TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102290/1022108.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 9.3 KB | 194 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 26

Read My Hips


Bush's flip-flops add new confusion to the budget battle and
raise doubts about his domestic leadership

By DAN GOODGAME/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Michael Duffy/
Washington


    The question is perhaps best left to psychiatrists, but last
week Congressmen, Senators, White House aides and millions of
Americans were trying to answer it. How could George Bush --
the World War II bomber pilot, the Commander in Chief who
invaded Panama and ousted its dictator, the leader who
dispatched more than 200,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf
and ably assembled an international alliance to confront Saddam
Hussein -- be so wishy-washy?

    As Congress squabbled in search of a budget, Bush during
three dizzying days switched his position at least four times
on the key question of what additional taxes the most affluent
citizens should pay to help reduce the budget deficit. On
Tuesday morning he declared that he might accept raising income
taxes on the wealthy in exchange for his long-sought cut in
taxes on capital gains. That afternoon he backpedaled under
pressure from Senate Republicans: White House aides announced
that Bush did not favor pursuing such a deal. Two days later,
facing countervailing pressure from House Republicans, Bush
reopened the possibility. Then about an hour later he closed it
again.

    Asked to clarify his position as he jogged in a St.
Petersburg baseball park, Bush pointed to his backside and
gibed, "Read my hips." Then, literally and metaphorically, he
abandoned the playing field. He later said he would wait for
Congress to clear up the confusion he had helped engender.
Bush's vacillation confounded his allies and delighted his
opponents. Newspapers across the country bannered headlines
studded with words like WAFFLE, RETREAT, BLINK and ZIG-ZAG.
Bush's approval rating, which stood in the mid-70s only a month
ago, plummeted 10 to 15 points. It was, said a senior
Administration official, "the worst week of his presidency."
The outpouring of criticism reflected long-held doubts about
Bush's approach to domestic affairs. G.O.P. strategists
complained that the President's flip-flops had weakened the
widespread perception that Congress is more responsible for the
budget fiasco than the White House. Complained a top adviser to
the President: "We've managed to change the subject from `Can
the Congress pass a budget?' to `Why isn't the President
leading?'"

    Moreover, by concentrating on cutting the capital-gains tax,
which would benefit mainly the few Americans who earn more than
$200,000  a year, the President strengthened the impression that
his highest domestic priority is taking care of the rich.
Harrison Hickman, a Democratic pollster, gleefully observed
that "George Bush has two Achilles' heels -- `rich' and `wimp'
-- and managed to expose both of them on the same day."

    The President and his men naturally downplayed the political
damage. Bush told reporters that "these things come and go. The
best thing, we get a budget deal, we get a good deal, and
people will forget the name calling." But when a budget deal
is passed, Bush may have little influence over it, and will
have trouble dispelling his image of weakness.

    Another danger was that Bush's performance would rattle the
confidence of allies in the anti-Saddam coalition and
strengthen the Iraqi leader's resolve against an enemy he
perceived as wounded. So far the European and Arab leaders in
the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq believe that the
President's domestic problems have little effect on his conduct
of foreign policy. Bush's advisers insist that there is a
"fire wall" between domestic and foreign policy, not only in
the President's thinking but also in that of the Congress and
the public.

    So why has Bush inflicted so much unnecessary damage on
himself? Part of the answer is that he has never had firm
convictions on domestic issues; over the years he has altered
his stance on abortion, civil rights and even supply-side
economics when it was politically expedient to do so. Bush has
always regarded domestic policy as "deep doo-doo," not to be
stepped in if at all possible. Foreign affairs, on the other
hand, he regards as his strongest suit. As Bush acknowledged at
a White House press conference last week, "When you get a
problem with the complexities that the Middle East has now, and
the gulf has now, I enjoy trying to put the coalition together
and keep it together. . . . I can't say I just rejoice every
time I go up and talk to [House Ways and Means chairman Dan]
Rostenkowski about what he's going to do on taxes."

    Any President faces fewer constraints in foreign policy than
at home, and many have been known to seek solace from the
slings and arrows of homegrown politics in its embrace. But
what particularly drags Bush down in domestic policy is the
limits of his leadership style and the key lieutenants on whom
he relies.

    Bush's patrician approach -- gradually building trust among
other members of an elite and cutting private deals with them
-- has often worked effectively on the foreign front. But it
does not deliver as well in domestic policy, where myriad
officials, interest groups and ordinary citizens demand to have
their say, both before any proposed solution is made public and
afterward. When Bush tries to communicate with a TV audience,
he often lacks confidence. More important, except when he is
campaigning for himself, Bush shrinks from framing options in
a stark and persuasive manner that can force people to make a
choice. He often speaks of using the "bully pulpit" to get his
way, but to him it means little more than "telling people how
deeply you feel" instead of knocking heads together to get
things done.

    For more than a year Rostenkowski, one of Bush's closest
friends in Congress, has pleaded with the President to "tell
the American people that if we don't balance our budget, we're
going to be No. 2 in the world, and the American people will
say `The hell we are!' If you challenge them, they will accept
whatever sacrifice you say is necessary."

    Bush was unmoved by Rostenkowski's appeal, as he was last
month when some advisers urged him to forcefully exploit the
crisis in the gulf as an opportunity to make progress on the
budget. Bush did give a televised speech linking the two
problems, but rather than call on all Americans to sacrifice,
he proposed nearly $30 billion in new tax breaks and left the
tough choices to Congress.

    After reaching a budget agreement with congressional
leaders, Bush delivered a tepid prime-time address on Oct. 2
asking Americans to call their lawmakers in support of the
deal. Instead, the overwhelming majority of calls and letters
opposed it, with many complaining that its regressive approach
-- with increased taxes on liquor, tobacco and gasoline, not
to mention higher Medicare premiums -- would hurt the poor more
than the rich.

    Thus when Bush last week conceded that he might be willing
to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans, many
Republicans were flabbergasted that he had done it so casually,
in the course of a 40-minute press conference. If he had issued
a ringing proclamation that higher taxes on the rich were
needed, says a senior Republican, "he could have explained that
he felt it was necessary to make the package fair, and we would
have got political credit for it. Instead, now we look like
we're being dragged into raising the top rates and the Democrats
are beating us to death as the party of the rich."

    The President's effectiveness in domestic policy has been
further hampered by the ham-handedness of White House chief of
staff John Sununu. The former New Hampshire Governor, complains
an official, "got ahead of the boss" when he sought to kill the
deal combining a capital-gains tax cut with a higher income tax
rate -- a mistake that did not go unnoticed by Bush. By failing
to disguise his contempt for Congress, Sununu has managed to
alienate even the Republicans whose support Bush desperately
needs. Two weeks ago, Sununu dismissed Mississippi Senator
Trent Lott's complaints about the original budget pact as
"insignificant." In response Lott ordered up buttons with the
words I'M INSIGNIFICANT, TOO. Sununu's remark was especially
damaging because Lott has provided crucial votes to uphold three
of the President's least popular vetoes. Says Lott: "They're
going to need me again, real bad and real soon."

    The White House budget strategy, such as it is, assumes that
none of the factions that rejected the bipartisan budget accord
will manage to put together a plan they like better and get it
through the House and the Senate. After they fail, a senior
White House official predicts, "everybody's got to be forced
back to the middle" -- that is, back to an outline not very
different from the defeated proposal. That could happen. But
many members of both parties say they would not be pushed back
to the regressive approach that was so resoundingly turned down
two weeks ago. They would rather pass a budget that is both
more equitable and practical -- if the President would only
assume his responsibilities and lead them to it.