Man of the Year: George W. Bush

George W. Bush entered the well of the United Nations general assembly on September 12 at the end of the most fractious month of his presidency.

While Mr Bush had been chopping wood on his ranch in Crawford, Texas, his inner circle had broken into public disagreement over the exercise of power by the world's mightiest nation.

Dick Cheney, vice-president, had demanded action against Iraq, dismissing further UN weapons inspections as a counter-productive distraction. Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, had described the "lonesome" responsibility of American supremacy, appearing ready to set the US on a solitary path to war. Colin Powell, secretary of state, had endorsed the return of UN inspectors to Baghdad and a policy engaging the international community.

It was more than a dispute about Iraq. It was a debate about the possibilities and responsibilities of the world's only superpower. And yet, in a moment of drama, Mr Bush was about to stamp his authority on the central argument of his administration and the defining issue of US foreign policy in the American Age.

Mr Bush had chosen, at Mr Powell's behest, to engage the international community by calling for a fresh UN resolution to disarm Saddam Hussein. The president's decision came only in time for the 24th and last draft of his speech, too late to be fed into the UN teleprompter. As he read the text, Mr Bush noticed the crucial omission. He looked up and, breaking the flow of the speech, said: "We will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions."

It was a defining moment of the year, when the leader of the last remaining great power bowed to international opinion not out of obligation but out of choice. At the UN, Mr Bush displayed the combination of power and restraint that has elevated his presidency in 2002. Under his leadership, the US has acted more multilaterally, more cautiously and more wisely than many had feared after the provocation of September 11 2001.

The Financial Times has chosen George W. Bush as man of the year because of the manner in which he has accumulated and exercised authority, reshaping the domestic political landscape, setting his stamp on the inter- national agenda and pursuing US interests around the world with America's allies, rather than despite them.

Mr Bush has put the presidency to work, consolidating power in the White House to an extent not seen for more than a generation. Having led the Republican party to a momentous mid-term election victory, he last week ushered in his friend and political ally, Bill Frist, as leader of the Senate. Washington has not witnessed a president wield the authority of his office with such discipline and purpose since the masterful Lyndon B. Johnson.

Mr Bush has many critics but even they must concede that the under-estimated president has confounded the expectations of those who thought him unequal to the task of leading a nation defined by its military and economic superiority. As he looks ahead to 2003, Mr Bush has the makings of a monumental Republican president. He will have a like-minded Congress, an international community focused on the priorities of US foreign policy, a new economic team and a Democratic opposition in sorry disarray.

Most marked this year has been Mr Bush's domestic ascendancy. As Republican leader, the president risked his political capital in the mid-term elections, an investment that brought historic returns. Mr Bush barnstormed America and won more than just congressional control for his party. He showed himself to be a formidable politician on the stump, making a joke of those who still chortled at his verbal pratfalls. And, by leading his party to a greater share of the House and Senate at the November 5 poll - a feat not pulled off by any sitting president since Franklin D. Roosevelt - he secured the moral mandate that had eluded him since the Florida voting fiasco in 2000.

The Democrats, meanwhile, remain torn between the patriotic obligation to be seen to back Mr Bush, the self-styled wartime president, and the political necessity of delivering an alternative platform. Democratic candidates for the presidential nomination will have to solve that same conundrum next year to avoid defeat in 2004. Even where Democrats have produced bold ideas this year - the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, the establishment of an independent commission on September 11 and proposals on prescription drug reform - Mr Bush has made them his own.

Followers of the US presidency have been searching the annals to find a president to match his achievements. In 2002, Mr Bush came to be measured by the standards of Harry S. Truman, the president who sought to rebuild a world order from the chaos of war and restructured government to meet the emerging Soviet threat. Mr Bush has unveiled a national security strategy, deliberately styled on the sweeping Truman doctrine. And the straight-talking Texan has pushed through the Homeland Security department, the biggest shake-up of the US bureaucracy since "Give 'em hell" Harry.

So, how has a politician made famous for swallowing long words but not his pretzels and who as presidential candidate plainly knew more about baseball than foreign affairs managed to marshal his staff, the facts, his allies and his adversaries to set the political course?

Mr Bush has this year proved to be an effective chief executive. He has exerted his authority over the muscular characters around his cabinet table with a rare ability to cultivate and then cut through the debate. For all the sniggering over the past two years that Mr Cheney was the presiding force of the administration, Mr Bush has overruled or chosen to ignore almost entirely the approach to Iraq set out by the glowering vice-president.

"There has been all this stuff about Cheney, the most powerful vice- president . . . It does not bother [Mr Bush]," says Dan Bartlett, White House communications director. "He is one of the most powerful vice-presidents, because the president has allowed him to be."

