George Bush Gets Huge Media Boost
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 24, 2001; 8:39 AM
The world has been transformed. Our view of national security has been transformed. The airline industry and the stock market have been transformed (for the worst).
Little wonder, then, that the media's view of President Bush has been drastically transformed as well.
Not too long ago, it was probably fair to say that Bush didn't get all that much respect. He wasn't quite Rodney Dangerfield – journalists gave him due credit for such achievements as passing his tax cut – but there was an undertone to the coverage that said: We're not sure this guy is up to the job.
That was then. The press view now is that Bush has grown significantly since Sept. 11, displaying leadership, feeling the country's pain, coming into his own. But the laws of media physics say you can't just write a piece saying the president's had a couple of good weeks. Not dramatic enough. Not omniscient enough. Not a soul-defining moment. So the portrayals of the new George W. Bush have been far more sweeping.
Nothing wrong with that, of course. The Fourth Estate is famous for exaggerating both strengths and weaknesses. If Bush was seen as bobbling the ball after terrorism became the only story in town, he'd be getting hammered right about now. So he's earned the kudos with a steady performance.
Of course – and no one understands this better than the president, who watched his father tumble from his 91 percent Gulf War popularity to his 38 percent defeat at the hands of Bill Clinton – this may be temporary. After all the "dead or alive" talk about Osama bin Laden, Bush has raised the very stakes by which he'll be judged. For now, though, he is seen through a very different prism than when we all pretended to get apoplectic about the lockbox.
The New York Times sees the crisis as "a window into what some of Mr. Bush's friends and advisers say is his own wholly transformed sense of himself and his presidency. He believes, they say, that he has come face to face with his life's mission, the task by which he will be defined and judged.
"He frequently says that we will be known to history by the way we approach this great cause," said one of his top White House aides, adding that Mr. Bush had made that statement to the religious leaders with whom he met in the White House just hours before his address to Congress on Thursday night.
"One of the president's close acquaintances outside the White House said Mr. Bush clearly feels he has encountered his reason for being, a conviction informed and shaped by the president's own strain of Christianity.
"'I think, in his frame, this is what God has asked him to do,' the acquaintance said. 'It offers him enormous clarity.'
"That is not something that Mr. Bush has always had. He often meandered through his life, occasionally ambled toward the presidency and exhibited a palpable ambivalence about his good political fortune along the way. During the protracted, bitter denouement of the 2000 election, there were times when he seemed to shrink from the tension and recoil from the messiness, his eyes dazed, his shoulders slumped.
"But many of the people around him say that now, facing an extraordinary crisis in his first year in office, he has acquired a kind of certainty that perhaps eluded him before. He is sure, they say, about what he should be doing. He is sure he cannot turn back."
The Washington Post sees a big-time political shift as well: "The twin demands of a sagging economy and an urgent new war on terrorism have transformed the philosophical heart of President Bush's agenda. A man who came to power offering himself as an ideological descendant of Ronald Reagan has emerged nine months later as something closer to an heir of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"The modern conservative movement, which provided the base of this president's support in the 2000 election, had several pillars. They included a distrust of centralized authority, an unyielding faith in free markets and a conviction that individuals should be left to succeed or fail on their own without the protection of a welfare state.
"But Bush's words in recent days – and most powerfully in his speech to Congress on Thursday night – suggest he has concluded that few of the old faiths that animated the conservative agenda before Sept. 11 have much relevance in the current emergency. Suspicion of a powerful national government gave way to a massive federal commitment to rebuild New York City. Devotion to free markets has yielded to an expensive promise to rescue the failing airline industry with government subsidies.
"And although conservatives once boasted of their determination to get government 'off the backs' of the American people, Bush warned that individual convenience must be balanced anew against the collective need for tighter security. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has proposed anti-terrorism measures that vastly increase the reach of the federal government into citizens' privacy – ideas that have caused activists at both ends of the ideological spectrum to warn about encroachments on liberty.
"At the same time, Bush is working on a large economic stimulus package to stave off recession. He said a weak economy needs its pump primed by government with a big infusion of money – a basic precept of Keynesian economics that was at the heart of FDR's New Deal."
The Los Angeles Times examines Bush as commander-in-chief: "What kind of war president is George W. Bush turning out to be? The test of combat hasn't come yet.
"But a rough picture is beginning to emerge from the accounts of aides and others who have met with Bush during the last two weeks: the president as CEO, delegating some roles to more-experienced advisors but keeping others to himself.
"In military planning, Bush has set the basic course but left much of the detailed work to a powerful – and sometimes divided – war cabinet. In diplomacy, he has hit the telephones with the diligence his father showed during the Persian Gulf War, talking with more than two dozen foreign leaders. As chief salesman for his newly declared war on terrorism, Bush has spoken in public every day but one since Sept. 11, sometimes even eloquently – a switch for a man who long preferred one-on-one politicking to speechmaking.
"And in domestic policy, Bush is about to turn attention to the slumping economy and education reform for the first time since the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon – mindful of charges that his father ignored domestic concerns. Still, the war will come first."
The polls remain strong, Newsweek reports: "President Bush's Thursday-night speech made Americans feel less fearful and more knowledgeable about the war on terrorism, a new Newsweek poll shows. Sixty-eight percent of 1,005 adults surveyed by telephone said they feel more secure after hearing Bush speak, while 73 percent say they have a better understanding of how terrorism needs to be fought.
