From day one, Bush has essentially written off the central issue that most Americans face. His Inaugural Address contained not a single word about productivity or competitiveness or the living-standard anxieties of the great middle class. For three years the sub-text has been, America’s troubled economic future. Not my department. Yes, modern presidents all favor foreign over domestic policy; it’s easier to control, less partisan and more historic. But Bush has been a radical on this matter, practically adopting the French model, where President Francois Mitterrand ignores domestic “housekeeping.”
This dramatic redefinition-the premise that the condition of voters’ lives is beyond the president’s job description-actually made some sense for a brief period. The epic collapse of communism had a fair claim on Bush’s time. And the American public–besieged by monster deficits, consistently inept public management and endless political gridlock–had reason to believe that government was more the problem than the solution. Washington couldn’t run a three-car funeral, so why let it try?
The recession itself hasn’t changed that. It merely clarifies the future. In its own diffuse way, the public shows signs of finally demanding that somebody step up to the unpleasant, long-delayed task of preparing the country for a bruising economic future. That somebody is, inevitably, the government. It won’t be Congress; it has to be the president. Middle East diplomacy doesn’t pay the bills or train the work force.
But old habits die hard. The Wall Street Journal noted that in September, the month that Bush pledged to dive into domestic affairs, he spent time with leaders from 21 countries, from Micronesia to Liechtenstein, but couldn’t manage to schedule a session with GOP House members to discuss family-leave policy, an issue facing millions of Americans. At a Houston fund-raising banquet last week, the president sounded downright petulant discussing the economy, as if he’d been forced to eat broccoli for dinner.
Until now, Bush has received an astonishing free ride on issues inside his own country. The Washington Monthly’s James Bennet counted all the questions posed at White House news conferences. Of the 1,865 questions asked the president through mid-September, 1,225 were on foreign policy (not including the gulf-war press conferences). It’s not that Bush ducks the gut issues; he’s rarely asked about them amid all of the repetitive questions about tiresome budget wrangles. The “Education President” has been asked a grand total of four questions about public schools, six questions about the explosive issue of health care, two questions on the state of the banking system and no questions at all about the homeless.
How is this possible? The answer is that until this fall these issues’ have somehow been seen as “off the news”–off the agenda that Bush has defined and spoon-fed the press. The administration has actually proposed more money to address issues like drug treatment and toxic-waste cleanup than Congress (which still prefers pork) has appropriated. But beyond a futile bid for capital-gains tax cuts, Bush hasn’t seemed to care much about these domestic matters. In his heart, he thinks they are divisive and ultimately irrelevant to the purpose of his presidency. How else to explain why he expended none of the huge political capital he earned in the gulf war on achieving concrete results at home?
Bush now has a choice. Because the American public is so disgusted with Congress, he can distract attention from his skimpy domestic record by stoking that resentment. This is actually a better tool for distraction than race, which is what the president and his handlers, in one of their more cynical moments, had originally planned to use until the rise of David Duke made it too combustible. Congress-bashing is a little silly-Bush last week spit out the word “Washington” as if it were a place he’d never been-but it has the advantage of being well deserved. If the economy doesn’t nosedive, he won’t be held accountable for what happens on his watch. Safely re-elected, he can resume jogging around the world as America’s supersecretary of state.
The second option–acting like an old-fashioned president–entails more risks. Raising his profile on domestic affairs could backfire–make Bush more responsible if the economy doesn’t recover. Because the press and public are suspicious about handlers, a flurry of activity will likely be dismissed as political posturing. But in another sense, leadership really is his only choice. If he cares about his presidency, he has to eat the broccoli-define the job broadly so that it relates to the real lives Americans lead, at home. If he doesn’t, he’ll be swept away-by the voters or by the harsh verdict of historians explaining a nation’s long decline.