Mr Bush, who tends to be at his desk in the Oval Office just after 6.30am, runs a disciplined White House. Meetings are punctual, position papers are preferred when they are one page long and discussion is ordered. "It is not a dead poets' society," says Mr Bartlett. The Bush White House clocks on and clocks off. As one member of staff puts it: "If the world calls on the weekend, it can leave a message."

Mr Bush is not a master of detail, leaving the facts and figures of world affairs to his staff. Like Truman, Mr Bush is said to relish the decision, not the debate. He relies on a tiny circle of advisers: Karl Rove, chief political adviser, who is the most powerful figure next to the president in the White House and the favourite butt of Mr Bush's teasing jokes; Condoleezza Rice, national security adviser, who sits down the hall from Mr Bush and serves as mediator between the hawks and doves in his administration; Mr Cheney, the president's Friday lunch partner; and Karen Hughes, the former communications director who retains a direct line to the president even after giving up her position in the White House this year to take her family back to Texas.

The Bush team shares one quality: straight-talking in the Oval office. One reason Mr Rove and Ms Hughes are treasured figures in the White House is that they are disarmingly blunt.

Mr Bush's White House follows the opinion polls and focus groups with the same rapacious interest that earnt the Clinton administration the scorn of Bush Republicans. But Mr Bush is never seen making calculations for low-down political advantage. That is left to his advisers, who prefer to portray their president as a man focused on the big policy decisions - and on achieving results.

Outside the US, Mr Bush's most significant achievement of the year has been to defend a course of moderation and multilateralism by employing the language of a defiant American patriot. Since the terrorist attacks 15 months ago, his administration has spoken more recklessly than it has acted. The president's performance at the UN was a prime example: he used the threat of US willingness to act alone if the international community stood by and allowed Mr Hussein to rearm - but at the same time reached out to the other members of the UN security council.

In the national security strategy document, Mr Bush cast US foreign policy in expressly moral terms. America would use its unparalleled military strength to "further freedom's triumph". Yet for the most part the Bush White House has proved measured in the conduct of foreign policy. The US has pursued a policy of diplomatic persuasion on the Korean peninsula. It has moved deliberatively towards action against Baghdad. It has avoided inflaming relations with Iran, despite including it in the "axis of evil". At the beginning of the year, the US was still prosecuting its war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. By the end of 2002, it was embroiled in a UN-driven process to disarm Mr Hussein. In both cases, Mr Bush had shown a steadier hand than his critics expected.

As Mr Bush mulls over his agenda at his Crawford ranch this weekend, he will consider how best to use his unparalleled authority to full effect. And, for all his successes, Mr Bush's record in 2002 is marked by shortcomings and unfinished business.

Osama bin Laden, leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, whom Mr Bush wanted to see captured "dead or alive" nearly 14 months ago, remains at large. The war on terror, as Mr Bush calls it, is not won; al-Qaeda-linked groups have struck in Bali and Mombasa. Pentagon officials fear another direct attack on US interests is only a matter of time.

Mr Bush and his administration have ably demonstrated that the first casualty of war is truth. On one occasion, the president addressed the American people on television and claimed that Iraq had unmanned aerial vehicles that could strike US interests. Officials later acknowledged it was misleading. Mr Rumsfeld has alleged a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Pentagon and CIA officials have since said there is no evidence of such a link.

Through a year of corporate scandals, Mr Bush has pussyfooted around the crisis of confidence in US business. Rather than lead the charge against corporate malfeasance, he left regulation and enforcement to Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley in Congress and Eliot Spitzer on Wall Street.

Economic policy, meanwhile, has been allowed to drift. The budget surplus has evaporated and a Republican White House that might have been expected to show fiscal prudence has ushered in a deficit. Mr Bush and his new economic team will want to match in economic management the administration's reputation in the realms of national security. The dismissal of Paul O'Neill, the loose-tongued Treasury secretary, and Larry Lindsey, Mr Bush's chief economic adviser - an economic team that had helped the US to weather a slowdown - showed a president taking no chances. The White House is expected to advance a $300bn stimulus package next year and John Snow, the newly appointed Treasury secretary, is charged with exploring sweeping tax reform.

The biggest challenge, though, is the prosecution of the campaign against Mr Hussein. The president will have to prepare the American public for war and canvass his allies for resources to fight and rebuild Iraq. He must also work hard to reassure international opinion of the legitimacy and wisdom of military action to unseat the Iraqi leader. To that end, he will need to show a much greater US commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

If the terrorists strike at America again, if the US is sucked into a bloody war in Iraq and a long, expensive occupation and if the economy falters in 2003, Mr Bush may be left looking back at 2002 as the finest year of a one-term presidency.

At President George W. Bush's inauguration, historians suggested unkindly that America was destined for another less-than- impressive presidential dynasty.

