The White House on Sunday tried to shore up George Bush’s credibility with an election charm offensive, engineering the president’s first appearance on a Sunday morning television chatshow to defend his war record — not only in Iraq but also during Vietnam.
Bush’s appearance on Meet the Press came as John Kerry, the Democratic frontrunner, was gaining favourable media attention following his runaway wins in the Michigan and Washington caucuses at the weekend.
On Saturday, the first lady, Laura Bush, granted a rare interview to the New York Times. Such outreach is unusual for a White House that has made little secret of its aversion to the press. Bush has granted only a dozen press conferences while in office.
But with a Newsweek poll at the weekend which showed Bush’s approval rating had dropped to 48% and that 45% of voters feel he should not be re-elected, the White House had to act.
Faced with persistent questioning on the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence and its decision to go to war on Iraq, the White House evidently calculated the president could bridge his credibility gap by taking his case directly to the people.
Bush also faces a challenge to his personal integrity dating from the Vietnam war when Kerry served as a decorated navy lieutenant. Bush served in the Texas air national guard, and Democratic activists last week revived stories that he did not complete his service.
In the hour-long interview, Bush first defended the decision to go to war in Iraq.
”I believe it is essential when we see a threat to deal with a threat before they become imminent,” he said. ”It’s too late when they become imminent.”
But he admitted he too was taken aback by the failure of weapons experts to find any nuclear, chemical or biological stockpiles in Iraq.
”I expected to find the weapons,” he said. ”Sitting behind this desk making a very difficult decision on war and peace, I made the decision on the basis of the best intelligence possible.”
Bush went on to defend his economic stewardship, and his decision to establish a commission to investigate pre-war intelligence failures on Iraq. The inquiry has been widely criticised because it will not report until 2005, months after the election.
But the president was also haunted by the events of more than 30 years ago when he was asked if he had fulfilled his service in the air national guard. ”I got an honourable discharge,” Bush said. ”I did my duty.”
He also said he had supported the Vietnam war at the time, but had lately been visited by doubts. ”The thing about the Vietnam war that troubles me as I look back was it was a political war. We had politicians making military decisions, and it is lessons that any president must learn, and that is to set the goal and the objective and allow the military to come up with the plans to achieve that objective.”
A new Time magazine poll says 60% of Americans think Kerry did his duty during the Vietnam war. In contrast, 39% say Bush fulfilled his.
The same poll showed Kerry had gained on Bush over the past month, closing the gap to 50% for the president and 48% for the Massachusetts senator, within the margin of error.
But the poll also exposed Kerry’s potential vulnerabilities. Some 21% of respondents said they would be less likely to vote for a senator from Massachusetts — believing he would be too liberal.
Kerry has already begun to address that reluctance — and to pre-empt Republican attacks on him as a Massachusetts liberal — by calling President Bush’s policies ”extreme”. He responded to Bush’s TV appearance by accusing him of spinning stories.
Kerry’s confidence is reinforced by a string of victories in the primaries, which have given his campaign an aura of invincibility. His command performance in the weekend caucuses was especially striking in Washington state, where it was thought that the internet hub of Seattle would give the advantage to Howard Dean. Instead, Dean came a distant second with 30% against Kerry’s 48%. His performance was even more dismal in Michigan.
Tomorrow, Kerry appears poised for even more significant victories: edging out two southerners, John Edwards and General Wesley Clark, in the southern states of Virginia and Tennessee. – Guardian Unlimited Â