Trying the Softer Approach
The president rekindles a kinder, gentler agenda designed to romance swing voters this November
By Kenneth T. Walsh
George W. Bush surprised a small group of visitors at the White House this month when he delivered an unusually emotional argument for helping the nation's "forgotten" immigrants. He had admired them from afar over the years, he said: men and women carrying discarded bleach bottles filled with water as they trudged into the fields to harvest America's crops; laborers who installed tiles on rooftops in the hot Texas sun; anonymous workers who cleared the tables and washed the dishes in restaurants and cleaned the toilets at hotels. In arguing for his immigration reforms, Bush said that America can no longer pretend such people don't exist and that he is finally in a position to do something about it
It was a personal side that the commander in chief has rarely shown in public since 9/11. But now that the 2004 campaign has begun, Bush and his advisers are again talking about a kinder, gentler approach to leadership. "Being the commander in chief in the war on terror is who he had to be," says Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie. "A compassionate conservative is who he wants to be."
Bush's Democratic opponents have a different take. They say the president is veering temporarily from a far-right, militaristic course that has ballooned the deficit and starved worthy programs and is in the process of trying to hoodwink the voters again. "People come away from his big speeches with the impression he has a caring side," says Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, author of The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It. "But it doesn't endure. . . . He gives the impression that he reaches out, but that's not the way he governs." Adds Geoff Garin, a pollster who is advising Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark: "Bush is still an extremely polarizing figure."
Yet the White House game plan is clear: Not only will Bush portray himself as the candidate best able to protect the nation's security, but he will also renew his earlier commitment to "compassionate conservatism." White House officials say the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq no longer require as much of his attention, allowing him to shift more heavily to domestic concerns. Just as important in an election year, some polls show that the economy and healthcare are now more important to voters than fighting terrorism.
Well positioned. "He's built a very successful 2003, capped off by the prescription-drug benefit under Medicare and capturing Saddam Hussein and an economy that's starting to look rather robust," says Ken Duberstein, former White House chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan. "There are a lot of dangers out there, but we are making progress, and the world is safer today. We're also making progress on the economy, on tax cuts."
The new White House strategy will be reinforced in Bush's State of the Union address this week. He will try to set the agenda for the election campaign based on a record that includes tax cuts, overhauling the education system and Medicare, and proposals to allow partial privatization of Social Security and to encourage religious groups to do charitable work. He will present some new initiatives on healthcare and other social concerns and will reaffirm his commitment to America's "enduring values," such as freedom, family, religion, and opportunity. And he will argue that he is effectively protecting the nation from terrorism
In a bid for support from Hispanics and suburban swing voters, Bush recently proposed allowing millions of foreign workers to stay in the United States legally if they secure jobs that American citizens don't want. Last week, he announced plans for a new mission to the moon and an eventual human landing on Mars (story, Page 48)--an effort to show that he has aspirations for the space program beyond military applications. In addition, Bush is expected to announce an initiative to spend $1.5 billion to help couples learn the skills necessary to maintain "healthy marriages."
To demonstrate his outreach, he placed a wreath at the grave of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta on the 75th anniversary of King's birth last week; a couple hundred protesters were kept at a distance. When he visited an African- American church in New Orleans, he said he gave up drinking long ago in part because of his religious faith. In a further appeal to churchgoing voters, he announced that religious groups could now compete for $3.7 billion in federal assistance to privately run social service programs.
U.S. News has learned that Bush is considering a June trip to mark the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landing in Normandy. His goal would be to reprise the famous tributes to the World War II generation given in 1984 by Ronald Reagan and in 1994 by Bill Clinton and to make the point that Americans today face a similar challenge in fighting terrorism.
In foreign affairs, barring a new crisis, Bush intends to show a less bellicose side. Administration strategists plan to shift their public-relations focus from military operations to diplomacy, peacemaking, and humanitarian projects, such as expanding programs to fight AIDS and HIV in Africa. The administration also is starting a PR campaign promoting the U.S. role in rebuilding Iraq and restoring power, water hospitals, and food supplies there.
Moving on. Now that major combat operations are starting to wind down in Afghanistan and Iraq, "we have a chance to use our partnerships . . . to greater effect in solving other regional problems," Secretary of State Colin Powell told U.S. News. Among those problems are the conflict between India and Pakistan and unstable situations in Sudan and Liberia.
As the election year begins, Bush has reason for confidence. Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist. told U.S. News that voters judge a president on how things have gone over the previous 12 to 18 months, not four years--and on that basis Bush looks strong. Dowd contends that the Democrats have gotten so strident in attacking Bush that they seem extreme. "It will be hard for them to pivot to the general election," Dowd says. "They've personalized the election too much. But their base wants it personalized. They're trapped by the politics of polarization."
GOP pollster Ed Goeas says his surveys show that 50 percent of voters believe the country is moving in the right direction and 42 percent say the country is off on the wrong track. And 60 percent of voters approve of Bush's job performance. Adds Republican pollster Bill McInturff: "It's absolutely true there is a lot of passion among these core Democratic voters, but that has not infected the other 65 percent of voters."
That's one reason that Bush loyalists are optimistic that softening his image will pay political dividends--and that they are suddenly so aggressive about it. "As governor of Texas," says Commerce Secretary Don Evans, one of the president's closest friends, "he saw the family values of somebody walking hundreds of miles across a desert to find a job to provide for their family back home. As he says, family values don't stop at the Rio Grande."
Democrats will paint such rhetoric as a cynical 11th-hour conversion of political convenience, and they'll pound away at that theme in the months ahead. Can the swaggering cowboy really become Mr. Sensitive this year? To a large extent, that's what the 2004 campaign will be all about. |
