Frist, who was on his way to Asia last week, and chewed him out. “It was pretty tough,” one source told NEWSWEEK. “Rove told him he ’needed to understand the gravity of the situation’.”
The military war may be winding down in Iraq, but the short tempers show that the political front is opening at home–and that fighting will be fierce. With the campaign season months away (for Democratic presidential hopefuls, it’s long since begun), the outlines of the Bush re-election strategy are emerging. Though the tax cut is central, Rove is under no illusion that his boss can carry the day by touting the economy: this president may be the first since Herbert Hoover to preside over a simultaneous drop in the markets on Wall Street and the number of jobs on Main Street. The White House will do its best to blunt Democratic attacks on that score, but, in the end, will focus its main appeal on the president’s role as war leader and guardian of homeland security. “It’s not like it’s going to be, ‘Iraq is over, America can withdraw into itself again’,” Rove told newspaper editors last week.
On the economy, the aim is to get an “A” for effort, lower expectations for a swift recovery and blame any lingering lethargy on the war on terrorism. Asked about the biggest political threat Bush faces, chief of staff Andrew Card said: “Jobs, jobs, jobs.” Rebuilding Iraq may help (if Bechtel and other contractors hire Americans). On background, though, officials argue that the public has a “reasonable” view of what Bush can accomplish in wartime. Signing another tax cut into law remains crucial. To sell it, administration leaders have fanned out across the country, less to pressure wavering senators than to spin voters in key 2004 swing states. As for Bush himself, he soon may reprise his “regular folks” events, chatting with carefully vetted civilians about their everyday concerns.
White House aides may reluctantly accept a tax cut not much higher than the $350 billion figure voted in the Senate. But they hope to salvage all the working parts of the plan–including an end to the taxation of stock dividends–by shrinking them. “Every element will be in there,” one aide vowed.
But getting even that far will require pacifying the GOP renegades, deficit hawks like Bush’s own father. Last week the Club for Growth, a freelance supply-side hit squad, launched cable-TV strikes against two of them, George Voinovich of Ohio and Olympia Snowe of Maine. The spots employed the lowest of blows: likening the senators to Jacques Chirac of France. Rove had no hand in the ads. But Stephen Moore, who runs the legally independent group, says that Rove hasn’t complained about them, either. “When he’s upset about something, we hear it,” Moore said.
Bush knows he has to talk about “jobs, jobs, jobs.” In the latest polls, voters put economic concerns ahead of terrorism-related ones. Still, the president ultimately seems destined to go to the country next year with a message of “war, war, war.” And why not? His lofty job-approval rating (72 percent in the latest NEWSWEEK Poll) is buoyed by his genuine popularity as commander in chief. Democrats–united and cuttingly effective about the shortcomings of the economy–are divided, confused and toothless on security issues. A basic electoral rule: play to your strength.
The strategy is risky. Bush has laid out an ambitious–almost limitless–goal: to eradicate terrorism by changing hearts and regimes throughout the Axis of Evil and all of its annexes. But the reclamation projects are just beginning, and could blow up. Depending on its provenance, another terrorist attack could raise questions about his security priorities. In Iraq or Afghanistan, sectarian and ethnic violence could trap Americans in a deadly cross-fire. It’s an unsettling predicament for a man who craves regular order: he’s depending on the kindness of strangers and the actions of foreign enemies. But he has to hope that his international vision succeeds, for he’s staked his presidency on it.
