Staying--and Overstaying--the Course

By JOE KLEIN

"My strategy is pretty simple," President George W. Bush said last week, of his continuing determination to pass Social Security reform. "Explain the problem to the American people, and keep explaining it and explaining it." There was defiance but also a certain frustration in his voice as he said this. The Gods of Wisdom in Washington have determined that Bush is in a trough. His poll numbers are declining. His approval rating is back where it was--in the mid-40s--before it was artificially inflated during the 2004 campaign by the dread prospect that John Kerry might replace him. Social Security reform is widely assumed to be dead. The war in Iraq is stymied and losing public support. There is talk that Bush has squandered the goodwill he earned by winning re-election, that the Democrats' sapping obstructionist strategy has weakened him. There is talk that he is on the brink of becoming a lame duck.

Most of this is nonsense. The Gods of Wisdom are bored. They are suffering fight-deprivation syndrome. The big spring battle in the Senate over filibuster rules and judicial appointments was resolved through compromise; Social Security has been talked to death; and the insipid Democrats have refused to confront the President on issues that actually matter, like the need for a comprehensive health-insurance overhaul or the absence of a coherent strategy in Iraq. The titillation of the trivial--the tendency to rate the presidency solely on the polling and politics of the moment--means that Bush has largely escaped judgment on the actual work of his Administration.

I watched the President go through his public paces last week--a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speeches touting Social Security reform and the Patriot Act--and his stubborn consistency was both admirable and annoying. His unwillingness to drop Social Security reform in the face of lousy polling results is certainly admirable. He has changed the emphasis from semi-privatization of old-age pensions (although he still favors that change) to the solvency of the system, and he has proposed a creative solution, progressive indexing, which would modulate benefits according to income, with the poor receiving proportionately more than the wealthy. This is an idea Democrats would embrace if they had the courage of their "progressive" convictions. But the donkeys appear to be more obsessed with social issues (like abortion rights) than with programs to benefit the poor, and most obsessed with short-term tactics to thwart Bush, regardless of the quality of his proposals.

Also admirable is the President's sudden infatuation with soybeans and their potential as a source of biodiesel fuel. He mentioned this twice last week--at the Blair press conference and as an aside in the Social Security speech. It is possible that Bush's belated interest in alternative fuels is a ploy to misguide the public into thinking that his proposed energy bill is something more than a tax-incentive gravy train for the oil and coal industries (after all, the New York Times reported last week that the Administration has allowed a former oil- industry lobbyist to "edit" its position on global warming). But it is also possible that Bush is signaling that he would be open to a revised energy bill, with greater incentives for the production and purchase of hybrid automobiles and for the construction of alternative-fuel infrastructure. It is not impossible that some Democrats might be lured to the table by such a proposal, even if it is Bush doing the proposing.

But the Blair press conference also was notable for the President's continuing, annoying--indeed, outrageous--refusal to talk straight about Iraq. His platitudes haven't changed a bit. Yes, the Jan. 30 election was inspiring, but the good vibrations have long since evaporated. In recent months the intelligence community has concluded that the Iraqi insurgency is more coherent than previously supposed--with a collegial, if not strictly defined, leadership network, reliable funding sources and Sunni fighters far more adept than the nine-week wonders being produced for the new government by U.S. trainers. There is a growing fear that the myopia of the current Shi'ite leadership in Iraq will soon provoke a full-scale Sunni rebellion and civil war. Last week's announcement that armed Shi'ite and Kurdish militias would continue to be tolerated by the new government certainly didn't help. "There needs to be an immediate, aggressive U.S. diplomatic intervention," says Leslie H. Gelb, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who recently visited Iraq. "The Sunnis and Shi'ites have to cut a deal, and we should help them get there."

In sum, Iraq has to be rethought--as do the current deployment levels and recruitment strategy of the U.S. military. The President may have been diverted by his second-term agenda--he vowed 60 Social Security speeches in 60 days!--and the Democrats may have given him a free pass on defense policy, but Bush's legacy is embedded in the Mesopotamian desert, and so is the nation's long-term security.