| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Tuttles Almanac" |
| Date: |
23 Oct 2005 11:07:31 AM |
| Object: |
Dubya's Bar Mitzvah |
Like Father, Like Son for Bushes http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BUSH_FATHERS_MISTAKES?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=POLITICS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-10-22-12-50-44
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Throughout his first term, President Bush
struggled to avoid repeating his father's mistakes. Yet less
than a year after he claimed the re-election mandate denied
his dad, he is confronting some of the same problems that
bedeviled the first Bush presidency.
Like father, like son:
-Conservatives are rebelling.
-His poll numbers are in the basement.
-Economic unrest is growing.
-Top White House staffers are under fire.
"George W. Bush always wanted to be like Ronald Reagan,
rather than like his father," said presidential historian
Thomas Cronin of Colorado College.
But it was an aspiration that may have set him up for failure.
"Both Bushes were held to a real and imagined Reagan bar.
And when his father broke his promise on 'no new taxes,'
he got hit really hard by the right," Cronin said.
Likewise, when the younger Bush nominated Harriet Miers,
his former personal lawyer, to the Supreme Court, bypassing
experienced jurists with proven conservative credentials,
many prominent conservatives balked. He promised them another
conservative like Justice Antonin Scalia, but he gave them
a mystery. Politicians of all stripes hate uncertainty.
Congressional misgivings over Miers and the CIA leak
investigation involving White House advisers have cast a
cloud over the administration.
Soaring gas prices, hurricane reconstruction costs,
the war in Iraq and declining consumer confidence have
darkened the economic outlook.
Avoiding his father's path was a first-term mantra for the younger Bush.
Where the father distanced himself from religious conservatives,
the son aggressively courted them.
The first Bush built an international coalition and ended the
first Gulf War after driving Iraq from Kuwait. The younger Bush
ignored international opposition and toppled Saddam Hussein's government.
The father was criticized for lacking an economic program other than
"message: I care." The son promised big tax cuts and muscled them
through Congress. No one called him a wimp. But the younger Bush
made several miscalculations, some of his Republican critics suggest.
"I think he concluded that as long as he remained loyal to the
conservative side on one issue - tax cuts - he could pretty much
do anything he wanted in other areas and the conservatives would
stand behind him," said Bruce Bartlett, who was deputy assistant
treasury secretary in the first Bush administration.
"And that worked for quite a while. But it was a shortsighted
point of view," said Bartlett, who has just written a book,
"The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and
Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."
The selection of Miers, the White House counsel, to replace
retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor followed growing conservative
unease about other Bush moves: the escalating cost of the Iraq war,
Medicare and other government programs; his proposal to liberalize
immigration laws; and his pledge to "spend what it takes" and
lift New Orleans out of poverty.
"There's a lot of frustration that was bubbling and building up,"
said Republican consultant Greg Mueller. "And Harriet Miers kind
of became the vehicle to channel that frustration, kind of the
tipping point in many ways."
Some of the fiercest criticism of the Miers nomination is coming
from veterans of the first Bush White House.
Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for both Reagan and the elder Bush,
contended that Miers' nomination is a mistake on par with the father's
selection of Dan Quayle for vice president.
The elder Bush's ratings dipped under 30 percent in late summer 1992.
The current president stood at 39 percent in an AP-Ipsos poll taken two
weeks ago, the lowest of his presidency.
The current Bush was criticized that he was slow to recognize the
severity of Hurricane Katrina. The first Bush was criticized for
being slow to respond to Hurricane Andrew, which slammed into
southern Florida on Aug. 24, 1992, and did extensive damage.
The current Bush's White House is distracted by a special
prosecutor's inquiry into whether administration officials
illegally leaked the name of a CIA operative for political reasons.
The investigation appears focused on Bush's top White House adviser,
Karl Rove, and Vice President ***** Cheney's chief of staff,
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
In the year before the 1992 presidential election, with his
poll numbers tumbling, the elder Bush had a staff that also
was in turmoil. John Sununu resigned as chief of staff under
a cloud and was replaced by former Transportation Secretary
Sam Skinner, who in turn was replaced by former Secretary of
State James A. Baker III.
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