"The president himself continues to earn high marks. A full 86 percent of those polled say they approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president, an increase from 82 percent last week. Eighty-eight percent approve of Bush's handling of the crisis, virtually unchanged from 89 percent one week ago in the NEWSWEEK poll."
USA Today has Dubya besting Poppy: "Bush, fresh off a well-received speech to Congress and the nation Thursday and enjoying praise from Democrats who for the first time say he is up to the job of president, has an unprecedented 90% job approval.
"'Count me in the 90%,' declared Sen. Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat.
"That's the highest job approval registered by the Gallup Poll since it began measuring presidential performance in 1938 during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. The previous high was 89% for Bush's father, George Bush, at the end of the Persian Gulf War in early March 1991."
Viewed from another perspective, has Bush become a super-pol? Is his sudden power limited to terrorism-related measures – or can he now leap Capitol Hill in a single bound?
The New Republic's Ryan Lizza says Bush's opponents are worried: "The real fear among Democrats, one staffer says, is that the war on terrorism 'is going to be used to justify moving the president's agenda' to areas in which it is not relevant to the terrorist threat. Democrats in the House and Senate will try to draw a bright line between emergency legislation that is truly related to the current crisis – military spending, the authorization for the president to use force, an anti-terrorism bill, and a bill to bail out the airline industry – and administration priorities that predate the attacks.
"But it won't be easy. Already, aides to key Democrats say that there is an emerging consensus to quickly send Bush his education bill as a show of bipartisanship. But beyond that, the compromises may be tougher for Democrats to swallow. Already, the administration's allies are using the attacks and subsequent market plunge as a rationale for previously troubled initiatives such as the energy bill (more drilling will 'begin at least the process of making us less dependent,' argues one Republican Congressman); fast track ('We still need to grow the economy and that means trade promotion authority,' a senior Republican aide whispered to Roll Call); and further tax cuts (every Republican and even some Democrats are making this case). . . .
"Despite what the public is currently telling pollsters, a long, complicated, and costly war against a worldwide network without an obvious endgame is not a recipe for keeping the voters by a president's side. And so the war gives Bush an incentive to push his domestic agenda from two directions at once: First, by supplying him with useful political capital. And second, by putting him in the center of a difficult national security situation by which, in contrast to his father, he may not want his presidency to be judged."
The Wall Street Journal editorial page, on the other hand, sees the opportunity for . . . more tax cuts, oil drilling and conservative judicial nominees!
"So much for Florida, and Jim Jeffords's Senate betrayal too. Those teapot tempests happened in a different country a long time ago. In the wake of last week's terror attacks, most Americans are putting their trust in President Bush and want him to succeed. This gives him a historic opportunity to assert his leadership, not just on security and foreign policy but across the board. . . .
"George W. Bush now finds himself in far better political circumstances, with nearly universal public support before he undertakes any military action. The public will not soon want to hear from critics who appear to be angling for partisan gain. This means that for the next few months Mr. Bush will have enormous political capital to do whatever he says must be done to help the war effort and buttress national strength. But the lesson of history is that Presidents must spend political capital or they will lose it. . . .
"First and foremost Mr. Bush has an opportunity to rebuild the nation's defenses. . . . Americans also know that a strong economy is essential to any war effort, and this also gives Mr. Bush a big opportunity. In particular, the phony 'trust fund' constraints on fiscal policy have fallen with the Trade Center towers, opening as much as $150 billion a year in surplus for pro-growth tax cuts.
"The transformed political landscape should also boost other Bush initiatives. Turmoil in the Mideast helps make the case for more domestic energy production, including drilling for oil in Alaska. With the world economy slumping, trade also needs a lift and so Mr. Bush's request for free-trade negotiating authority is likely to be easier. Mr. Bush can also now demand a complete government as soon as possible, including judicial nominees."
That should certainly help in the war on terrorism.
The Chicago Tribune looks at how life has changed in large and small ways:
"No more breezing past the security desk at work, casually waving your ID card. No more e-tickets or curbside check-ins at airports. No more coolers at ballgames. Even the Goodyear blimp, the weekend eye in the sky hovering above sporting events, is grounded.
"That's only the opening chapter of the national mobilization against terrorism. On the docket in Washington and state legislatures around the country are new anti-terrorism proposals that include the expansion of electronic surveillance authority and stronger search and seizure powers for law enforcement.
"The sacrifice of personal convenience is moving into the territory of civil liberties, raising the question of how much Americans will forfeit to achieve a new balance between long-enjoyed freedoms and security from the menace of terrorism. Several public opinion surveys conducted in the week after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks suggest a tolerance – with limits – for sacrifice.
"An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, for instance, said 78 percent would support reducing some privacy protections, including those that restrict government searches and wiretapping. A Gallup poll said most Americans will put up with the inconvenience of checking in up to three hours before flights. . . .
"Looking down the road, public opinion polls even reflect support for a national identity card, long anathema to civil libertarians and most Americans.
"For now, though, security efforts are based heavily in manpower and precautions that are restricting access to public areas. In Los Angeles, security has been stepped up at Dodger Stadium. . . .
"Specially trained dogs now check every corner of the stadium for explosives before each game. Backpacks and oversize bags have been banned, and more police and security staff have been added. Cars may not be parked within 100 yards of the stadium, and ID badges are being more closely scrutinized. Blimps and small planes trailing banners are no longer allowed to fly over during games."
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