DOUBLE OR NOTHING:

Something tells me Bush holds all the aces (Mark Steyn, 29/08/2004, Daily Telegraph)

At the beginning of the year, Thomas Lifson, who was at Harvard Business School with George W Bush, made an interesting observation about the President. He notes that young George "was a very avid and skillful poker player" when he was a Business Administration student and that "one of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W Bush's political career".

Indeed one does. In the months following Mr Lifson's observation, the President sat back, as John Kerry's consultants, the Iowa caucus voters, the Democratic Party at large, and the media convinced themselves that the one card that trumps Bush's leadership in the war on terror was Kerry's four months in Vietnam, and bet everything on it. They have just lost that hand. [...]

The Bush-haters are right about him: he is a radical President, just not in the cartoon manner they believe. So it will be interesting to hear what he has to say about tax reform and Social Security - two areas where he's got big ambitions. The rest of the week will be a soft-focus infomercial just like the Democratic Convention, but the Republican speakers - Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain and dissident Democrat Senator Zell Miller - make a much stronger line-up than the old lions on display in Boston - Jimmy Carter, Ted Kennedy, Bill and Hill, effective speakers all but strictly for the true believers. Rudy, Arnie and co have far more cross-party appeal. [...]

So the most likely outcome this November is an increased Republican majority in the House, a couple of extra Senate seats, and a second term for Bush. I might be wrong. Anything is possible. But the reluctance of the British press to admit the possibility that Bush isn't a loser suggests that they too have over-invested in John Kerry's very weak hand.

One of the things that Democrats and pundits--with the exception of a few wise souls like Mr. Steyn--just don't seem to get is that the President enjoys raising the stakes at exactly those moments when they think they've caught him bluffing. And when they accept he tends to crush them. After the stolen election he was supposed to mark time untril Al Gore could be awarded his rightful crown, but instead he rammed through his tax cuts. After Jim Jeffords jumped the President was supposed to be permanently, but he just went ahead and passed NCLB and Fast Track Trade Authority and the like anyway. After 9-11 he was supposed to not do anything partisan lest it change the color of the global mood ring, but he went to war in Iraq anyway. Presidents are supposed to lose seats in the congressional midterm but the President staked his reputation on them and won seats. Economy doing badly? He'd have to repeal tax cuts, right? Wrong, he went for more and got them. Iraq going unsmoothly, better apologize to the U.N. and hide behind it, right? Wrong, he invited them in only to use them like rented mules. Senator Kerry served in Vietnam while the President was "only" in the Guard--better avoid that issue right? And so on, and so forth, seemingly ad infinitum.

MORE:

A lifetime of risk-taking shapes Bush's leadership (Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | August 29, 2004, Boston Globe)

When George W. Bush accepted the presidential nomination four years ago, he laced his speech with extraordinary clues about his governing style. ''I do not need to take your pulse before I know my own mind," Bush told Americans. Mocking criticism that his platform was filled with ''risky schemes," Bush told the story of a patriot who ignored warnings that he would lose his property if he signed the Declaration of Independence, saying, ''Damn the consequences, give me the pen."

In retrospect, the Texan left no doubt: He intended his presidency to be built on a foundation of bold and broad risks.

Now, as Bush again prepares to accept his party's presidential nomination, his candidacy is based on at least two major ventures fraught with risk -- the war in Iraq and massive tax cuts -- as well as on his reliance on risk as a style of governing. A former oilman who bet and sometimes lost tens of thousands of dollars on dreams of gushers, Bush has taken that wildcatting style into the White House, determined to show that, unlike his father, George H.W. Bush, he has the ''vision thing" and is unafraid of the consequences.

''He is a big risk taker," Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat, said. ''If you look at the way he ran his oil business, this is a guy who was skating on the edge. I think it goes to a deep personality characteristic."

Conrad, who opposed the Iraq war resolution, is no fan of Bush's approach and laments being one of many Democrats who feel shut out by the White House. But Bush's admirers see it another way: A president must be sure of himself and take risks in order to be a leader, and must trust those he is advising in order to lead well. Caution in a time of terrorism would be a weak way to run the White House, his defenders say.

Indeed, one of Bush's campaign refrains is that his policies don't create wealth but create an environment for risk-takers to be rewarded -- and he has followed that philosophy himself in pursuing the war, tax cuts, and a governing style that has alienated many Democrats and some foreign leaders.

''He is not afraid of risk and he is confident obviously in what he believes, and it has kind of shaped his political career," said White House communications director Dan Bartlett. ''It is that whole mentality that was very much shaped by his West Texas upbringing and in business; being in the oil business you have this frontier attitude about taking risk and entrepreneurship."

So, to the surprise of some observers, Bush has become the country's ultimate entrepreneur, gambling his political future and that of millions of Americans on the biggest stage of all. [...]

The Sept. 11 attacks transformed Bush from being a peace president who had time to leisurely examine stem cell research, to being a war president whose top concern is to defend America.

''Whatever you may think of the wisdom of his policies, you cannot deny that he has been bold and aggressive in pursuing them," said Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas government professor who has long followed Bush's career. ''Bush the elder was cautious, pragmatic, not a real risk taker. Bush the younger seems willing to take the bit in his teeth.

''In his [2000] acceptance speech, he said, 'They have not led, we will.' By God, he has," Buchanan said.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 29, 2004 8:33 PM