Bush fails to stem erosion of authority

Bush fails to stem erosion of authority
By Edward Luce in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Published: January 24 2007 19:41 | Last updated: January 24 2007 19:41



Although it had been billed as one of the most important speeches of his presidency, there were few signs on Wednesday that George W. Bush’s State of the Union address had succeeded in stemming the rapid haemorrhaging of his authority.

A number of leading Democrats, including Barack Obama, a front-runner for the 2008 presidential campaign, evinced cautious welcomes for Mr Bush’s modest proposals to address global warming and healthcare reform.

But most Democrats and several prominent Republicans remained fixed on Mr Bush’s unwillingness to listen to his growing army of critics over the war in Iraq, to which he devoted about a quarter of the 50-minute speech on Tuesday night.

In spite of an impassioned plea for Congress to give his Iraq strategy a chance, Mr Bush failed even to sway waverers within his own party.

Several leading Republicans, including John Warner, the former chairman of the senate armed services committee, plan to go ahead with resolutions that oppose Mr Bush’s 21,500 troop “surge” to Iraq.

“If people like John Warner, who represents the southern and military heart of the Republican party, are now abandoning Mr Bush over Iraq then he is going to come under acute pressure to reverse course,” said Bruce Riedel at the Saban Centre for the Middle East in Washington DC. “His speech failed to dent those defections.”

On domestic policy, meanwhile, the Democratic leadership in both houses dismissed Mr Bush’s proposals as either too timid or irrelevant. Mr Bush was also criticised for failing to mention reconstruction in New Orleans following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“We were very surprised last night when the president talked about the city of Baghdad that he did not mention the city of Detroit or Louisville or Minneapolis or, most importantly, the city of New Orleans,” said Debbie Stabenow, Democratic senator for Michigan.

In contrast to his six previous State of the Union addresses, Mr Bush appealed to Congress, which turned Democrat last November for the first time in his presidency, to work “across the aisle” in a bipartisan way in order to “achieve big things for the American people”. But the already-weak prospects for a fruitful White House legislative agenda over the next 18 months appear only to have waned further.

“If you want to see bold bipartisan action between now and 2008 you should look to America’s democratic laboratories at the state level where states like California and Massachusetts are showing the way on issues like healthcare and global warming,” said Ted Halstead, president of the Centre for the New America Foundation, a centrist think tank in Washington.

As authority drains from the White House, Washington is also increasingly looking to the large and growing field of 2008 presidential candidates – most of whom are in the Senate – to provide a lead on big policy ideas, such as healthcare, Iraq and climate change. With the exception of John McCain, who dutifully welcomed Mr Bush’s restated Iraq plan, almost all others were either critical or lukewarm.

Hillary Clinton, who entered the race last weekend, spoke for most Democrats when she opposed Mr Bush’s proposal to put a cap on employer-provided health benefits and extend higher subsidies to individuals. The former first lady said it would do very little to bring in the 47m Americans who have no health insurance.

Likewise on global warming, Mr Bush’s ideas were dismissed as too little too late. “In last year’s State of the Union, Mr Bush said we were addicted to oil and nothing happened,” said Evan Bayh, Democratic senator for Indiana. “Doing little or nothing on this issue is not good enough any more.”

But it was Jim Webb, the newly elected Democratic senator for Virginia, who best summarised Mr Bush’s prospects when he gave his party’s response straight after the president’s speech on prime time television.

Mr Webb, a Vietnam veteran, called on the president to follow the lead of some of his most illustrious predecessors who had changed course dramatically in mid-stream. “If he does, then we will join him,” said Mr Webb, “If he does not, then we will be showing him the way.”