The return of former President George W. Bush to the public spotlight this week helped underscore how different some things are in Washington under his successor, President Obama. Like the “war on terror.”
Bush still talks about it. Obama rarely does.
The war on terror was a constant refrain of the Bush presidency after the Sept. 11, 2001. terrorist attacks, a rhetorical construct Obama has uttered publicly fewer than half a dozen times since becoming president two years ago.
The phrase surfaces occasionally in budget documents, and Obama has offered some variations with “the global fight against extremism” or the “enduring struggle against terrorism.”
Though Obama upholds a number of Bush’s anti-terrorism policies, including rendition flights of suspects to other countries and the use of military tribunals to try terrorism suspects. But for the most part, the war on terror is over as presidential locution, even as the global fight against extremism and the enduring struggle against terrorism rage on.
“Bush is a lot more blunt than Obama, just from a message construct standpoint,” said Joseph Valenzano III, an expert on political rhetoric at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. “But language also reflects the way we see reality.”
Bush’s embrace of expressions like “the war on terror” and “freedom is on the march” reflect the circumstances of his presidency and a stark communication difference from Obama, whose rejects slogans and catchphrases.
Bush revived the war on terror during a media tour to promote his new book, “Decision Points.”
Bush declared war on terror in a speech to Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, saying, “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there.”
“It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,” Bush said.
Valenzano noted that invoking the concept of “war” immediately after the terrorist attacks — Bush also declared himself a “wartime president” — gives any president key advantages.
“It creates a sense of crisis, and you often see a spike in public approval,” he said. “They get some level of a bump and some level of immunity to criticism — the benefit of the doubt, for the time being.”
In the weeks after the 2001 terrorist attacks, Bush’s popularity ratings hit new highs — as high as 87 percent in some polls.
Rhetorical critics scoffed at Bush for declaring war on a tactic or abstract noun. And historians noted the difficulties former President Reagan had waging a war on drugs and President Johnson faced with his war on poverty — both open-ended conflicts with undefined enemies and no clearly achievable point of closure.
Martin Medhurst, a presidential communication expert at Baylor University, noted that declaring war creates a strong set of expectations.
“It suggests there is a final victory or a final defeat, just as we had with World War II,” Medhurst said. “In this case, how would you know if it were to happen? I guess with the outbreak of universal peace.”
