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| Bush as wartime president |
| 2001-09-15 |
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush came to office as a two-term Texas governor with scant foreign policy experience. Suddenly he faces one of the most complicated national security challenges ever to confront a U.S. president. As his father before him, Bush has been transformed into a wartime president by events beyond his control. But few, not even the elder Bush, believe that the president can orchestrate the kind of offensive that enabled the first Bush administration to prevail over Iraq in a 1991 war that lasted a mere month. Initially the president drew criticism for not returning to Washington on Tuesday from Florida to take command. The administration said he acted on the advice of the Secret Service because the White House and Air Force One were possible targets. Bush moved quickly to cover the major bases. He unified a divided Congress, comforted a grieving nation, reached out for international support and rallied rescue workers in the rubble of New York's World Trade Center. Bush proclaimed the United States engaged in the "first war of the 21st century." Congressional leaders, too, were quick to use the word "war." Hardening his tone, Bush on Saturday said flatly, "We're at war." By week's end, both chambers of Congress had put aside their partisan differences to vote unanimously to give Bush the authority to use military force against terrorists linked to the attacks and against those that sponsor them. Congress also approved a $40 billion anti-terrorism package. His approval ratings in national polls since have soared from the mid-fifties to about 80 percent - near his father's approval ratings at the end of the Persian Gulf War. But there is no guarantee that those numbers will remain so lofty - as the elder Bush discovered when the economy soured, his popularity plummeted and he lost the White House. "Nobody should be questioning any decisions he (Bush) makes," former President Clinton said in a telephone interview after the attacks. "We ought to be hanging in there, giving his national security team the time it takes." "This is probably the most complex multilevel challenge that a president has faced since the Civil War," said presidential historian Stephen Hess. "It's almost like a giant onion: there are layers upon layers of challenges that Bush faces." Among the challenges: an enormous disaster-relief effort, a complex criminal investigation, trying to force an international coalition against an enemy that is not a nation-state and incredible military logistical problems. Despite those obstacles, the fight against terrorism "is now the focus of my administration," Bush said. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |