Bush's Aides Seek to Focus Efforts on the Economy (gag alert)

As White House officials move to refocus President Bush's energies on the precarious economy, they are working to present him as a more commanding leader in what may be the most treacherous stretch of his first year in the White House.

The economic and political challenges facing Mr. Bush were underscored earlier this week when his senior adviser, Karl Rove, joined more than a dozen prominent Republicans for a private dinner and heard an unvarnished critique of Mr. Bush's style and strategy.

The message, delivered on Tuesday in a dark-paneled room at the Metropolitan Club, two blocks from the White House, was urgent and unambiguous: If Mr. Bush did not take more forceful steps to resuscitate the economy, he would risk repeating the mistake that brought an early end to his father's presidency. He needed to talk about economic issues differently, they said, and to spur the economy with new measures that went well beyond the recent tax cut.

"You didn't get the sense that anyone was holding back," recalled Mark McKinnon, a Bush campaign adviser who attended the dinner.

Even before the dinner — and before the ominous news on Friday that the unemployment rate had risen to 4.9 percent — Mr. Bush's aides were already recalibrating his fall agenda. There will be more and more economic prescriptions, they said, diluting what was initially planned as a season devoted largely to his education agenda and talk about values under the banner of what Mr. Bush calls "communities of character."

As Mr. Bush faces narrowing economic options at home and rising challenges abroad, some of his advisers said they feared he still did not project the image of a commanding leader. These advisers cite polls showing that many people still view Mr. Bush not as decisive but as tentative and perhaps overly scripted. They say that polishing the president's performance skills is an urgent political task.

From the size of the index cards he reads from to the size of the lecterns he stands behind, Mr. Bush's handlers are seeking to make him appear as comfortable in the formal settings of the presidency as he clearly was last month at a news conference in a small community center near his ranch in Crawford, Tex.

That will become all the more critical in the next three months, his aides say, because of the politically tough choices ahead.

"We're in the Chinese box phase" of the presidency, one of his closest advisers said.

For example, Mr. Bush seems all but certain to have to choose between scaling back some of his defense and education priorities and acknowledging the virtual inevitability of tapping into the Social Security surplus. By November or December, he must decide whether to enrage United States allies and abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty — or accept delays in his missile shield program. He must bridge a rift in his own administration over dealing with China before visiting Beijing in five weeks.

Looming over all these concerns is the sluggish economy, which has necessitated a reshaping of Mr. Bush's fall agenda. Rather than focusing on issues he most enjoys — family values, the importance of education, personal responsibility — Mr. Bush will concentrate on the country's economic problems.

"Karen had a whole fall offensive lined up — all this character and values stuff," one Bush adviser said, referring to Karen P. Hughes, Mr. Bush's counselor. "That, I think is pretty irrelevant now," the adviser said. "We're in the process of switching the game plan."

While she disputed that she was switching signals, Ms. Hughes acknowledged, "We are maintaining some flexibility in October."

Other advisers said privately that there would be a much sharper focus than initially planned for Mr. Bush to talk about prescriptions for economic recovery, to turn the debate from the question of whether to tap into the Social Security surplus to the question of who has the best, most comprehensive plan to save the economy.

"We're aware," one senior economic adviser said, "that after this month, he can't simply keep saying, `Did you get your $600 check in the mail?' "

Mr. Bush is driven by his determination not to repeat the mistake his father made: failing to leap ahead of sour economic news, failing to sound sophisticated and in command of the problem.

At the dinner on Tuesday — attended by conservative stalwarts including David Keene, Haley Barbour, Kenneth M. Duberstein, Vin Weber, Charles Black, Linda DiVall, Bill Paxon, and Ed Gillespie — several participants said they pressed Mr. Rove to get the president to act assertively. One suggestion was to cut the capital gains tax — a step that might generate some income for the government by spurring stock sales but that would be seized on by Democrats as a tax cut for the wealthy.

They said Mr. Rove was sympathetic but noncommittal, as were two other administration officials in the room, Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., who heads the Office of Management and Budget, and Nicholas Calio, the chief White House Congressional liaison.

"My job at these dinners is to take it all in," Mr. Rove said in an interview. "It's not to immediately react to everything. A number of people in the room had suggestions about things they said needed to be done for the economic growth package."

Mr. Rove disputed that Mr. Bush was entering the most challenging phase of his presidency thus far.

"I've heard that continually when he faced the cell decision, when he faced the tax cut decision, when he faced the education bill," Mr. Rove said. "A lot of people in Washington are trying to dismiss the success of the president by raising the bar higher on the next thing down the pike."

But even some Republicans have lingering concerns that on the stump with steelworkers in Pittsburgh or at Labor Day events in Michigan and Wisconsin, the president's economic prescriptions sounded simplistic, and that he lacked President Bill Clinton's well-honed skill at explaining how individual American workers can benefit from a changing world economy.

Mr. Bush has the compassion part down well. Ms. Hughes said, "He called me right after the picnic at the steel plant and said that the effects of the downturn are beginning to show up in factories and workplaces."

But in his public discourse about the economy, Mr. Bush sometimes sounds disjointed; he has trouble moving beyond a few set sentences about the relationship between free trade and the creation (not to mention the loss) of jobs in the United States. And so far, he has not developed many skills in talking to players in the financial markets, something Mr. Clinton learned from his treasury secretary, Robert E. Rubin. (Mr. Bush's treasury secretary, Paul H. O'Neill, is also viewed widely in the administration and Congress as a poor communicator of economic strategy.)

