Published on Thursday, September 25, 2003 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune
Bush Really Hits the Trifecta
by David Sarasohn
A few weeks ago, President Bush did what presidents get to do when they're in trouble: He addressed the nation live in prime time from the White House.
The White House address is to normal speeches what Air Force One is to a discount airliner, and at least for a little while, it just about always works. Even Jimmy Carter saw a bump in his approval ratings as Americans rallied around the President Speaking From the White House.
But after this speech, Bush's Gallup Poll approval ratings dropped seven points, from 59 percent to 52 percent. It's enough to make you lose faith in the East Room as a prop.
The problem wasn't the speech itself -- although the president, far from his swaggering style on the aircraft carrier, was back to his wary, suspicious look, as if he thought someone was about to ask him to spell something. The problem was the check that Bush produced like a waiter at the end of a meal -- $87 billion in the next fiscal year for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Americans responded like the people in commercials who've just opened their cell phone bill.
It wasn't so much political opposition. With their usual fighting spirit, most of the Democrats running for president, and in Congress, harrumphed that they supposed they'd have to pay it, only mumbling something about asking for some idea of what the money would go for. The sharper response was among the public, with 61 percent against the request.
The president's problem with asking for $87 billion -- aside from its being enough money to choke an economy -- was that it poked at not one, but three current raw nerves:
??Why is this costing so much more than we were told it would?
Repeatedly, in the runup to the war, administration officials reminded Americans that Iraq was an oil-rich country which could pay for its own restoration. But now the Bush administration is asking for $87 billion, with at least $20 billion in U.S. taxpayer money going to restore Iraq -- and nobody thinks, and the administration doesn't claim, that this will be the end.
And reminding people of one prewar miscalculation also makes them think of others, such as the weapons of mass destruction and the warmth of the Iraqi welcome.
"This is a country in which it doesn't matter what you say if you succeed," Walter Pincus of the Washington Post recently told the Nation magazine. "But if you fail, people go back and look at why."
??Why are we paying for this operation by ourselves?
Actually, the $20 billion restoration budget assumes $40 billion from other countries. But so far, the total is just $300 million from Canada, and $250 million from Europe.
Americans have noticed that despite the president's claim that our allies have a duty to pay for the outcome of the war they opposed, nobody is rushing to do it -- or to send their own troops. Among people who kept telling pollsters before the war they'd be happier if the United Nations were more involved, this confirms a lot of worries.
??The money comes from where?
Even without the $87 billion, next year's deficit was $480 billion -- the biggest in the history of human counting.
The deficits, massive and boundless before, now seem beyond mind-boggling -- at a time when domestic spending is tightly crunched.
"I'd like to see a public-works project in our country," says Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio. "It's hard to say we don't have the money for sewers, roads and schools here, but we are able to put money over there."
And will be for a long time.
For the last two years, asked to square oceans of red ink with campaign pledges to balance the budget, Bush has insisted that he left himself three outs: war, economic downturn and national emergency, and "Lucky me. I hit the trifecta."
Actually, research has failed to find any campaign occasion when Bush listed the three exceptions -- although there does seem to be a speech when Al Gore did.
But now, Bush has offered a plan that sets off three different voter concerns: miscalculation, isolation and a deficit the size of Texas.
This time, he's really hit the trifecta.
Or rather, it's hit him.
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