GEORGE W. Bush is a high-stakes player, a political gambler. And last night he took a fantastically bold gamble: In the teeth of bad polls, an atmosphere of panic in his own party and the barely concealed glee of his rivals . . . he has decided to stand pat.
He didn’t change course last night. He didn’t use the occasion to announce elevated troop levels or faster elections or any of the panacea urged upon him over the past few weeks (including by me).
In other words, he is betting his presidency on the soundness of his approach and its prospects for success.
For there is no question now that Iraq is and will be (barring another terrorist catastrophe) the only issue in the presidential election. Bush has powerhouse economic numbers that any politician would kill for, and still more than 60 percent in every national poll say that America is on the “wrong track.”
That’s solely because of Iraq. And in a way, there’s something heartening about it. The American people are identifying themselves and their country’s fortunes with the progress or perceived lack of progress in Iraq. They’re not just floating away on a tide of good news. The nation is at war, and the nation is taking that war seriously.
There would be no reason for Americans to believe that things were going well in Iraq after all the bad news these past weeks, from the prison scandal to the confusing pullback from Fallujah to the even more confusing raid on Ahmed Chalabi’s house.
Left-wing policy analyst Ruy Texieira said last year that the danger posed to Bush by a poor economy was not that he would appear out of touch (as his father did) but that he would appear incompetent. Texieira may have gotten it right even though he got the subject wrong. If the American people judge that Bush is totally incompetent in his handling of Iraq, they might well take a chance on John Kerry in his stead.
The speech’s purpose was to address and answer that concern about his competence. That’s why it was so long and so detailed, with a five-step plan for political change leading up to direct elections of Iraqi leaders at the start of 2005. The president sounded stalwart and engaged, aware of all the moving parts and gear-shifts that will be necessary in the coming months.
Bush’s decision to stay on course may not simply be an example of stubbornness. The fact is that the news from the battlefield in Iraq these past five or six days has been remarkably good. The forces commanded and directed by the thug-cleric Muqtada al-Sadr are on the run or nearly destroyed in three different cities.
Sadr’s uprising two months ago was the moment at which even passionate supporters of the war and proponents of the success in achieving civil order began to grow terrified that somehow the United States might actually lose in Iraq. So shouldn’t the fact that we’re routing him be grounds for some optimism?
It’s very meaningful that other Shiite clerics in the city of Najaf now feel safe enough to issue what must be judged an astounding denunciation of Sadr in the past few days.
As reported on the brilliant Healing Iraq blog (healingiraq.blogspot.com), Najaf clerics laid the blame for the entry of U.S. forces into that holy city: “It is the movement of Sayyid Muqtada [Sadr] that has encouraged the occupiers to cross the red lines,” the senior clerics in Najaf wrote. “And it is clear that the organization of Sayyid Muqtada – and whoever follows the Sadrist movement – were the first to violate the sanctity of” the city’s holiest shrine.
The president said that “history is moving and it will tend toward hope or tend toward tragedy.” At a moment of great political peril for him, Bush is remaining calm.
He’s placed his bet.