Commentary No. 121, Sept. 15, 2003
"Bush in Big Trouble at Home"
President Bush has been in great trouble with most of the world for over a year now, if not longer. But he has retained solid strength in the United States, up to about three months ago. Now, it's slipping away, and very fast.
Let's start with the Establishment press. The Republicans like to refer to this press as the "liberal press," suggesting that they are leftist wolves in sheep's clothing. But the fact is that the Establishment press in the United States is and always has been solidly centrist. For a year after 9/11, indeed up until three months ago, this centrist press sounded like they simply took the press releases from the White House and endorsed them. Now suddenly, this is no longer true. Indeed far from true. One only needs to take a look at the four main TV channels (CBS, NBC, CBS, and CNN) or read the main news magazines (Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report) or the principal newspapers (N.Y. Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times, Boston Globe). What one sees is article after article - news stories, opinion pieces, editorials - quite critical of the Bush administration - of its policies in Iraq, or rather of its "failures" in Iraq, and of its inability to counter the persistent and growing recession and unemployment in the United States. Indeed these articles are now so critical that they comment openly and negatively on what the Bush people say.
The Bush administration got the U.S. into the war with scare tactics about Iraq - weapons of mass destruction, rocket launchers, drone planes that could spread biological weapons; and of course, close ties to Al-Qaeda. One by one, each of these claims has come undone. No weapons have been found, nor rockets, nor drone planes, nor ties to Al-Qaeda. And more and more intelligence people are saying now that they told the Bush administration this long ago, long before the invasion. This is so true that the Bush people stopped defending the invasion on these grounds some two months ago. They found another argument. The U.S. got rid of Saddam Hussein, for which the Iraqi people are eternally grateful. And the Iraqis will now build an exemplary democratic state in the Middle East. But the Iraqis seem to be expressing their gratitude by shooting at American soldiers with some regularity. The country is a physical and political mess. And if Iraq has become a beacon to the democratic world, I must be living on another planet.
The most unbelievable picture, in terms of where the U.S. was even three months ago, is what is happening in the Democratic Party - the meteoric rise of Howard Dean. Howard Dean was a rather obscure governor of a small state, centrist in his political options (at least in the past), who started with only one thing going for him. He was an open critic of the invasion of Iraq. Up to three months ago, there were only a handful of prominent Democratic opponents of the war - Senators Byrd, Kennedy, Graham, Rep. Kucinich, and most of all, Howard Dean. That was about it. Everyone else had jumped on Bush's patriotic bandwagon, including the four major opponents of Dean for the Democratic nomination - Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt.
Dean's outspoken, very down to earth, persistent opposition to the Iraq war (expressed not only before but also after it started) gained him a national audience. And his smart use of the internet gave him a political grassroots organization across the country and financial contributions that have outdone his Democratic opponents. The press originally treated him as inconsequential, then as interesting but marginal, then as interesting but sure to lose the election to Bush if he won the nomination, to its present belief that not only can he win the nomination but he has a good shot at beating Bush. His Democratic opponents have responded to the Dean phenomenon by coming as close to his position as they possibly can, given their past records and commitments. The four major opponents are now saying that the invasion may have been correct, but the aftermath was very badly planned. This doesn't really persuade anyone. Just as Democratic voters don't seem to want "Bush light" (which is what some commentators called Lieberman), so they don't seem to want "Dean light" (which is what they are calling Kerry, Edwards, and Gephardt now).
Even more interesting has been the reaction of the Republican political insiders. Originally, they thought Dean would be the easiest Democrat to defeat. Now they quite openly admit he might be the hardest. After all, there is already a Republicans for Dean organization.
Finally, there are the ordinary voters, the ones who get polled regularly. Bush's ratings have been steadily falling. Today, at best he has a bare majority who think he's doing well. But more interesting is the latest poll that shows that 64% of the American population believe that the Iraq invasion has increased the likelihood of terrorist attacks. 77% believe that negative attitudes toward the U.S. in the Islamic world have increased terrorist recruiting. And 81% think that the true lesson of 9/11 is that the U.S. needs to be more multilateral.
The Bush administration is inching its way back to trying to seem multilateral. They are seeking a U.N. resolution, and are more or less pleading with other countries to send in troops and money (let bygones be bygone, suggests President Bush). But the U.S. still doesn't want to give up U.S. political and military primacy in Iraq, which is no doubt the real price they must pay to get support. The U.S. may get its U.N. resolution, or some diluted version of it. But even so, the U.S. probably will get neither troops nor money from other countries, anyway nothing significant. To be sure, after Bush's latest speech, Romania promised another 50 soldiers. But that's so ridiculous that even the Bush administration doesn't advertise it.
The first American voices for a full U.S. withdrawal from Iraq have started to be heard. Their numbers will be growing and they may be shouting quite loudly in the next three months, as the casualties continue to mount, the situation in Israel/Palestine deteriorates still further, and unemployment continues to mount in the U.S. The neo-cons are aware of this. They have begun to say that the comparison is not with Vietnam, but with Somalia, where the U.S. withdrew in disgrace and defeat. They are warning that, if the U.S. does not stand firm, it will lose everything. In a sense they are right.
This is George Bush's unsolvable dilemma. If he stands firm, but resolves nothing in Iraq, his likelihood of reelection will diminish radically and rapidly. If, however, he doesn't stand firm, he will be ridiculed as someone who talked big and couldn't stand the heat in the kitchen. His principal danger is not losing the center, but losing his own firm supporters on the right. Many of them are already unhappy that this administration has been one of the most spending administrations in the history of the U.S. despite its rhetoric. The U.S. deficit is approaching rapidly the half trillion dollar mark. Probably George Bush's only way out would be to say to the American people: The U.S. needs to stay in Iraq for five years at least. And for that, we need American sacrifices. I am going to reinstitute the draft, and I am going to ask for sharp tax increases to pay for this imperial policy. This is in fact what someone like Sen. McCain would do. It might even work, at least in terms of American backing for such a policy. But George Bush doesn't have the guts to do it, and the people around him have many other agendas.
So, bye-bye George W. Bush. In ten years, we will look back and agree that no president in the history of the United States did more to weaken the world power and prestige of the United States. George W. Bush will have the record.
Immanuel Wallerstein
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
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