Bush's Lonely Election Season

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Meanwhile, even as Bush was praising Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as "a smart, tough, capable administrator," endangered Republicans like Kentucky Representative Anne Northup and Ohio Senator Mike DeWine have been joining the increasingly loud chorus of calls for the Secretary's ouster. And pressure for change is not coming only from the desperate and the wobbly. Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison--a Bush loyalist well ahead in her bid for re-election--is expressing regret for her vote to authorize the invasion and is advocating partitioning Iraq along ethnic lines. "We have to step back and stop trying to put our American ideas onto this problem," she told the Houston Chronicle.

Iraq is what has put the President on the eve of a possible rebuke by voters. And if Bush were a different kind of politician--if he loved political jawboning like Lyndon Johnson or could show political elasticity like Bill Clinton--this moment might be less significant. But Bush has perfected the art of governing from inside his razor-thin majority, and is proud above all of his ideological toughness. That's why the midterms could do more than change the balance of power in Washington, if current polls are right and one or both houses shift to Democratic hands. The election might also produce a different kind of presidential style. Bush has sounded wistful lately about his more bipartisan days as a Texas Governor. "As you know, in Austin I was able to work with Democrats and Republicans to get a lot done," he said in an interview last week with Texas-based Belo Broadcasting. That's a new tone for a leader whose confidence and convictions have given his party its backbone for the past six years.

IT'S THE PRESIDENT, STUPID

FOR THE MOMENT, HOWEVER, SILVER linings in the President's predicament are so scant around the White House that when a conservative commentator recently asked Bush to give him some good news, Bush replied, "You're talking to Noah about the flood." Even the President knows this election has become a national referendum on him and his performance. In the latest Washington Post--ABC News poll, 31% of those surveyed said they will use their congressional votes to register their opposition to Bush, which was almost double the percentage who said they felt that way before the last midterm. By comparison, only 17% said they plan to use their vote to show support for Bush. And Democrats are stoking that sentiment in ads like the one the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is running on television in Connecticut's Second District, in which an announcer intones: "Rob Simmons said he'd represent us, but George Bush always comes first." In fact, you are far more likely to see Bush in a Democratic ad this year than a Republican one. The President is now being featured in 89 separate TV commercials for Democratic House candidates nationwide. Says DCCC spokesman Bill Burton: "No other issue is that dominant."