May 1, 2002
AMBLING TO VICTORY :
Since at least the time of Watergate, when modern American politics became almost purely partisan, there's been no more popular sport in Washington, DC than the party out of power ripping the president and the party in power defending him at all costs. Right now we're being treated to the rare spectacle of each party trying to pull off a bankshot, with Republicans defending George W. Bush's disengagement from the Middle East by accusing Bill Clinton of being over-involved, and Democrats attacking Bush by contrasting him to Clinton. The fact that the degree of presidential involvement in the Middle East has had no effect whatsoever on the level of violence there would seem to make both sides' arguments seem foolish, but that won't stop them.The one thing though that is strangely missing from the analysis of President Bush's strategy is the degree to which it fits perfectly along the continuum of how he has conducted domestic policy. On issues ranging from the centerpieces of his presidency--the tax cut and the Education bill--to a law that he has openly called unconstitutional--Campaign Finance Reform (CFR)--the President has tended to sit back and let the parties who will actually have to agree on the legislation (House Republicans and Senate Democrats) fight it out until they come up with a bill and only then invested his own energy and prestige in getting the finished product passed.
Here's an excerpt from a piece that ran a year ago, Conflicting Image of Bush Emerges : Bush Makes Political Investments, but Will They Make Him? (John F. Harris and Dan Balz, April 29, 2001, Washington Post) :
The cell phone rang just as Nick Calio was sitting down at the Caucus Room restaurant a few weeks ago for a late dinner with out-of-town friends. It was President Bush on the line -- again, just a couple of hours after they had last spoken.The Senate was debating the $1.6 trillion tax cut at the heart of the Bush agenda, and the new president seemed to be everywhere. Or so it seemed to White House aides like Calio, the legislative liaison, who recalled his boss as a hovering presence, inquiring constantly about the latest vote counts, filled with instructions on which senators to call, immersed in internal discussions about possible deals to be struck. Bush hung up with Calio that night, only to call him at 7 the next morning for a new update.
This portrait is striking if only because on Capitol Hill that week the same man White House aides describe as the everywhere president was virtually nowhere. He made a few calls to lawmakers, but the most important lobbying was done by Vice President Cheney. At week's end, after the Senate rejected Bush's plan, complaints smoldered among Republicans that he had been missing in action, not doing enough to lobby or strike the bargains that might have yielded something more than the $1.25 trillion figure the Senate endorsed. The White House response: It was simply too early in the long fight over taxes for Bush to invest his prestige haggling for votes.
One hundred days after his inauguration, the contrasting images of Bush during his first Senate showdown neatly encapsulate the contradictory ways of looking at his presidency. He is a natural operative who serves as the most important tactician of his own White House. Or he is a passive leader who relies on proxies to carry out important tasks. This blurred figure is the biggest question mark in the new balance of power playing out this year in Washington. With the White House and Congress under Republican control, however tenuous, for the first time in two generations, how will the new president define his role, and can he successfully play it?
The answer may lie in Bush's conception of "political capital," a term that can be roughly translated to mean the perceived power a chief executive has to wield at any given time in his presidency. Bush and his senior advisers invoke the phrase constantly, as they discuss the intangible process by which a president accumulates and exercises influence. Bush has distinct theories on this subject, namely that only through the expenditure of capital can a president hope to gain even more. His views have shaped White House decisions about where he goes, what he says, when he intervenes -- and when he does not.
All you'd have to do is substitute Palestine for Senate and Israel for House in the appropriate places in those paragraphs and you'd have today's news analysis of the Bush role in the Middle East peace process.
Compare, for instance, that earlier story to this one One Crisis Down, Tougher Ones to Come : Arafat's release would be a first step in bringing peace to region. The parties differ on what lies ahead. (ROBIN WRIGHT, April 30 2002, LA Times) :
The complexity of working out the deal over Arafat's departure from his headquarters in Ramallah underscores the enormousness of what lies ahead.A confluence of factors finally persuaded Bush to use diplomatic elbow grease to end the crisis, which was provoked by the Passover massacre by a Palestinian suicide bomber that led Israel to invade the West Bank.
Bush's actions were precipitated by the visits of Abdullah and other Arab leaders last week, persistent requests by European allies, the first signs of Israeli flexibility and recognition at the White House that nothing would happen on the big issues in either the Middle East or the war on terrorism until the current crisis was resolved.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell "had tried to work on this same arrangement when he was in the region, but the parties weren't ready then," said a senior administration official who asked to remain anonymous.
A major snag involved five Palestinians holed up in Arafat's compound whom Israel wanted to charge with the October assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi; a sixth man, Arafat's accountant, is also wanted.
As time passed, the Israeli government recognized that it wasn't going to be able to conduct its own trial of the six men--and Washington found room to negotiate, U.S. officials say.
The timing coincided with the visits last week of the Saudi leader, Morocco's king and the Lebanese prime minister, all of whom brought similarly strong messages about the dangers for all involved if the crisis was not defused. Abdullah was particularly forceful, U.S. officials say.
"In talking to the Saudis, the president committed to doing all he could," the senior administration official said. "In the end, his intervention put the process over the edge."
Although Bush's calls to Sharon on Saturday were the critical turning point, much of the legwork was done in a constant flurry of calls Thursday through Sunday by Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, administration sources say.
Looked at in isolation, Mr. Bush's final decision to intervene in the negotiations here may appear to have been an act of desperation that was forced upon him by circumstances. But if you read it in the context of his pre-established management style, you see that he eventually got Israeli, Palestinian, and other Arab leaders to come to him in desperation looking for a solution, which he was then able to hammer out (actually, have his staff hammer out).
The most important aspect of the Bush method is that--although like Ronald Reagan before him, he is dismissed as a lightweight by the policy wonks of Washington--he keeps racking up victories, large and small. Republican critics may have wanted him to get more on taxes, to hold out for school choice in the Education Bill, to veto CFR, etc., etc., etc., and Democrats may believe that he's too divorced from the process to get credit for the results, but at the end of the day President Bush has what Congressional Quarterly has called the greatest record of legislative accomplishment since LBJ at the height of the Great Society (measured by how often Congress adopted legislative positions that he supported). The stuff he cares about is mostly done (the glaring exception being Social Security and education privatization, which requires a Republican Congress) and the stuff he doesn't care about (CFR) is not only gone as an issue, but paradoxically assures his re-election because of the crippling restrictions it places on his prospective Democrat challengers. The critics on the Left may be correct that the president is just a figurehead who deserves no credit for this record of achievement, but you can't help noticing that the achievements keep piling up.
Similarly, as regards foreign policy, Republicans may have wanted President Bush to put ground troops in Afghanistan right away, to attack Saddam right away, to get tougher with Arafat, etc., etc., etc., and Democrats may think he's in over his head, but so long as the war on terrorism keeps going his way, who's to gainsay his strategy? And the important thing to recognize here--which offers the critics a more legitimate line of argument--is that, although the President's support for Israel is genuine, as regards his overall policy goals, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resembles CFR more than the tax cut. That is to say, it is an annoyance that he would like to see go away even if the results are distasteful. His real concern is with the war on terrorism in general and on Saddam Hussein in particular. Turning the heat in Palestine down from a boil to a simmer will make it easier to pursue the war in Iraq, but beyond that (and guaranteeing Israel's safety) critics are probably right that Mr. Bush isn't any more interested in the so-called peace process than he was in so-called Campaign Finance Reform. In the same way that he measures his domestic success by the fact that the bills he most desired became law and the ones that might prove annoying went away, so his eventual success or failure in the Middle East will be measured by whether bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are running countries at the end of 2003--and by that standard he's halfway home.
