The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : Will we see a new Bush?

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 20, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Will we see a new Bush?

By Jonathan Freedland

Previous occupants of the White House have sometimes used their second term differently, replacing a narrow agenda with one that seeks to serve the longer term national interest.

THE AMERICAN weekly satire show Saturday Night Live used to have a neat spin on the last Republican President to serve two full terms. First it showed Ronald Reagan as most people thought they knew him — a genial old buffer who was hardly the sharpest pencil in the box. But then, behind closed doors, there was a surprise. Saturday Night Live's Reagan was suddenly revealed as an energetic, high-IQ superman — conversing with Leonid Brezhnev in Russian, scolding the Iranians in Farsi, analysing military data at computer-speed. This Reagan, the TV show suggested, was the real President — hidden behind the bozo exterior.

With Reagan's heir due to be sworn in for his second term at noon today, the men around George W. Bush seem keen to give him the Saturday Night Live treatment. "Aides and friends" revealed to Newsweek that the image of Mr. Bush as the lazy fratboy, more at home on the Stairmaster than with his briefing books, is a gross caricature. On the contrary, they told the magazine, he is a "restless man who masters details and reads avidly." Chief strategist Karl Rove insists his boss sees the same papers as the rest of the team but "he'll inevitably have thought about three steps ahead of anyone in the room." Even with all that on his plate, Newsweek learned, the President manages to keep up with the latest literary trends, reading Tom Wolfe when he is not devouring fat tomes on the geopolitics of the Middle East.

Perhaps this is indeed the real George Bush who has, after all, built a career by exploiting his enemies' tendency to underestimate him. Or maybe it is wishful thinking, a clue to what kind of President his aides hope the second-term Bush will be.

For a second inauguration offers the chance for a new start. Previous occupants of the White House have sometimes used their second bite of power differently from their first — looking to their historical legacy, rather than mere re-election, replacing a narrow, partisan agenda with one that seeks to serve the larger, longer-term national interest. In his first term, for example, Reagan denounced the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." In his second, he sought an accommodation with Moscow, even coming close to agreeing total nuclear disarmament with Mikhail Gorbachev.

Might Mr. Bush repeat the pattern, leading in the next four years in a strikingly different direction to the past four? The sceptical answer is that he'll be lucky to lead anywhere at all. Recent second terms have been notoriously unproductive, with an uncanny knack for miring the incumbent in scandal — think Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica — before jockeying for the presidential succession reduces him to a lame duck two years before he leaves office. The terrain looks especially unpromising for Mr. Bush, whose approval ratings hover just above 50 per cent — the lowest for any returning president since Richard Nixon.

Nevertheless, Mr. Bush is ambitious, setting out grand goals, foreign and domestic, for this second spell in office. As he said immediately after his victory last November, "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it."

The likeliest scenario, at least in the sphere of foreign policy, is that he will use that momentum to serve up more of the same. On this reading, the U.S. will not rush for the exits from Iraq but will, in the President's words, "stay on the offence." Iraqis will vote at the end of the month, Mr. Bush will hail the ballot as a great day for freedom — but he will not pull the troops out. Instead he will continue the current policy of Iraqification, training the country's own security forces until, as he puts it, democracy can endure even without the presence of U.S. guns. If that takes years, so be it.

It is even conceivable that Mr. Bush will use his new lease on the White House to extend the project. He speaks with fervour of his mission to democratise the Middle East — believing it to be a goal equal to Reagan's vision of a free eastern Europe — and there are some logical next steps. Iran would be the obvious new front, which could explain the weekend revelations that U.S. special forces have been on the ground in that country, looking at nuclear sites for future military attack. Far from feeling chastened by the Iraq experience, Bush 2 might feel as if its work has only just begun.

There are some pointers in this direction. Note how, the key hawks are still in place, starting with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. These two leopards are not changing their spots any time soon. Note too the elevation of Alberto Gonzales to Attorney General: as White House counsel, he commissioned a memo justifying torture and described the Geneva convention as "quaint." Meet the new team — same as the old team, with teeth just as sharp.

For all that, it is not delusional to hope that a new Bush could yet surface — one more like the probing, thoughtful homme serieux described to Newsweek. The crucial witness here is the woman who appeared before the senate on Tuesday, Condoleezza Rice.

She is no Colin Powell, but by placing such a close confidante at the State Department, Mr. Bush has upgraded the status of diplomacy itself. Perhaps just as important, Ms. Rice's deputy is to be Robert Zoellick, a veteran of Mr. Bush's father's administration — and an old-style Republican internationalist a la James Baker. That could augur well for a more engaged, alliance-conscious approach to U.S. foreign policy.

None of this is entirely in Mr. Bush's hands. If U.S. public opinion turns yet harder against the war in Iraq, he may have to cut and run, whatever his intentions now. The rhetoric will certainly be grand tomorrow, as it always is — but it will be reality that decides.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News Update

Stories in this Section

REBUILDING TOURISM

CASE AND CLOSURE

Saying no to aid

Will we see a new Bush?