[Nasional-e] Making His Case

[Ambon]

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020916/nelection.html
Making His Case

President Bush has to take on Congress before he can take out Saddam. In
this high-stakes election season, that means playing hardball


By Karen Tumulty | Washington


Posted Sunday, Sept. 8, 2002; 6:31 p.m. EST

Just hours after President Bush indicated that he would soon ask Congress to
vote on whether to wage war against Iraq, he dispatched one of his best men
to make the case. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his way last
Wednesday to a secure, windowless room on the top floor of the Capitol,
nearly three-quarters of the Senators awaited him. They were confronting one
of the gravest decisions lawmakers can face—sending troops into battle—and
they expected to see the intelligence Rumsfeld and other Bush Administration
officials have said would clinch the case that Saddam Hussein must go, the
sooner the better. Instead, they got the kind of riff Rumsfeld uses with the
Pentagon press corps. "There are three issues here," the Defense Secretary
told them. "There is the issue of what we know. There is the issue of what
we don't know. And there is the issue of what we don't know we don't know."
So much for a smoking gun. Rumsfeld's presentation left even stalwarts of
the President's party unhappy. "We want to be with you," Oklahoma Senator
Don Nickles, the Senate's second-ranking Republican, finally told him. "But
you're not giving us enough." The following day, the White House and State
Department phoned Senators to assess the damage. Not a fatal setback, they
concluded, but the mess in Room S-407 showed that the President will have to
work hard to convince Congress and the American public that a war with Iraq
is in the national interest. Congress normally gives a popular Commander in
Chief what he wants, but Bush has a mountain of skepticism to overcome. As
Senate majority leader Tom Daschle put it, "I'm more concerned about getting
this done right than getting it done quickly."
This isn't just another military adventure. This would be unlike any other
war the nation has waged. Bush & Co. aren't responding to cross-border
aggression or an assault on American citizens or interests. To use the
President's language, this would be "pre-emptive," launched against a
country that has not—yet—attacked the U.S. or its allies.
It's no wonder there isn't a consensus: a recent poll by the Pew Research
Center showed that while 64% of Americans supported U.S. military action to
oust Saddam Hussein, only 30% would favor going in without allies. In the
very week that an anniversary reminds America of the lethal nature of its
enemies, is it easier or harder for the President to stand before the United
Nations and the American people and defend a plan to continue that war by
launching another one? A year after 9/11, does Bush have to prove some
connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden, or is it enough that since
that day, Americans have the dark imagination to see what an enemy can do to
destroy us? With each new speech, each meeting with congressional leaders,
each Op-Ed salvo, the Administration is speaking to a curious and conflicted
public. Is this war really necessary? Do we have to fight it now? Will we
have to fight it alone? And will starting a war have consequences like more
terrorist attacks at home and abroad?
Administration officials are still working out their plan for answering
those questions in a way that will show Americans that war, as terrible as
it is, is the least costly course possible. Saddam, they will argue, is
dangerous now and will grow only more dangerous as he builds his arsenal of
gases and poisons and searches for a nuclear weapon. There is a sense, at
least inside the Beltway, that Bush will eventually win the support he
needs. But the issues haven't yet been fully aired, and to the extent that
there has been debate, it has occurred largely within the President's party,
between the brain trust of the current President Bush and the veterans of
his father's Administration. Democrats have been nearly silent on the merits
of an invasion, perhaps because there's no point wasting a bullet when, for
now, there are plenty of Republicans to do it for them (and perhaps because
so many Dems have been in Washington long enough to regret their votes
against the first President Bush's war against Saddam). With the country
hurtling toward possible conflict, it's almost hard to recall how much in
disarray the Administration's Iraq policy was just a week or two ago. Before
the President launched his new offensive, the oddly public dissension among
his top aides threatened to unhinge his war wagon altogether. Vice President
Dick Cheney articulated the hard line, arguing that inaction was tantamount
to appeasement, even as Secretary of State Colin Powell talked up a far
milder next step: getting U.N. arms inspectors back into Iraq. So jarring
had been the dissonance that when Bush summoned congressional leaders to the
White House last Wednesday to ask lawmakers to unite behind his Iraq policy,
House International Relations Committee chairman Henry Hyde said the
President's team should do so first. "The Administration has to speak with
one voice," he said.
Intentionally or not, by pushing lawmakers to focus on Iraq, the
Administration is deflecting issues that might have caused trouble for the
Republicans this election season, like the shaky economy, shrinking 401(k)s
and a litany of CEO wrongdoing. A popular President is pushing Congress to
vote on Iraq before Election Day, Nov. 5, and the timing could put lawmakers
on the spot. Early this year, Bush adviser Karl Rove boasted, "We can go to
the country on this [war on terrorism] issue because they trust the
Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening
America's military might and thereby protecting America." That said, some
Democratic strategists still insist that come November pocketbook issues,
not Iraq, will drive the election. Recent history bolsters the argument: in
the 1990 midterm election, another time of economic malaise, Republicans
lost eight House seats and one Senate seat, even as the first President Bush
was sending troops by the thousands to the Persian Gulf.