Bush's Focus -- And the Country's
By David S. Broder
Thursday, January 31, 2002; Page A25
He may have done too well for his own good.
By the time President Bush had conjured up a picture
of "tens of thousands of trained terrorists . . . still at
large" and warned that "the world's most dangerous
regimes" -- North Korea, Iran and Iraq – could
"threaten us with the world's most destructive
weapons," most viewers of Tuesday's
State of the Union Address probably
were suffering an overdose of emotion.
What came after his call for "the largest increase in
defense spending in two decades" seemed an afterthought.
Even with the repeated promise of "good jobs," the whole
domestic and economic program was a blur to minds
still wondering how we would ever root out all the killers
in our midst or topple the rulers of Baghdad, Tehran
and Pyongyang.
Bush spoke from a position of enormous political power,
his job approval in a Washington Post poll published
the morning of the speech "higher and more protracted
than any modern president." And yet, that and
other surveys found that domestic concerns now
preoccupy the public more than the threat of terrorism.
Bush sought to link his military-diplomatic strategy
with his domestic agenda under the rubric of "security,"
but he gave far different weight to the two pieces.
Last week's Battleground poll conducted by
Republican Ed Goeas and Democrat Celinda Lake
said that voters rate the domestic economy their top
worry over terrorism by a 2 to 1 margin.
And within the economy, they found, the biggest
Concern by far is the rising cost of medical
care. Bush made no explicit reference to that problem
and devoted only one paragraph toward the end of the
speech to the whole issue of health.
Yet, as I learned from Secretary of Health and
Human Services Tommy Thompson earlier that
same day, next week's budget will show some
major increases and significant policy innovations
in health care.
It's clear this is not where Bush's mind is centered.
The import and intent of this State of the Union
was to wrench the nation's focus back to the subject
that is all-consuming to the president: the war on terrorism.
When he said last September that defeating terrorism
would be the chief purpose of his presidency, he meant
it.
Everything that The Post's Bob Woodward and
Dan Balz have written in their detailed reconstruction
of the first days in the White House following Sept. 11
confirms that Bush's instinctive response to the attacks was to
put his administration and the country on a wartime footing.
As the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks have
receded, Americans have moved back toward a pre-crisis
mood. You could feel the difference in the House
chamber where Bush spoke. The emotion was far less
intense than it had been when Bush last addressed
the lawmakers and the nation, just nine days after the assault.
Democrats have to try to separate the domestic issues on
which they disagree with Bush from the war on
terrorism to have any hope of prevailing in the
November elections. So far their position looks weak – with
No consistent message on taxes, trade or other issues.
House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt's call for a White
House-congressional summit on domestic policy is a device
for buying time, an offer he knows Bush will refuse.
But the Democrats are not yet out of the game. When the
budget comes out next week, there will be hundreds
of freezes or cuts in programs important to domestic
constituencies. When I asked Budget Director Mitch
Daniels the other day how much political flak he expects,
his answer was:
"It depends if we can sell guns vs. butter."
That's an honest answer, but it implies that Bush, as well
as the Democrats, will have to emphasize the gap
between his top priority, the war on terrorism, and
the domestic concerns now uppermost on the minds of
voters.
And then there is the Enron factor. It was striking that
while Bush was ready to denounce by name the nations
on his target list of terrorist states, he was squeamish
about dealing explicitly with Enron and its auditor,
Arthur Andersen. The day of the speech, the stock market
had dived on fears that other companies might be
cooking their books. Almost everyone with money
in a pension fund is worried.
But Bush gave it barely a glance: three sentences at the end, with no acknowledgment of the source of the fears.
Strong as his support on the war undoubtedly is, he has left his political opponents an opening.
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