Washington – Racked by war, singed by scandals and checked by the surprising vigor of his domestic foes, President Bush’s second term has gotten off to a listless start that, if not soon remedied, could penalize his party in next year’s elections and taint his presidency, political strategists and professionals say.
The war in Iraq continues to claim lives and money, with as many setbacks as tangible signs of progress. August has been as costly a period, in terms of U.S. combat deaths, as any since the fall of Baghdad.
Despite his best efforts, Bush’s major domestic initiative – the politically arduous transformation of Social Security into a private-public system – has stalled in the Republican-controlled Congress.
Top GOP strategists, such as House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and other Bush aides, are distracted by federal investigations of their professional conduct.
Republican allies on Capitol Hill have openly bucked the White House on matters like pork-barrel spending and stem- cell research. An otherwise-rosy economic picture has been undermined by soaring health-care costs and gasoline prices.
“If I was sitting in Karl Rove’s job, I would not be overly encouraged,” said GOP strategist Ed Rollins. “There has been no good news since January. … The president’s Social Security bill has not gained anything. … The war in Iraq has not progressed as anybody would wish.”
Current public-opinion polls give Bush his lowest approval rating in office. After averaging a 62-percent approval rating during his first term, Bush’s job performance has the approval of 44 percent of respondents, a recent national Gallup poll found.
According to Gallup, Bush ranks behind Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton and Truman and is on par with Richard Nixon (44 percent amid the Watergate crisis) and Lyndon Johnson (42 percent during the Vietnam War) at comparable times in their presidencies.
“You have an 18-month window, normally, in a second term to get significant legislation through,” said David Gergen, an analyst and adviser who has served in Democratic and Republican White Houses, at an American Enterprise Institute forum on second-term presidencies. “That window may have shut very prematurely on him (Bush).
“The almost uniform feeling is that his second term is now joining the pantheon of other unmemorable second terms.”
In recent presidencies, Nixon, Johnson, Clinton and Reagan have all been afflicted by the second-term blues. They followed in the tracks of, among others, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
Second terms are “characterized by … hubris … by a loss of energy … a lack of new ideas … scandal … divisions within their own party … trouble with their own ideological base … (and) a united opposition,” said Norman Ornstein, an analyst at AEI.
“The hubris issue, I think, is what is most significant here,” Ornstein said. “There was a sense (at the White House) … that they had suspended the normal rules of politics and didn’t have to worry about those things that had plagued previous second terms. And now they’ve discovered almost all of them are there.”
Often – as in 1938, 1958, 1974 and 1986 – the midterm congressional elections held in second terms are debacles for the president’s party, Ornstein said.
Because today’s incumbents protect themselves via redistricting and aggressive fundraising, “we’re not likely to see disasters of that proportion,” Ornstein said. Nevertheless, he said, there is “an increasing level of nervousness among congressional Republicans as they approach 2006 that it will be a referendum on a failed war.”
Members of Congress are “getting hammered” when they go home and discuss the war with their constituents, said Democratic political consultant James Carville.
“They can’t continue to lose public support for this at the rate they have been,” he said.
Since Republicans have relatively narrow majorities in each house of Congress, any erosion in the 2006 elections will make things more difficult, especially for a president who does not have a readily identifiable successor to discipline and unite the party.
Bush is in Texas for a month- long working vacation but has several upcoming opportunities to turn things around.
The situation in Iraq may look better if its politicians meet Monday’s deadline to draft a new constitution and prepare for an October referendum and December elections.
Judge John Roberts, Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, may win national approval and swift confirmation after hearings begin Sept. 6. When they return from their summer recess, Republicans in Congress could jump- start work on Social Security or launch another of the president’s signature initiatives: tax reform.
Any of these achievements would build upon a second-term legislative record that includes the passage of major energy, transportation and bankruptcy bills and consistent economic growth. That success, in turn, would burnish Bush’s already-considerable stature as a political leader.
“He may well be remembered, as much as anything, for his political legacy. He is a formidable politician,” Gergen said. “George W. Bush has done something really important in politics. He’s the first president since FDR whose party has gained seats steadily while he’s been running for office.”
“The president of the United States leads on big issues,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, rejecting the notion that Bush has diminished to lame-duck status. “He boldly leads. He addresses issues that people say are impossible.”
Nor, said Frist, can Rove’s troubles be compared to the scandals that hammered Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton in their second terms.
“Based on everything I read, I see absolutely no wrongdoing,” Frist said.
In appearances last week, Bush and his advisers sought to turn the nation’s attention to positive economic signs. Indicators show the economy is expanding and U.S. industry is becoming more productive, without dangerous spurts of inflation.
“The economy is growing faster than any other major industrialized country. Job growth is strong,” Bush said. “The unemployment rate is 5 percent, which is below the average of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Americans have more money in their pocket.”
But Bush and his economic team acknowledged that they have no immediate fix for record-setting increases in the price of oil, or for growing health-care and health-insurance costs. Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the White House council of economic advisers, acknowledged that energy and health-care costs pose major “risks to the economy.”
The twin economic soft spots may help explain why, in a period of economic expansion, large majorities of Americans still tell pollsters that the country is on the wrong track and disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy.
Much of the major legislation passed by Congress – bills to save Terri Schiavo, boost energy production, promote foreign trade or protect creditors and health-care providers – have offered little immediate relief to working families and are seen by many voters as rewards to Republican constituencies. Nor has Bush been helped by photo opportunities that show him holding hands with Saudi princes.
“For 101 days, the United States Senate has been open for business. And for 101 days, Republicans have put special interests ahead of American families,” said Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, just before Congress adjourned. “If you’re an Exxon lobbyist, a right-wing judge or a White House leaker, then yes, this has been a productive session.”
And above all looms the war.
“It’s the biggest issue by a landslide that Bush faces,” said Harry McPherson, who served on Lyndon Johnson’s staff during the Vietnam War. “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not good news right now, and as somebody who has been part of a failing administration in such a tie, it seems to me to get closer and closer to the late 1960s.”
According to the Almanac of American Politics, “the most Republican major metro area in the nation over the longest time span has been Cincinnati.” In the 2000 and 2004 elections, Bush beat Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry there by ratios of almost 2-to-1.
But in this month’s special election to fill the 2nd Congressional District seat of a departing Bush loyalist, Democrat Paul Hackett, a late-starting, underfunded political neophyte, took 48 percent of the vote. Hackett, an Iraq war veteran, launched withering criticism of the Bush administration’s actions in Iraq. It was the closest a Democrat had come to victory in the district since Watergate.
Bush, however, remains blessed in his choice of foes. If he is not wildly popular, neither is his opposition.
Democrats in Congress “have done what they absolutely had to do” in forming a united front to blunt Bush’s attempt to trim Social Security benefits, said Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. But among the general public, said Greenberg, “Democrats are perceived to have no core set of convictions.”
Staff writer John Aloysius Farrell can be reached at jfarrell@denverpost.com.
