The behind-the-scenes string pullers in the Bush camp launched their re-election plan last night with the carefully choreographed spectacle that played out on all the networks. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post provides some analysis of yesterday’s show:
Until yesterday, the White House had postponed a presidential speech declaring victory because of the messy uncertainty that remains on the ground in Iraq. There have been no confirmed findings of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. Hussein and most of his top leadership remain unaccounted for. And celebrations among liberated Iraqis have turned into anti-American protests as the country’s disparate groups begin to feud.
Last night, however, Bush set such concerns aside. He made just a glancing reference to those problems in his address to cheering sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln off California; the remaining questions in Iraq received just 140 words in an 1,800 word speech. Instead, Bush demoted the war in Iraq, and the earlier war in Afghanistan, to mere “battles” in the larger war on terrorism — and he rested much of his address on the disputed premise that Hussein’s Iraq was allied with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda.
… For Bush — who also spent the night aboard the carrier — the whole day was devoted to linking his presidency to the aura of the U.S. military. When the Viking S-3B carrying Bush made its tailhook landing on the aircraft carrier off California yesterday, Bush emerged from the cockpit in full olive flight suit and combat boots, his helmet tucked jauntily under his left arm.
… The carrier landing capped a recent period in which the president has tied himself to the military as never before. And that is no accident: Bush aides are planning to make his war leadership the focus of his 2004 reelection campaign, and yesterday’s images are crucial in burning that impression into the national cornea.
… Instead of discussing the earlier mission of disarming Iraq, Bush emphasized other, less central and less widely supported, reasons for the war. “We have removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding,” he said. “And this much is certain: no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because that regime is no more.”
The president, in linking Iraq closely to al Qaeda, implied that Hussein had a hand in the September 11 attacks — a connection has been widely described by intelligence analysts as tenuous, if it exists at all. Subtle linkages of the two in Bush’s past speeches have apparently encouraged that belief; opinion polls show large numbers of Americans believe Hussein was culpable in the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. Last night, Bush hinted strongly at the linkage again.
… Historian Douglas Brinkley said Bush’s aircraft-carrier moment was a “trophy” for the victorious war president. “It’ll be in his biography, a moment of sweet triumph,” he said. Even before that biography is written, Bush’s carrier visit may appear somewhere else: 2004 campaign footage. Brinkley called it “the opening salvo for his presidential campaign.”
Ralph Neas of the liberal group People for the American Way, cautioned: “Problems arise when a president uses patriotism and the flag not as unifying things but as political weapons. I believe they crossed the line in 2002 and am worried they’ll do the same in 2004.”
The image of Bush as victorious war leader is a complete turnaround from the 2000 campaign, when he dodged criticism of his light duty as pilot of an F-102 in the Texas National Guard. Yesterday, making his way to the Lincoln aboard a jet that can carry up to 3,958 pounds of missiles, torpedoes, rockets and bombs, the victorious commander in chief recalled his days in the Guard with fondness.
Just don’t forget: President Bush never completed his tour of duty with the Guard, and was declared AWOL. If the voters are concerned about having a military man in the White House, they’d be better off looking toward Senator Kerry – the only one running so far who has been in combat.
