BIRNBAUM ON WASHINGTON
Is Bush Hard Of Hearing?
What are you thinking, Mr. President?
FORTUNE
Monday, August 13, 2001
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
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Everyone knows that George W. Bush has trouble speaking, but now people are wondering whether he is hard of hearing. What else can explain his deafness to public sentiment? Given his druthers, Bush would spend the next several months increasing oil production, building a missile defense, relieving church-based charities of federal regulations, and privatizing parts of Medicare and Social Security. Along the way he'd veto a patients' bill of rights, ignore global warming, and stop federal stem-cell research.
Hellooooo! What are you thinking, Mr. President? According to recent polls, the items on that list attract support from barely half the electorate, if that much. Bush has squandered his chance to build a governing majority and "has ceded the political center to the Democrats," pollster John Zogby says.
Take stem cells. Few issues have as broad a consensus behind them as whether to use embryonic cells in clinical tests to help find cures for cancer and other diseases. That view is shared by all groups, including Catholics--the cohort that Bush supposedly is courting by hesitating on the question. Compromise won't make anyone happy, yet Bush persists in considering research limits.
Bush eschews science as well as polls. Almost all scientists (including those cited in a study he requested) believe that global warming is largely caused by humans and should be dealt with soon. A similar scientific consensus doubts that a competent missile-defense technology exists. Yet Bush is reluctant to cut back greenhouse gases and is hell-bent on funding fancy new missiles.
Bush is paying the price for his stubbornness on Capitol Hill. Drilling near Florida in the Gulf of Mexico? Gone. Oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? Forget about it. A big boost in military spending? Doubtful. Meanwhile, the Democrats' agenda is flying through. After they took control of the Senate, the patients' bill of rights and a new prescription-drug benefit moved to the top of the legislative calendar. Both are popular with voters but weren't what Bush wanted to tackle right away. He also wanted to wait on the next Democratic agenda item, an increase in the minimum wage. But it, too, is likely to breeze through Congress, buoyed by national support.
The Democratic triumphs can't be explained entirely by the defection from the Republican Party of Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords. GOP moderates were pivotal prior to Jeffords' switch, and they remain so. Bush hasn't won them over despite months of wooing because they disagree with him on many issues.
The most potent alliance formed this year is between Republican Senator John McCain and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat. The weekend Daschle spent at McCain's verdant compound in Sedona, Ariz., wasn't purely social, as both men assert. Ever since that early June meeting, McCain Republicans and a solid phalanx of Democrats have seized control of the legislative schedule and much of the legislation itself.
There's a McCain-style populism in almost every major bill that has moved through Congress in the past couple of months. The patients' bill of rights (a McCain-Ted Kennedy effort), for example, contains a broader right to sue than Bush says he's willing to accept. Even the shelving of campaign finance reform (another McCain brainchild) illustrates this center-left tendency. Nineteen centrist Republicans defied their party leaders in the House to join the Democrats in that vote.
Bush supporters say that unlike his predecessor Bill Clinton, the President doesn't change positions at the drop of a poll. But Bush's biggest problem may be that his agenda has sunk with the GDP. Plans to put some payroll taxes for Social Security into the stock market, for instance, have dwindled with the Dow. Other propositions, such as his multibillion-dollar missile defense, seem like extravagances in light of shrinking budget surpluses.
The question is, Will Bush be willing to change? At the moment he's sticking to his priorities, even stumping to press for more oil production. But that can't last. He will have to begin listening to his constituents, or they'll give him and his party an earful come Election Day. |
