How Bush Plans To Win

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When it comes to making a new line of argument, Bush can take comfort that the moment is ripe. The 9/11 commission report is a blueprint to overhaul the U.S.'s intelligence agencies and plug holes in homeland security. Any swift executive action on those fronts lets Bush remind voters that he is a war President and that the danger is still real. Moving now is particularly important for Bush, since his once unassailable advantage on fighting terrorism has shrunk to just 8 percentage points in the polls. Kerry pounced on the findings of the 9/11 commission last week, using them as a bludgeon, charging that Bush was derelict for not aggressively embracing its recommendations. Very soon — perhaps as early as this week, aides say — the President will appropriate some of those ideas and offer up a few of his own.

The Administration's rush to comply has rankled some of Bush's people. "They seem to be hell-bent to do something to give the false impression of progress, whether they've got a plan or not," said a senior Administration official involved in the war on terrorism. "They're desperate to announce something so they can't be accused of not doing something." But the President's political advisers were hoping not to repeat the fight over creating a new office of Homeland Security. The White House endured months of criticism for opposing the plan, only to embrace it eventually. "We always drag our feet," said a Bush campaign adviser, referring to the Administration's initial opposition to creating the commission and to giving it access to presidential intelligence briefings and testimony by Condoleezza Rice. In each case the Administration ultimately relented. "Why not agree now to what we're going to be for later?"

A senior White House official suggested last week that the Administration would take its time with the commission's grandest demand, a new national director of intelligence. The biggest question was not whether to create such a post — Bush seems destined to endorse the notion — but how to do it. Should the duties of the CIA director be expanded or a new entity created? The commission recommended putting the new intelligence uberboss in the Cabinet, but Bush aides say they fear that doing so would subject the post's holder to political pressure — a position ironic to Democrats who believe the Administration has politicized intelligence. Administration officials hinted at a politically neutralizing move for the President: he could take measures to protect civil liberties — thus confounding Kerry and the Democrats who have accused Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft of trampling rights in the name of the war on terrorism.

But Bush's biggest vulnerability is on the domestic front, where voters believe the Democratic ticket would do a better job on everything from health care (Kerry and running mate John Edwards lead Bush and Cheney by 16 percentage points) to the economy (8 percentage points) to understanding working-class needs (8 percentage points). With Kerry and Edwards aiming so much of their rhetorical fire at the middle-class squeeze, Bush will offer a counterattack that he hopes will prove "he understands the challenges that people face every day," in the words of Bartlett. One of Bush's signature lines in his new stump speech is "This world of ours is changing," and his new proposals are meant to show that his government could help families adapt.