There’s no question that the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina had a significant impact on the Bush Administration. The President’s approval numbers are at all time lows, and the administration itself seems to be less confident in a way that hasn’t been seen since before 9/11. In today’s Washington Post, there’s this report about the administration’s effort to regain its swagger.
A president who roamed across the national and world stages with an unshakable self-assurance that comforted Republicans and confounded critics since 2001 suddenly finds himself struggling to reclaim his swagger. Bush’s standing with the public — and within the Republican Party — has been battered by a failed Social Security campaign, violence in Iraq, and most recently Hurricane Katrina. His approval ratings, 42 percent in the most recent Washington Post-ABC poll, have never been lower.
Every two-term President in recent history has reached a turning point in his second term where things just started going downhill. For Nixon, it was, of course, Watergate which led to his eventual resignation. For Reagan, it was the Iran-Contra scandal. For Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky. In each case, things were never the same after the turning point was reached. Nixon had to resign, of course, but even Reagan and Clinton were never quite the same after their respective turning points. Was Hurricane Katrina George W. Bush’s turning point ? It certainly seems like it.
What impact this will have on the President’s political capital depends largely on how he responds to it. So far, at least, the response seems to be a willingness to admit mistakes that has been lacking in the past.
In small, sometimes subtle but unmistakable ways, the president and top aides sound less certain, more conciliatory and willing to do something they avoided in the first term: admit mistakes. After bulling through crisis after crisis with a “bring ‘em on” brashness, a more solemn Bush now has twice taken responsibility for the much-criticized response to Hurricane Katrina.Aides who never betrayed self-doubt now talk in private of failures selling the American people on the Iraq war, the president’s Social Security plan and his response to Hurricane Katrina. The president who once told the United Nations it would drift into irrelevancy if it did not back the invasion of Iraq last week praised the world body and said the world works better “when we act together.” A White House team that operated on its terms since 2000 is reaching to outside experts for answers like never before.
A positive response perhaps, but a willingness to admit mistakes can also be interpreted as a sign of weakness. And Washington is a city full of sharks ready to pounce when they smell blood in the water. Even Bush’s allies are distancing themselves:
The most immediate consequence of the new governing reality for Bush is the growing number of Republicans shedding their fear of publicly challenging the White House. Consider Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.). The conservative senator, a Bush loyalist from day one, in the past week has suggested Bush might be a political liability for him in Pennsylvania and then told a local newspaper that the White House botched the Social Security effort. At private meeting on Capitol Hill this week, John Fund, a conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) and others complained about a White House that seems sluggish and way off its game, participants said.
Still, Bush’s allies said any stumbles are anomalies and changes in tones momentary. They note, for instance, that the administration is still winning political victories, such as the likely confirmation of the president’s nominee for chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr.
I disagree. The Roberts nomination never became the fight some were anticipating because it seems like the Democrats had consciously decided to save their powder for the next nomination, to replace Sandra Day O’Connor. That will be the real test of the Bush Administration’s political capital in the new Post-Katrina reality.
