No Lemons
It's All Lemonade In Bush's White House
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By Dana Milbank
Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page B01
To judge from the headlines, the week before last was not the best of times for the Bush administration.
Conservatives complained that Bush had surrendered his principles on the education bill. Democrats charged that Bush's tax cut was creating a budget deficit.The White House was involved in a flap over the Salvation Army's request for protection fromanti-discrimination laws. The House GOP leadership lost a procedural vote on campaign finance and, overseas, allies complained about a U.S. objection to an international pact limiting small arms sales.
But according to a memo sent to White House political allies, "Week in Review: White House Talking Points," the events of July 9 to 13 were quite different:
"On Monday & Wednesday the President worked to reach agreement with Congress on a bipartisan Patients' Bill of Rights.
"On Tuesday the President made dreams come true for new American citizens at a naturalization ceremony in New York.
"On Wednesday the House Ways and Means committee passed key components of the President's initiative to rally America's armies of compassion to help those most in need.
"On Thursday the President unveiled a new prescription drug discount card for seniors and his principles for improving Medicare -- initiatives that are already winning praise from seniors.
"Today the President will continue his drive to help bring the very best health care possible to seniors -- especially low-income seniors."
Some skeptics might dismiss the White House version of events as a rather clumsy attempt at spin. They would be wrong. The Bush administration, which marks six months in office this weekend, has settled into an unmistakable pattern: compromise quietly, claim victory loudly.
The White House serves up its upbeat diagnosis each day and again at week's end. Bush aides send the talking points throughout the building and to allies on the Hill and GOP opinion leaders across town. Interest groups receive customized talking points, such as a list of Bush victories for Hispanics.
What Bush and his advisers realize is that claiming victory is self-fulfilling. During the campaign, Bush talked freely about winning, and the sense of inevitability his campaign created was key to its success, particularly in the primaries.
At the same time, Bush has a history of taking the best deal he can get from a legislature -- in Texas or in Congress -- and declaring victory. He and his advisers know that few Americans will notice or care that he didn't get quite what he wanted. When Americans get their tax rebate checks in the coming months, how many of them will care that the tax cut Bush won was $1.3 trillion instead of the $1.6 trillion he proposed? If Congress passes a version of Bush's religious-charity legislation, how many Americans will know or care that there was a major dispute over 42 U.S.C. 1994 Sec. 1994A.(d) (1) in H.R. 7?
Looking on the bright side, of course, is Politics 101. "You're always in a better position when you're arguing about the size of your victory," says GOP strategist Mike Murphy. But Murphy argues that Bush has an additional reason for the claim-victory approach: his narrow win in the 2000 election, in which he lost the popular vote and ended up with a closely split Congress.
"Each victory helps you amalgamate political power," says Murphy, who earlier this year wrote an article on the subject in the Weekly Standard titled "Compromise First, Then Crush Them." "The first two years he should build popularity and political power by piling up victories and 'getting things done,' " Murphy wrote. "He can then amass great credit and apply the power that popularity will bring to hold Congress, win reelection, gain more power, and dictate policies more to his liking."
No wonder there is so much optimism and achievement emanating from the Bush White House.
The July 13 memo went on to provide details of triumph in four categories:
• "New Gallup Poll Reaffirms America's Support for the Bush Presidency" ("President Bush's style of leadership is winning widespread approval. . . . Look for a detailed analysis of the new poll this morning from the Office of Strategic Initiatives");
• "President's Aggressive Drive to Help Seniors Wins Praise" ("The President also unveiled his principles for improving Medicare to bring the very best in health care to seniors");
• "Victory for the President's Energy Plan" ("This vote represents a crystal clear bipartisan victory for the President's comprehensive energy package"); and
• "President's Faith-Based and Community Initiative takes Another Step Forward."
Leadership. Winning. Victory. Step Forward. They all imply the crucial word that will strengthen the president: Momentum. (Last Thursday, for example, the points argued that an interim staff draft of a Social Security report "gives new momentum to the President's vision for bipartisan Social Security reform.") String together some small wins and your improved reputation makes a big victory more likely. "Because of the closeness of the [election] victory, every inch that you gain amounts to a political mile," a Bush adviser explained last week.
