Causes and concerns

By David Westphal -- Washington Bureau Chief
Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002

While tracking down Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida associates remains his top priority, President Bush no longer has the luxury of spending all his time and political focus on terrorism. Suddenly, terrorism is but one of the urgent uncertainties on his Oval Office desk.

WASHINGTON – In a multistate circuit Wednesday, President Bush will draw attention not only to Sept. 11 victims and their families, but also to the transformation of his own presidency.

A year ago, Americans were still trying to make up their minds about the new president, not entirely sure he had what it takes to lead the country. But in a matter of weeks, with a plainspoken bluntness and striking sense of purpose, Bush erased many doubts.

This week, in speeches at Ground Zero in New York, the Pentagon outside Washington and a rural field in Pennsylvania, Bush completes a year in which his standing with voters approached all-time records.

Yet as he begins Year No. 2 in his war against terror, Bush’s presidency once again is being transformed.

While tracking down Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida associates remains his top priority, Bush no longer has the luxury of spending all his time and political focus on terrorism.

Suddenly, terrorism is but one of the urgent uncertainties on his Oval Office desk. Already, planning for a war with Iraq is beginning to rival the hunt for bin Laden for top position on the administration’s foreign policy agenda.

From a political standpoint, Bush has an even bigger worry: the still-shaky economy. Is the nation headed into a second recession? Can corporate executives regain investors’ confidence? Will the budget deficit get out of hand?

All of those questions confront Bush in the context of a fast-approaching congressional election that, if things don’t go right for the GOP, could end with Democrats controlling both houses of Congress.

Analyzing a recent national survey, Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm in Washington, suggested that a confluence of troubling issues could create a “perfect storm” of trouble for GOP candidates this fall.

In a particularly ominous sign for the White House, the portion of Americans who believe the country is headed in the right direction has plummeted since the first of the year. By one survey, little more than a third of the nation now sees national trend lines headed in the right direction.

“The right-direction figure points to a serious setback for the president’s party in the midterm,” said political analyst William Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute.

So far, Bush’s approval ratings, while dropping out of the stratosphere, have remained in the mid-60 percent range. But unless sentiment changes soon, they’re likely to fall further, raising odds that Democrats could score big in November. Democrats now have a one-vote edge in the Senate but trail in the House by a 12-seat margin.

All of which has raised a comparison that White House aides once dismissed: Is Bush headed for the same kind of political meltdown his father suffered after the Persian Gulf War, when the 1990-91 recession cost him re-election?

Trouble with the economy has changed the political landscape of just a few months ago. Then, the nation’s recession appeared to be ending, things were going well in Afghanistan, and Bush was defying predictions that his 70 and 80 percent approval ratings would fade quickly after Sept. 11.

In the midst of these heady days, Bill McInturff, a GOP pollster, made a prediction: “The conditions are now in place for President Bush to restructure three generations of previous trend data” and maintain his high approval rating through the 2002 election.

Citing historical data showing a close relationship between the president’s ratings and his party’s midterm election success, McInturff said Republicans stood to do well at the polls this fall.

Now, he said, with the economy faltering and stock markets diving, things have changed.

Even so, Republicans say that the president remains in a strong political position to deal with the serious problems at home and abroad because of his solid backing from Americans and his record of accomplishment since the terrorist attacks.

On the domestic front, Bush began his presidency by winning passage of his signature issues – tax cuts and education reform – and followed this year with several terror-related measures and with trade promotion legislation, which had eluded Bill Clinton for six years.

Abroad, he won wide acclaim by establishing a warm relationship with Russian leader Vladimir Putin – a development with tantalizing possibilities for the United States. And he accomplished in short order the fall of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, something skeptics had warned could take many months of costly fighting.

Most important, says Republican Party Chairman Marc Racicot, is that Bush has won the hearts of an overwhelming majority of Americans.

“The president has given us a renewed understanding of our purpose and the nobility of our cause,” Racicot said.

Some GOP advisers are counting on the Sept. 11 anniversary ceremonies to give Bush a lift, reminding Americans of the strength they drew from the president after the attacks.

In general, though, surveys show Americans’ concerns about terrorism are being drowned out by greater worries over the economy and health care.

All of which leaves Bush with a tall autumn agenda – one in which action on one front can preclude pursuing another.

In a recent trip to South Dakota, for example, the president refused to support drought assistance for the state’s farmers and ranchers – despite the pleadings of GOP Senate candidate John Thune – in order to take a stand against further deficit spending.

Some Republicans believe the president will confront a more serious conflict: the possibility that an Iraq war could undermine the war against terrorism.

Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush’s father, wrote in a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece that attacking Iraq now would be a mistake.

“Our pre-eminent security priority – underscored repeatedly by the president – is the war on terrorism,” he said. “An attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken.”