John Quincy Adams proved a forgettable president like his father, John Adams. (Both men did more for their country outside the presidential office.) The Kennedys served as America's royal family but tragedy and scandal kept Robert and Edward from carrying the flame forward.

After a campaign in which Mr Bush had shown himself to be an accidental but ultimately lucky candidate, the 43rd president was deemed likely to be as unremarkable as his father, the 41st. Yet the Bush family is now positioned to make a more lasting mark on the US presidency than any other.

Father and son have ushered in new eras: George H.W. Bush witnessed the end of the cold war, George W. an age of global terrorism marked by the attacks of September 11 2001. Both have served as active commanders- in-chief, dispatching US forces to the Gulf. Both have been tasked with remedying a sickly economy, even if the father had little success and the son has yet to show much aptitude for economic management.

The November elections threw up an even more extraordinary possibility: Jeb Bush running for the White House in 2008. The president's little brother put the stature of the White House to work in Florida, seeing off with ease a Democratic challenger for the governorship.

Following the Republicans' mid-term election success, Mr Bush said he hoped Dick Cheney would join him for re-election in 2004. Mr Cheney, who would be 67 in 2008, is unlikely to use the vice-presidency as a platform for his own bid for the Oval Office, which opens the White House race six years from now to contenders such as Jeb Bush.

Republican strategists may be excited by the prospect of another Bush moving into the White House and securing the presidency for the party for a dozen years - but they will not be drawn on a distant possibility. The battle to succeed Mr Bush is some way off. The appointment as Senate majority leader of Bill Frist marks the ascension of another possible Republican candidate in 2008.

Still, the fact that pundits are even thinking about another Bush presidency suggests that it was Prescott Bush, the Connecticut senator and father of George H.W., rather than Joseph Kennedy, who deserves recognition as the founder of America's foremost political dynasty.

The Bush family's grip on the White House is rooted in the impression it gives that it would rather be somewhere else: Crawford, Camp David, Kennebunkport - but not 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The family's political style is modesty in power, not monarchy.

Nor is it a power base built on the accumulation of great wealth. The first president spent most of his career in government service. George W. made a comfortable fortune in the Texas oil industry and associated businesses to provide for himself and his family for the rest of their days - but not the kind of treasure-chest to fund a national political campaign.

Too much is made of the connection between the current president and his father. Their differences as politicians are more striking than their similarities: George W. Bush is easy-going, while his father could be stiff and patrician. The current president has political instincts but less grip on the policy detail; his father was the opposite.

In fact, Mr Bush is considered by those who know him well to be more in the mould of his mother, Barbara. The moral clarity, the punctuality, the loyalty, the mental check-list of friends and enemies, the emphasis on formal dress and good manners - all suggest Mr Bush is a chip off the maternal block. Barbara Bush, known for the geniality that is central to her son's political success, also saw her family's adversaries in stark terms. In 1984, she said of Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice-presidential candidate: "I can't say it, but it rhymes with rich." Mr Bush is equally known inside the White House for straightforward judgments of people, plainly put.

The advantage Mr Bush has over his father is the lesson of history. The 43rd president has shown a determination not to repeat the mistakes of his father, who squandered the political capital earnt in the Gulf war and appeared aloof to Americans struggling in a recession.

Perhaps Mr Bush's memory stretches back further: John Quincy Adams took office after a disputed election in 1824 and lost his bid for re-election four years later, just as his father had done in 1800. Mr Bush, though, has shown the hallmark of his presidency is a knack of bucking the expectations of history.

There is no such thing as a "budget surplus" and the Democrats regret ever using that term because calling it a surplus preventing them from just spending it all outright. It took on a life of its own and they had to account for it.

The "Clinton Budget Surplus" was the amount of filty lucre left over after the biggest tax hike in history allowed Clinton to steal the money from American tax payers wallets and spend most of it on wasteful Socialist programs.

Any administration can create a "surplus" by raising taxes high enough. Only the Democrats are devious enough to do it.

A relatively nice column from across the pond...i checked to see if this was posted and i did not see it..so forgive me if this is a re-post!

Well, it has it's ups and downs, but I must agree. Overall, a great article from the Financial Times.

I must say I do agree with this statement on his prospects for a second term !:

Perhaps Mr Bush's memory stretches back further: John Quincy Adams took office after a disputed election in 1824 and lost his bid for re-election four years later, just as his father had done in 1800. Mr Bush, though, has shown the hallmark of his presidency is a knack of bucking the expectations of history.

I like it when he glowers. we need some pics of our glowering VP, stat!

Happy New Year to you, my FRiend !

Bush is emblematic of the American Eagle....

Arrows in in one claw, peace in the other...

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