The Bush political recovery may just have begun. A number of
steps remain, though — difficult steps worth examining
(highlighted in bold) in some detail. First things first: With the
commutation of the prison sentence of I. Lewis
“Scooter” Libby, President George W. Bush not only did (at least
partially) the right thing; he also took the first step towards a
long-shot but still possible comeback in public esteem and
influence, and in the ultimate judgment of history.
Although the commutation was both reasonable and well-reasoned
on the merits — without regard to political considerations — the
basic political reality is that Bush cannot regain his political
standing without first securing (or re-securing) the strong
allegiance of the conservatives who have been his most bedrock
supporters. Most of those conservatives would not have forgiven
Bush if he had let Libby serve time in prison; conversely, the
commutation might go a small way, at least, toward re-energizing
them.
But Bush still has a long way to go. To recover politically, he
must do at least four more things.
First, he must learn to lose gracefully and turn losses
to his advantage.
Second, he must try new tactics and styles of
communication.
Third, he must skillfully use battles over the judiciary
to his advantage.
Fourth, he must be seen as working to mitigate high
energy prices.
Meanwhile, of course, even as Bush works on all four of those
tracks, which are ones he has a reasonable chance of controlling,
he will never complete his comeback without achieving identifiable
success in Iraq. But that is mostly a topic for another day.
SO, YOU MIGHT ASK, how can Bush accomplish those four big tasks?
Let’s start with losing gracefully (1), where he
can learn a lesson from current Alabama Gov. Bob Riley.
The big loss Bush just suffered, of course, occurred on the
massive immigration bill that went down in flames last week. His
first reaction to the loss wasn’t helpful. He looked and sounded
shaken, and in effect he chided Congress for not producing results.
The response was politically tone-deaf. It made him sound like a
sore loser. But there is still time to change that impression.
When Gov. Riley pushed a massive and complicated tax reform
package in his first year in office, only to see it rejected by a
stunning 2-1 margin, he greeted the news with an open and engaging,
if somewhat sheepish, smile. He said he had learned something from
the people of Alabama and would take it to heart. He said he would
find another way to meet their needs and his public obligations,
and that state government would need to perform better in order to
re-earn the trust of its citizens. And he did it with all the grace
and good humor with which golfer Jack Nicklaus was justly famed for
greeting tough losses to the likes of Lee Trevino and Tom
Watson.
Riley went back to work, attacked the state’s fiscal problems
and tax inequities in bite-sized chunks…and, three years later,
despite having won his first term by a mere 3,000 votes out of more
than 1.3 million cast, Riley earned re-election in a landslide even
as his Republican Party took major losses nationwide.
Bush could do likewise. After the Independence Day recess, he
should say that he accepts the judgment of the American people on
immigration, namely that existing laws ought to be better enforced
and that government performance must be upgraded before more
comprehensive reforms are attempted. He could vow, in addition to
better enforcement, to approach the subject with smaller, piecemeal
reforms (i.e., bite-sized chunks), beginning only with those that
are less controversial and more easily implemented.
A newfound ability to acknowledge and learn from losses or
mistakes, and to adjust accordingly, would begin to earn him
respect from disaffected voters in the political right and
center.
ALL THAT SAID, the immigration defeat was partly a symptom of a
larger problem: President Bush has not communicated his positions
in a way that persuades people who aren’t already on his side. He
needs to try new methods of communication (2).
One reason Bush fails to connect with large parts of the public
is that he communicates only one way: deductively. He starts with a
big principle, asserts that the principle is universal, and then
outlines policy choices based on that principle. The problem is
that many people either don’t buy into the principle in the first
place, or they don’t see its relevance to their own particular
world. In short, they need to be persuaded, but Bush merely
preaches. What those people — most people — need is the sort of
inductive reasoning used by Sherlock Holmes: Build fact upon fact
(or reasoned argument upon reasoned argument) in order to reach a
broader conclusion, or in this case a broader principle.
Certainly, a communicator needs to set the scene, and set an
overarching theme, from the very beginning. But then he needs to
circle back and illustrate the theme in familiar terms, and to
prove its relevance to familiar concerns, before moving on
to new prescriptions. It is this second step that Bush consistently
fails to perform.
Not only that, but President Bush needs to take better advantage
of the new tools of communication. He ought to be issuing blog
statements; he ought to be going on talk radio (or at least
releasing recorded statements to talk radio outlets); and he ought
to be seen and heard not just talking, but also listening and
responding to those who are in neither his inner circle nor in the
“mainstream media.”
THERE’S MORE HE CAN DO to communicate better, but let’s move on,
because it matters not how skilled a communicator he is if he is
choosing the wrong things to communicate. He ought to choose better
topics, substantively; and there is no better topic, both
substantively and politically, than judges (3). The
president ought to use the end of the recent Supreme Court term to
embrace the new, tenuous court majority. Large majorities of
Americans agree with Chief Justice Roberts, for instance, that “the
way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop
discriminating on the basis of race.” And the vast majority of
Americans (including the vast majority of those in Congress,
judging from their votes) agree that state legislatures ought to be
able to limit partial birth abortions.
Similarly, large majorities of Americans, including centrists
and independents, agree with the results of conservative
jurisprudence on private property rights (especially against
government confiscation of property for other private use), against
hyper-technicalities used to coddle criminals, against the left’s
outright hostility toward (rather than neutrality about) all
expressions of faith in the public square — including in the
Pledge of Allegiance. And so on: Conservative jurisprudential
results, on most issues, tend to be popular.
Of course, conservative jurists aren’t supposed to be
results-oriented. Nevertheless, a conservative adherence to the
actual language of the Constitution and statutes, and where
discernible to the original intent thereof, tends overwhelmingly
toward conservative “results” as well. Even better, the public
tends to agree that the words of the Constitution should be
interpreted to mean what they say, and that judges ought to defer
to plain meanings rather than invent new ones.
In short, a public and principled battle about appeals court
judges could only help, not hurt, Bush’s popularity and his
legacy.
Finally (for now), Bush should address public
unhappiness about high energy costs (4). The truth is that
the economy for three solid years has been spectacularly good
overall (low unemployment, low inflation, low interest rates, solid
wage growth, high levels of home ownership, etc.) — but that
public majorities won’t recognize the strong economy as long as the
billboards at gas stations give them bad news. Even worse is that
food prices recently have been rising as well. The two problems are
connected. Bush ought to admit a mistake in the too-rapid move,
mandated by the feds, to corn-based ethanol. He ought to appeal to
Americans’ desire for self-sufficiency by pushing for limited
demonstration projects of exploration in Alaska and off the coast
of Virginia. He ought to jawbone oil companies to keep their prices
down. And, for relief long-term, he ought to use every tool at his
disposal to encourage the construction of new refineries.
In other words, President Bush ought to be seen as fighting for
the American consumer against exorbitant energy prices.
There. That’s enough for now. The problem of Iraq — on which
President Bush’s ultimate aims are both practical and profoundly
moral — remains (to be addressed in a future column). What’s
important to understand is that political coalitions and political
popularity can be rebuilt just as steadily as they have been
forfeited, and that no presidency with more than 18 months
remaining in it ought to be seen as a politically dead one. At this
time in President Reagan’s second term, he too was seen as a spent
political force. But the very next year, his party was re-elected
to the presidency; and twenty years later, we still marvel at
Reagan’s accomplishments both pre- and post- the doldrums of
1987.
If Bush will be humble enough and brave enough to improve his
own performance…well, then, let the comeback proceed.
