Posted on 12/31/2001 6:28:14 PM PST by Pokey78
CRAWFORD, Tex., Dec. 31 — It was late on a Saturday, just days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when President Bush was ready to sign an order freezing the assets in the United States of suspected Islamic terrorist groups, the first showy financial strike against Al Qaeda. The order was to be announced, or so the plan went, the following Monday by Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill. But the president suddenly had another idea.
"I am about to sign this order," an aide recalled Mr. Bush saying. "Why am I not announcing it?"
The staff scrambled, and by Monday morning it was the president, not Mr. O'Neill, who made the announcement, reinforcing the message that Mr. Bush would direct the war against terrorism on many fronts.
Nearly a year after taking office, Mr. Bush has seized the catastrophe of Sept. 11 to project himself as the commander in chief at the center of the crisis and to reach for new powers.
His most assertive action was a November order establishing military tribunals for accused terrorists, but Mr. Bush has also moved to keep presidential papers secret and permitted sweeping government efforts to investigate anyone suspected of terrorism. To help in those investigations, he expanded government wiretapping and allowed the monitoring of communications between some people in federal custody and their lawyers.
And yet Mr. Bush returns to Washington next week facing a variety of challenges. In foreign policy, he is trying to avert a war between India and Pakistan, and monitoring the financial collapse of Argentina, which an administration official acknowledged today had not been a sufficient focus of the White House after Sept. 11. Domestically, Mr. Bush says he will try to revive an economic stimulus package that failed in a bitter round of partisan Washington combat at the end of December. He also faces Democrats increasingly willing to challenge his policies, even while avoiding taking on a president with high approval ratings.
Mr. Bush did win big legislative victories on a $1.3 trillion tax cut and an education bill, but the White House is not expecting as easy a ride in 2002.
"He's got more problems with the Congress than with the public," said John Morton Blum, the Yale historian who taught Mr. Bush 20th-century American politics in college.
The result is that Mr. Bush is likely to spend a considerable portion of his political capital if he hopes to revive the agenda he laid out so forcefully a year ago.
"I think the lesson he learned from his father's presidency is that if you have capital you must use it wisely — but use it," said Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director.
And he has shown that he is willing to use it to accomplish goals that go far beyond prosecuting the war. With only cursory consultation of Congress, he announced the American withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, with surprisingly little backlash from Russia or the allies. Similarly, Mr. Bush threatened a veto if Congress spent more than he wanted on domestic security. Congress protested, then acquiesced.
Some historians say Mr. Bush seems captivated by Theodore Roosevelt, who grabbed more power for his office than any other president since Abraham Lincoln. The week before his inauguration, Mr. Bush kept a book of Roosevelt speeches on the coffee table in his living room at the Texas ranch, where he was preparing his inaugural address. On Friday at his ranch, Mr. Bush said he had just finished reading "Theodore Rex," the second volume of Edmund Morris's biography of Roosevelt, this one focusing on the White House.
"I see in Bush's performance to date the very large possibility that his model for the presidency is essentially that of Theodore Roosevelt," Mr. Blum said. So far, he added, "I think he has claimed powers, and tried to aggrandize the office."
But unlike Roosevelt, Mr. Blum argued, Mr. Bush "doesn't exude power, at least not yet."
Other historians say Mr. Bush's presidency has expanded simply because of circumstance.
"The story of Bush has been the aggregating of power over the last few months," said William E. Leuchtenburg, a historian at the University of North Carolina, "but I doubt that it has an awful lot to do with Theodore Roosevelt.
"In any war, there's going to be a very great accretion of power to the president," he said, adding, "He has an area he can roam around in and be as big a president as he wants to be."
Such a turn of events once seemed improbable: Mr. Bush began in the cold rain of January with an uncertain mandate, lost Republican control of the Senate by the spring, then faced a disappearing surplus and a menacing recession by the end of the summer. With no notice to the allies, he declared that the Kyoto treaty on global warming was "dead," adding to European fears about an isolated America determined to go it alone. Mr. Bush's staff worried that his presidency seemed small.
But then came Sept. 11, when Mr. Bush's powers as commander in chief coincided with the desires of many of those swept back into office by his election. First among them was Vice President Dick Cheney, who said he believed that Bill Clinton had squandered the power and prestige of the presidency.
"I think it starts with a strong cabinet," said Andrew H. Card Jr., Mr. Bush's chief of staff. "Look at the people in the news since Sept. 11 — Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell. They are strong leaders. But they also brought a great appreciation of the power of the presidency to their offices."
Mr. Card added that when the attacks occurred, "the president knew he had to be commander in chief in the broadest sense of the word — commander of the military, but also of the firefighters and the police and the mail carriers."
At home, Mr. Bush used his powers through much of the fall to bend Congress to his will. In November, when he was under severe pressure, even from Republicans, to increase spending for domestic security, he resisted. On Nov. 6, he summoned a delegation from Capitol Hill and bluntly announced that he would veto legislation that went beyond the $40 billion he had already agreed to for this fiscal year for countering terrorism and rebuilding New York.
Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin and the ranking minority member on the Appropriations Committee, had expected a negotiating session rather than an ultimatum. He was furious.
