A handful of stalwart Senate moderates dubbed “Daschle Republicans” by The Wall Street Journal will help Democrats hold the tax cuts to half of what President Bush wants, but half is still more than he should get. Polls show that people give Bush credit for being straightforward and plainspoken, but he has scaled Clintonian heights of caginess in presenting the costs of his Middle East adventurism. I must have missed the Oval Office speech when Bush called upon the elderly, the poor and the sick to make the sacrifices necessary to pay for the war, because they’re the ones who will bear the brunt of the budget crunch.
The same people in the administration who dream about democracy spreading in the Middle East were counting on a quick military victory in Iraq to boost the economy. The price of oil is down but the stock market hasn’t spiked like they had hoped. “It’s up, but it’s not kissing 10,000,” says a Senate Democrat. Bush won’t make the same mistake as his father of ignoring the economy, but he’s running out of time to generate momentum for a meaningful recovery. Democrats expected a government of national unity after 9-11, but Bush has not backed off his hard-right agenda.
Bush had an opportunity to rally the country and to translate the solidarity Americans felt into action, but he asked for nothing. After every past war, there were upsurges of community involvement, says Theda Skocpol, author of “Civic Engagement in American Democracy.” Bush gave lip service to Americorps but didn’t deliver the money. Underfunding the Clinton-era volunteer program is one thing, but Bush didn’t even come through with sufficient money for the Citizen Corps he proposed after 9-11. “There’s an incredible disjuncture between this administration’s foreign policy and what it’s prepared to do domestically,” says Skocpol. “I’m not sure the American people are prepared for that.”
What Bush is doing is Reagan redux. He is trying to shrink social programs and starve them in the future to pay for massive tax cuts. The difference is that President Reagan swept into office on a conservative tide and was candid about his goal of dismantling the welfare state. Bush masquerades as a compassionate conservative while advocating policies that strip revenue from all our public resources. House Democrats plan to introduce next week a resolution calling on the administration to match the money it will spend to rebuild schools and hospitals in Iraq with an equal commitment to education and health care at home. The resolution won’t pass, but it’s an opening salvo in the Democrats’ campaign to return public attention to the deteriorating economy and the bottom-line impact of the U.S. commitment in Iraq.
The U.S. troops who draped a flag over the statue of Saddam in Baghdad didn’t learn from the smackdown a young Marine got earlier in the conflict for hoisting an American flag. Being magnanimous and humble in victory is not this administration’s style, a tone that is reflected all the way down the command structure. “They might as well enjoy it,” says a Democratic foreign-policy aide. “Because this is as good as it gets.” The images of looting and anarchy juxtaposed with scenes of joy remind us of what lies ahead. There is still some residual fear among policy planners that we haven’t heard the last of Saddam. “It’s a little bit too optimistic to think he just rolled over and said, ‘You win’,” says the aide. “The regime didn’t collapse. It disappeared. Everybody on cue just melted away. It could be a staged retreat.” If Saddam is dead, this aide reasons, there should be more high-level commanders surrendering.
If Saddam is alive, he could be preparing his last stand in Tikrit, the city he calls home. Arabs are happy to see Saddam gone but they feel humiliated that he didn’t even try to put up a fight. The relative ease with which the Coalition forces took Baghdad is prompting skepticism about whether Saddam even has weapons of mass destruction. A top congressional staffer who receives the administration’s intelligence briefings says this is a “journalistic red herring.” The weapons caches are there and they will be found, though it may take awhile. “The bigger question is: will anybody believe us?” Americans will believe Bush. The rest of the world will want proof.
The real test for Bush will come on the economy. Now that he no longer has the war as an excuse, will he own the economy the way he did Saddam? Or will he use his high ratings on national-security issues to deflect concerns about the economy. The way Republicans landed on Democrat John Kerry for advocating “regime change” in 2004 suggests a GOP strategy that defines patriotism as nobody can criticize Bush while we’re at war. Kerry stood his ground, a sign that Democrats will fight at home with the tenacity of those young soldiers and Marines fighting in Iraq.
