With almost metronomic precision, this George Bush has navigated in politics by zigging where the first Bush zagged. Now the son is facing his biggest political challenge: to avoid becoming another winning Bush at War booted out for failing to convince voters that he cares about reviving a sputtering economy. The Bushes, said one top aide, are “fundamentally in two different places in the public’s mind” in terms of “caring about the economy and having the vision thing.” Maybe so, but the poll numbers are eerily familiar. When Gulf War I ended in March 1991, Bush the Elder set a record for job approval: 91 percent in one survey. Still, only 49 percent liked his work on handling the economy. Last week, in the NEWSWEEK Poll, Bush the Younger’s job approval rose to a healthy 71 percent. But only 44 percent gave him good economic marks.
As a diplomat and war leader, Bush Two seems more eager than ever to prove how different he is from his dad. The father settled for the narrowest possible aim with the widest possible support: driving Saddam from Kuwait, and only with full backing of the United Nations. His son seems quite willing to use military might to remake an entire region in idealistic, Wilsonian fashion–and without either the permission or direct participation of the United Nations. So far, Bush Two has conspicuously ignored the cautious advice of such Bush One friends as Brent Scowcroft and James Baker, in favor of big-think “neocons” whom Bush One distrusted but whose influence seems destined to grow with the relatively swift fall of Saddam’s regime.
The war in Iraq produced new evidence of the father and son’s divergent approaches to politics at home. His father had been reared to revere modesty and tact. He had an aversion to pronouns, especially “I.” His son is forever using it, personalizing not only his presidency but America’s role on the world stage. “Saddam Hussein clearly knows I mean what I say,” he crowed in Belfast last week. His dad viewed campaigning as tawdry business, almost unworthy of a gentleman. His re-election effort started late (in part because of the death of a key aide, Lee Atwater) and never ran smoothly. His son is determined not to let that happen. The 2004 re-election campaign is about to begin in earnest. Fund-raising starts in June.
Money in campaign coffers: worth a lot. Money in voters’ pockets: priceless. At the very least, voters have to be convinced that Bush cares, and that he has a plan to help them. When his father was at the zenith of his popularity in 1991, only one in five voters said they had “a good idea” about where he planned to lead the country. That number, as much as any other, presaged the Old Man’s demise. No wonder his eldest son is obsessed with the “vision thing” in domestic policy. That, in turn, means tax cuts; this year, specifically, a proposal to end the taxation of dividends. But GOP moderates in the Senate revolted late last week, voting to cap the amount of cuts and there-by vitiate Bush’s vision. Sources tell NEWSWEEK that the president was blindsided by the Senate deal. That’s what used to happen to his father from time to time. In this White House, that’s not an excuse you want to make.
