timidity in the face of Democratic accusations, has let them. He hasn’t fought back. He’s become an enabler.

And look what he’s enabled! By not instantly and unflinchingly denouncing the Democratic offensive for what it is, an entirely bogus attack on his administration, he has allowed a mere flap to get out of hand. And now he faces unpleasant decisions over whether to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and permit Democrats to haul Karl Rove, his senior adviser, before a congressional committee. Should he do either, his administration will be tremendously weakened and his presidency stained.

So there’s a crisis, but not the one Schumer talked about. It’s a crisis of presidential leadership. Bush excels as leader of his country. He is unrelenting in pursuing the war on Islamic terrorists, and he performed admirably on his recent tour of Latin America. But he’s also responsible for leading–and defending–his administration and the Republican party. He’s failing in both of these duties.

Bush needs to fight back, rhetorically and otherwise, without hesitation and without fear that his critics will end up even more opposed to his policies. The way Washington works in 2007, with Democrats in control of Congress, makes this necessary. Being nice and conciliatory, as Bush has been, is counterproductive. It’s never reciprocated. Rather, it encourages his Democratic foes to be even more belligerent and discourages his Republican allies.

From the earliest days of the Bush presidency, his advisers have debated whether he should be nice or tough. On one side are what an aide calls “the communicators.” They want the president to speak kindly to Congress, the aide says, and try to mollify not only Democrats but also “the New York Times and [ABC anchor] George Stephanopoulos.” The tough guys believe Bush should be as hard-hitting on Congress as he is when discussing the war on terror. As best I can tell, counselor Dan Bartlett favors the gentler approach, Rove and Vice President Cheney the harder line.

The communicators are winning. A White House official says the president’s instinct is not to denounce opponents. This is not necessarily because he thinks politeness will curry favor with Democrats. It’s just Bush’s style. Another official says Bush “likes to set a tone,” a high one. Still another aide says Bush dislikes questioning an opponent’s motives.

This tendency may have been unobjectionable when Republicans ran Congress, but it is something else today. Now the Washington system works like this: A phony controversy that isn’t stamped out immediately and harshly can balloon into a real controversy or scandal. “If you don’t come up very aggressively and push back, it takes on a life of its own,” says Republican senator John Thune of South Dakota. “That’s what’s happened here.”

The model Bush should have followed from the get-go is that of Oliver North. Rather than apologize, as Bush has, North went after the real outrage: the congressional Iran-contra committee itself. He pushed back furiously, thrilled his allies, and demoralized his enemies. The committee, knocked on its heels, never recovered.

What should Bush have said when Democrats first took after the firings? Something like this: “It’s an outrage that Democrats would attack, solely for political gain, a president’s constitutional authority to name U.S. attorneys and remove them from office. President Clinton removed all 93 federal prosecutors in 1993, as was his right. I have removed 8, none of them for political reasons. That Democrats are now willing to play political games with our criminal justice system is a shame, and I will vigorously oppose their efforts.”

This is what’s known as a shot across the bow. It probably wouldn’t have stopped Democrats in their tracks. But they would have known they were in for a fight if they tried to use the firings as a political weapon.

Instead, the Democrats’ attacks have gone virtually unanswered. This has prompted them to step up their demands for administration witnesses at congressional show trials and to begin turning policy differences into criminal violations. Bush has not given his allies anything or anyone to rally around. It’s small wonder, then, that Republicans have begun dropping off and calling for Gonzales’s ouster.

The president’s failure to defend his administration has led to trouble before, notably when the White House declined to stand behind the “16 words” about Saddam Hussein’s search for uranium in Africa in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address. This led ultimately to the CIA leak case and the prosecution of Scooter Libby.

Trouble will visit Bush again and again if he does not stand up to the Democrats. He could begin by informing them that they won’t get the scalp of Gonzales, Rove, or anyone else. Following that, he could tell Democrats to quit wasting their time on antiwar resolutions and other issues (card check, stem cells, etc.) that will never become law and concentrate on issues like immigration and education that may. He could battle noisily for confirmation of one or two or three appeals court nominees. He could pardon Libby. Republicans would be inspired. Administration officials would feel protected. And if Reid and Schumer fume, so what?

Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.