The full story, obviously, is more complicated. Other polls haven't been so kind to Bush. Pharmacies are suing him over his prescription discount card plan, and he's locked in a battle with Democratic leaders over a patients' rights bill. Large parts of his energy proposal, even Republican leaders acknowledge, are moribund. Proposed funding for his "faith-based" plan has been cut by more than 90 percent.
The White House is not wrong in its assertions; each fact it provides is true, if carefully selected. Bush aides are merely looking at the half-full part of the glass. Such a technique, though hardly novel, has been elevated to an art form by Bush and his administration this year. (One of President Clinton's failings, GOP strategists figure, was his inability to turn victorious days into victorious weeks, thus not gaining -- there's that word again -- momentum.)
In an era of 24-hour cable and Internet news, Bush advisers understand their talking points, uttered by administration officials or allies, will often be reported by outlets too pressed for time to put the claims in context. With a long run of small wins, Bush aides figure, eventually the president will have enough clout to claim a big win, such as he is attempting to do with his plan to partially privatize Social Security.
After a House committee on July 11 slashed funding for Bush's "faith-based" program, the president's aides called it "a major victory" and Bush issued a statement praising the committee for "passing legislation today that includes key elements of my faith-based and community initiatives." Ari Fleischer, Bush's spokesman, compared it to the president's tax cut, which survived more intact. "Even though it wasn't everything the president asked for, it was an awful lot of what he's asked for," Fleischer said.
On education, similarly, conservatives moan that the Bush plan has been eviscerated. "Key elements of the president's plan -- accountability, choice, flexibility and structural change -- have been eliminated or weakened to the point that his design for educational reform is barely recognizable," the Heritage Foundation wrote in a report issued on July 5. But Bush, two weeks earlier, took a more optimistic view. "I'm pleased to say that we're nearing historic reforms in public education," he said. "This is a victory for every child and for every family in America."
Then there's the Bush energy plan, which Democrats who control the Senate have pronounced dead. Republican moderates have also cast doubt on the plan; the Senate voted 57 to 42 to prohibit new oil and gas drilling on large areas of land set aside as national monuments bythe Clinton administration. The White House's "talking points" skipped that vote, instead focusing on a Democratic amendment to delay oil and gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. It failed, 67 to 33. This "crystal clear" victory "shows that a bipartisan consensus can be reached on a plan to address our energy needs," the memo chirped.
The White House's "accentuate the positive" technique has also gone global. U.S. allies have excoriated the U.S. position on missile defense and global warming, and on July 16 Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Jiang Zemin signed their countries' first "friendship treaty" since the Cold War, aiming for a "new international order" to counter U.S. dominance and missile-defense plans. Putin has also threatened to respond to the United States by putting multiple warheads on Russia's missiles.
Bush and his advisers, however, have taken a more benign view, arguing that in open "consultation" with Russia and the allies, the world is coming around to the American view. After a NATO meeting this spring, at which language about the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was removed from the alliance's communique because the Americans objected, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice hailed this as a victory. "You have to take that as a clear indication that the alliance is moving on," she said. "This intellectual argument is moving forward."
In fact, European leaders such as France's Jacques Chirac have said the opposite, insisting the ABM Treaty is still the cornerstone of international security; some Europeans believe they are being forced to bend to the American administration's will. But Bush and his advisers take a happier view of the matter, arguing that they are freely consulting (albeit without offering to change positions) and that foreign nations are beginning to agree. Bush told former Reagan wordsmith Peggy Noonan after his first European trip that he went to dinner with 15 European leaders "and patiently sat there as all 15 in one form or another told me how wrong I was," according to Noonan's account in the Wall Street Journal. "And at the end I said, 'I appreciate your point of view, but this is the American position because it's right for America.' "
Where some Europeans see intransigence, Bush sees openness -- and victory by persuasion. "As a result of standing my ground based on principle," Bush said, "I'll be able to reach an accord with Putin."
With that kind of victory, the White House wouldn't even need talking points.
Dana Milbank covers the White House for The Post. |
