A year later, a changed world

Washington Bureau Chief FRITZ E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 7, 2001

WASHINGTON -- One year ago today, who could have imagined a story like this one:

The reformed party-boy son of a former president is elected to the White House without a majority of the popular vote. For the first time in American history, the winner of the election is decided by the Supreme Court. His chances of being a successful president are judged to be poor.

Then, just nine months after the new president takes office, thousands of Americans are killed when their homeland is attacked for the first time in two centuries. And much to the surprise of the president's detractors, the president rises to the occasion, declaring war against an elusive enemy that has confounded previous leaders.

If this were fiction, the author at this point would probably stop writing and ask himself, "where do I go from here?" Stymied by the magnitude of the drama, he might choose to craft a simpler tale.

But President George W. Bush, whose true-life story it is, keeps writing with bold strokes. Not only does he pursue what he admits will be a long and difficult war against terrorist cells hidden in many remote parts of the world, but he also raises the stakes by portraying it as a global struggle between good and evil.

"So we're determined to fight this evil, and fight until we're rid of it," Bush declared Tuesday. "We will not wait for the authors of mass murder to gain the weapons of mass destruction. We act now, because we must lift this dark threat from our age and save generations to come."

While Bush's shortcomings have not been forgotten, historians say that the success or failure of a president is often decided in times of crisis. Some scholars even compare Bush to Harry S. Truman, whose performance at the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War far exceeded expectations.

It now seems as if Bush ascended to the presidency not on Jan. 20, when he took the oath of office on the Capitol steps, but on that day in September when he stood in the rubble of the World Trade Center with his arm around a firefighter.

"You've almost got two completely different presidents in George W. Bush -- one before Sept. 11 and the other after," said Lee Edwards, senior fellow and presidential scholar at the Heritage Foundation. "I don't think he had impact before this crisis, even though he did get his economic plan enacted. But since Sept. 11, you don't have to be a genius to see he's done very, very well."

It was on Nov. 7, 2000, that Bush's name appeared on the ballot alongside Democrat Al Gore in what would prove to be the narrowest U.S. presidential election in history. It was a virtual tie, a divisive process that would be prolonged by 36 days of an on-again, off-again recount in Florida. No one could have guessed then that Bush would have a 90 percent approval rating just one year later.

Even after Bush was declared the winner by a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court, Gore's supporters -- as well as many Republicans -- continued to question his suitability for the office. His squinty grin and nervous laugh fed fears he was not up to the job. In public, he seemed flummoxed by press questions and overly awed by foreign leaders, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Bush's first strokes as president caused a majority of Americans to conclude that he would govern as a strident conservative. His environmental and energy policies were seen as strongly favoring the oil industry. And his neglect for the opinions of Senate moderates caused the defection from the Republican Party of Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont, throwing control of the Senate to the Democrats.

Nor did the president's economic package succeed in preventing a recession, as Bush had promised. His large tax cuts simply starved the government of the money needed to carry out some of his most popular domestic objectives -- education reform and a prescription drug benefit for seniors.

To soften his image and broaden his appeal, Bush began making campaign-style trips to the heartland, where he read books to schoolchildren, expressed a love of the outdoors and shared the hopes and fears of wage earners.

The president was visiting an elementary classroom in Florida, in fact, when two hijacked airliners crashed into the World Trade Center and another struck the Pentagon. He promptly declared it an act of war and announced a multi-faceted campaign to eliminate terrorism by taking military action, depriving the attackers of their funding, and convincing most other nations to align themselves with the United States.

After Bush outlined his war effort in a well-received speech to Congress, the New York Times reported that even some Democrats who opposed Bush during the election were happy he had been elected instead of Gore. While many Democrats said the story was an exaggeration, they praised Bush profusely. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who was even considered by Gore as a possible running mate, said Bush had come into his own as a leader.

Commentators suggested the terrorist disaster had given Bush a second chance to prove his leadership, just as the Oklahoma City bombing had enabled former President Bill Clinton to rehabilitate himself following a disastrous start.

After six weeks on a wartime footing, however, Bush has reason to fear his bipartisan support is crumbling. Several important wartime legislative initiatives, including an economic stimulus plan and a proposal to beef up airline security, are caught in a partisan snare on Capitol Hill. And the war effort in Afghanistan seems to be progressing too slowly for a victory-hungry nation.

Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman who teaches at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, predicts Bush's wartime momentum is going to stall.

"You can't remain at this heightened state of alert forever," said Edwards. "Frankly, after a period of time, the public is going to say, 'What about this, what about that?' In six months we'll be back to pursuing the normal political agenda, and having the normal political fights."

It almost goes without saying that the war against terrorism will have to succeed, at least in part, if Bush expects to maintain the level of support he now has throughout the country. By singling out Osama bin Laden as the terrorist ringleader and the primary "evildoer," he has caused Americans to expect the demise of bin Laden.

But domestic policy may be every bit as important for the president during this war.

"The homefront and the warfront absolutely have to be one," said historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has written biographies of two wartime presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. "Unless the domestic side is strong, the war effort will never be strong."

But bolstering the domestic situation could be more difficult for Bush than prosecuting a successful foreign war. The Sept. 11 attack pushed the American economy closer to a recession. And as every presidential scholar knows, presidents get blamed for a bad economy, even though they have almost no power to turn it around.

In addition, top administration officials have stumbled lately, particularly when they failed to assist postal workers who were exposed to anthrax contained in a letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D. Both Attorney General John Ashcroft and homeland security chief Tom Ridge have been cited for their failures, too, as the administration tries without success to find the source of the anthrax scare.

Stephen Hess, presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, thinks Bush has a good chance of succeeding, both at home and abroad. "People seem both patient and forgiving," he said. "The president, with a 90 percent approval rating, has more chips than anyone in the game."

But Goodwin cautions that Bush cannot succeed as president unless he helps Americans to perceive themselves as part of the war effort, as Roosevelt did with his fireside chats during World War II. "The mystery of leadership is to make people feel connected," she said. "But that was easier for Roosevelt than it is now."

Not only are Americans not being asked to sacrifice, as they were during World War II, but today's 24-hour news cycle has caused them to expect quick results. To galvanize support, Bush has told Americans repeatedly that they are fighting on the side of good.

It is a strategy designed to undermine the professed religious purposes of the Muslim terrorists. But it is also a precarious strategy, that backfired on Bush's father during the Gulf War.

In his autobiography, Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Gulf War, recalled that he cautioned former President Bush against comparing Iraq's Saddam Hussein to Adolph Hitler. He said he felt it would backfire because America had no plans to attack Iraq.

Here again, the epic story of the son who becomes president takes a dramatic twist. Ten years after the Gulf War, Iraq is still sponsoring terrorism, and some members of Congress are saying Bush cannot succeed unless he does what his father's administration failed to do: oust Hussein.

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