THE CYNICAL VIEW of President Bush is that he exploited the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, for political gain and now is ardently pursuing war with Iraq for the same reason. Many Democrats, including Senate minority leader Tom Daschle, believe this. It’s true that Bush is stronger politically for having national security and not domestic issues as the focus of the nation’s attention. But there’s a political downside in the prolonged prelude to war, and the president is beginning to experience it. Six months of diplomacy at the United Nations Security Council, with no war resolution in sight, has taken a toll.
That Bush has persisted on Iraq in the face of sinking polls, diplomatic setbacks, and rising criticism argues against the cynical view. Thomas DeFrank of the New York Daily News reported last week that Bush told friends nearly a year ago that he’d concluded Saddam Hussein must be deposed. Since then, the president hasn’t flinched. “He’s using his political capital to take a reluctant nation to war,” says a White House official. It’s not the other way around–Bush taking the country to war to build political capital.
Let’s not exaggerate. Bush has lost some ground politically, but he’s not in freefall. The latest Gallup Poll showed approval of his performance dipped from 63 percent to 57 percent over the past two months. This brings Bush roughly back to where he was prior to September 11. The rally-around-the-president phenomenon usually vanishes in seven or eight months. With Bush, it took 18 months to disappear, and it’s likely to return when war with Iraq begins.
The long road to war has created uncertainty about the future, and this is partly responsible for the weak economic recovery. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, among others, says so. The vote by Turkey not to join the war, the opposition of France, Russia, and Germany, the troubles at the U.N.–all have shown the president as less than dominant. And not only have Bush’s political opponents been emboldened, an antiwar movement has had time to mobilize, though less effectively in America than in Europe.
Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute has a theory that winners win. That sounds tautological, but it means that winners create confidence in their ability to keep winning and thus improve their chances of doing just that. But lose or hit a roadblock, and the opposite occurs. “If you’re not winning, you look vulnerable,” Ornstein says. Rebuffs by allies and the U.N. “make Bush look less formidable. He looks not impotent but weaker.”
There’s something to this. Certainly Daschle and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic presidential candidates act as though they believe it. Their criticism of Bush has become frequent and harsh. They’re encouraged by polls. Only 36 percent of Americans now say things are getting better in America, down from 46 percent in December. And the number of people who think the economy is in poor shape has nearly doubled (from 16 percent to 32 percent) over the past year.
Bush’s political situation would no doubt be better today if he hadn’t taken on Iraq, assuming Saddam hadn’t used any of those weapons of mass destruction he claims he doesn’t have. The president would be concentrating on a limited war on terrorism, aimed at al Qaeda. With two of the top five al Qaeda operatives captured or dead and Osama bin Laden possibly cornered and with no further terrorist attacks on American soil, “Bush’s poll numbers would be sky high,” insists a presidential adviser.
Maybe so, but Bush has chosen to take risks. He’s allowed his schedule to be preoccupied by Iraq. He cancelled a luncheon with members of Congress last week to talk on the phone to British prime minister Tony Blair, who’s nervous about losing support in Parliament. A few days earlier, while addressing a group of health care experts on Medicare reform, the president devoted the first 15 minutes to talking about Iraq.
Most striking of all, he’s been willing to go to the U.N. and linger there to prove he’s made every effort to avoid war. This seems to have assuaged few of his critics. Because Blair wants a new resolution declaring Saddam still in noncompliance with U.N. orders to disarm, Bush has gone along, even to the point of lobbying leaders of small, insignificant countries with Security Council seats, but with no stake in liberating Iraq or winning the war on terrorism.
The entire U.N. offensive now looks like a mistake, but an understandable one. It was Secretary of State Colin Powell’s idea, but Bush made the decision. In their defense, neither Powell nor Bush could have known that France’s opposition to serious Iraqi disarmament or regime change would be so hostile and implacable. At least Blair’s support has been equally implacable.
All is hardly lost. In fact, not much has been lost. Bush hasn’t panicked. Every report from the White House is that he’s as firm as ever in his belief that Saddam must go and that Bush himself must make sure it happens. Rather than allies’ encouraging Bush, it’s been his task to buck them up when they’ve grown weary in warding off opposition at home. The weary include his two closest allies, Blair and Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar.
The good news for Bush is that he still has considerable clout with the American public. Bush loathes press conferences, but he did well enough on March 6 that he changed public opinion. Backing for war and regime change increased. Better yet, the jump was exceeded by the national desire (up 15 percentage points in a Fox news survey) to stop dithering at the U.N. and start fighting. I suspect that is Bush’s sentiment exactly.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