"Like most Republicans," said Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, "Bush is pretty free market, so he's working his way toward talking about the economy, and he's discovering it's quite a balancing act. If you describe the problems in the economy too bluntly, you run the risk of having people lose confidence. And yet he knows he can't understate it either."

The problem is only compounded by the Bush administration's central dilemma. With the tax cut already passed, the president is essentially out of economic ammunition. He can talk about winning authority to negotiate new trade agreements, but the economic benefits would be years away. And the traditional stimulaters available to politicians — more government spending or more tax cuts — would require dipping deep into the Social Security surplus.

At the height of the October budget battles, Mr. Bush will spend 10 days in Asia visiting Japan as it faces economic crisis, South Korea as it struggles with Washington over how to talk to the Communist North Koreans, and China. The last stop, one of Mr. Bush's close Republican foreign policy advisers said the other day, "is where we'll learn how well he plays three-dimensional chess."

Mr. Bush's own party is deeply split on how to approach China, with the business community urging more and more engagement and the conservative, pro-Taiwan faction warning that China could well become the next great military challenge for the United States. That division also runs through his administration: just listen to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell wax on about the benefits of a smart political and economic engagement with China, while Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld regularly briefs the press on how a rising Chinese threat requires a greater focus on security in the Pacific.

White House insiders differ on which man has the president's ear. But they agree on one thing: Mr. Bush cannot declare, as he did the first time he met President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that he has looked into the souls of his Chinese hosts and seen men he trusts.

With regard to Russia, administration officials had hoped this summer to hold a quick "consultation" that would pave the way for abandoning the treaty limiting missile defenses and allow Mr. Bush to test a missile shield. By now it is clear that Mr. Putin plans to take his time, insisting that Mr. Bush first reveal how deeply he is willing to cut American nuclear forces. Around the time the two men meet at Mr. Bush's ranch in Texas, the administration will have to choose its course.

"What worries me is that they are not yet treating this issue as a foreign policy problem but rather as a missile defense issue," said Senator Hagel, a missile defense proponent. "People from the administration come up here to testify and we hear all kinds of things, but you have the sense there is no clear definition of where they are going with these big relationships, that maybe they haven't thought out all the consequences yet."

Mr. Bush is also under pressure to once again put the United States in the midst of the Middle East talks, which until now he has kept at arm's length. That risks spending a lot of energy for a potentially small reward.

A nagging concern at the highest levels of the White House staff is Mr. Bush's communications skills, with new debate over how he can project himself as a leader while also capitalizing on his ability to charm people in smaller group settings.

Some advisers said Mr. Bush would have a more dominant public profile if he appeared at more majestic, White House-style events with the trappings of his office behind him. Others have countered that Mr. Bush would get swallowed up — and look out of his element — in such settings.

Ms. Hughes said that this fall the White House will continue to carry out a strategy that she, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove devised early in the summer to be more deliberate about staging presidential events. She said there had been too many medium- sized events that did not always generate favorable coverage for the president or put him in the best light.

As an example, some White House officials cited a trip by Mr. Bush in late June to Oak Mountain State Park in Alabama, near the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, in which he promoted conservation. Some complained that Mr. Bush appeared too scripted and that the event did not give him an opportunity to mingle with people.

By contrast, Ms. Hughes said she was pleased in August with the small events in Texas where Mr. Bush appeared in informal settings relating to ordinary Americans. From now on, she said, there will be more of a blend of those events as well as grander appearances, like his first state dinner this week, that show Mr. Bush in more of a presidential mode.

"You always work for a balance," Ms. Hughes said, "and there was a conclusion that we need to focus on bigger presidential events as well as smaller events where he focused more directly on people."

Part of the problem White House officials face, however, is that Mr. Bush appears far more relaxed and comfortable when he is in settings outside Washington, particularly at his ranch. In addition, officials said, Mr. Bush scoffs at the notion that he is stage-managed and sometimes resists efforts that could improve his performance, like practicing more with a teleprompter.

"You cannot force it," one White House official said of Mr. Bush's reluctance to use the prompter. "The bottom line is he does not want to do it every time with the teleprompter."

Another Bush adviser said, "He hates the idea of being coached and handled, just like his father did."

Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, said he has seen a marked improvement in Mr. Bush's public appearances. "He is evolving into the presidential mode very comfortably. It's been an evolution, but the comfort level seems to me to increase every day."

The New York Times will never be pleased with what President Bush does, ever. And yet again, the NYT doesn't quote any of the closest, highest level advisers by name who have this fear.

Not once did Ritchie Berke and Davie Sanger mention the word -"gravitas".
But the lack of it by Dubya was implied all the way their biased article posing as news...

Swallow hard boys, Limbaugh and Hannity just received multi-million dollar contracts..
While your hero Clinton is set to receive 10 million.
How much do you boys earn?

As White House officials move to refocus President Bush's energies on the precarious economy, they are working to present him as a more commanding leader.

I wish them luck.

This article does make me gag a little... because it's pretty much right on the money. Bush has until sometime next year to get over this image problem. After that, it's a lost cause.

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