"I said," Mr. Obey recalled, " `You can say anything you want, this is your house, Mr. President. But I've been coming down here for 30 years, and this is the first time that a president has told me his mind is closed before the subject is even opened.' " Mr. Bush was unmoved. "Thank you very much," he told the delegation, several people present said. "I've got another meeting."
An administration official said Mr. Bush had not meant to be rude, just uncompromising. "It was also a test of who was going to be paramount, the legislature or the executive, when it came to spending," the official said.
As commander in chief, Mr. Bush made it clear from the first days of the war that he alone would make major strategic decisions. On the first weekend of bombing, he silenced a debate among his advisers about whether to broaden the war on terrorism's goals to include toppling Saddam Hussein of Iraq, saying that decision would come only after Al Qaeda was routed. And while European leaders have argued it would be a mistake to expand the war to Iraq, Mr. Bush had made it clear that he alone would make that call.
Critics say Mr. Bush is showing his true stripes as a unilateralist who is interested in alliances only when they do not get in his way. Mr. Bush's closest advisers disagree.
"George Shultz had this idea that you `garden,' which means you have to constantly tend to your alliances," said Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. She added that while "the president is very much of that school, that never meant, from his point of view, that you simply go along to get along," citing his decisions on the Kyoto agreement and the A.B.M. treaty.
"You have to stand for something," she added. "You have to have a sense of what American interests are." Often that fits into a broader alliance, she said, and "the war on terrorism is a great example of this."
That is also a telling example of the Bush style. In the first days after the attacks, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney decided that all the major strategic decisions about the war would be made in Washington. They built a coalition in the loosest sense — with the exception of Britain, all the members were nonvoting partners.
"No one wanted to re-create the worst moments of the gulf war, when the allies and the Arab states argued about what to do next, and how," one aide said.
As he tried to create workable alliances abroad, Mr. Bush found he also had to repair relations among agencies of the executive branch. Aides said Mr. Bush was stunned to discover after Sept. 11 how little the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. communicated. He set a new course, aides say, and now insists that Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I., sit in on the daily C.I.A. briefing in the Oval Office. The director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, then remains for the F.B.I. briefing.
"It's not unusual for the president to say at the end, to the two directors, `Now I want you two to go off and work on this specific problem,' " Mr. Card said. "And the message travels down pretty fast."
That is also a telling example of the Bush style. In the first days after the attacks, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney decided that all the major strategic decisions about the war would be made in Washington. They built a coalition in the loosest sense ? with the exception of Britain, all the members were nonvoting partners.I wondered why I wasn't consulted.
Given the high marks he got for announcing all human beings were no longer created equal but, rather, some were manufactured in Excess of Market Demand and therefore suitable for enforced sacrificing of their lives for the really Living, I have a hard time believing Bush or his administration have a hard time announcing whatever new powers -- or funding -- they've ordained for themselves in the name of 'crisis', comrade.
They make "taking command in a crisis" sound like an impeachable offense.
Given the high marks he got a fortnight prior to 911 -- when he announced that all human beings were no longer created equal but, rather, some were manufactured in Excess of Market Demand and therefore suitable for enforced sacrificing of their lives for the really Living -- I have a hard time believing Bush or his administration have any trouble trumpteting whatever new powers -- or funding -- they've ordained for themselves in the name of 'crisis', comrade.
This article didn't even mention his laser heat-ray vision, let alone his (to be revealed in a later installment) cowboy hat of cosmic power.
Speaking of bites ... it is a hell of bitter pill for me swallow, having to vest my trust and this nation's "moral" leadership in a man who so clearly understands lives Not Worth Living.
"I said," Mr. Obey recalled, " `You can say anything you want, this is your house, Mr. President. But I've been coming down here for 30 years, and this is the first time that a president has told me his mind is closed before the subject is even opened.' " Mr. Bush was unmoved. "Thank you very much," he told the delegation, several people present said. "I've got another meeting."Doesn't it just break your heart? lol
When I read that, I nearly broke down crying. eheh
Another way of looking at it is that he is not Jesus, and as such was unable to bring the dead back to life. As such, the course to take was the one which would rally public opinion behind him, while he made a strong appeal for the nation to relearn to appreciate the value of the lives of the unborn.
He put his our money where his mouth is.
And no amount of money could buy that. The pro-life movement had spent millions for years trying to move public opinion, to little avail.
BTW, a Happy New Year to you and yours.
Forgive my French, Hugh, but B.F.D.
Do you not understand that "pro-lifer" pro-aborts like the Bush's are only too well aware their "vital" prong of population control has been a tad too successful?
Even Russia's got anti-abortion placards IN THEIR SUBWAY CARS.
All well and good to "reduce abortions" ... especially among the more valuable of the labor force and consumers. The industrialized nations' populations are imploding, for Pete's sake.
But it will be cold day in hell before they actually move to renege on the GOP policy that is legal abortion. Ashcroft made that much clear when he said right of the bat that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was not on Bush's agenda.
He nailed open the most profitable of all window of "non-personhood". What isn't crystal clear about that?
__________
(It's nearly midnight ... Cheers, guy.)
It's about time.....the absense of any real commander in chief for the previous 8 years is what made the U.S. so vulnerable to these new threats.
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