Scandals seen as hallmark of White House under pressure

Scandals seen as hallmark of White House under pressure
By Ken Fireman
Newsday Washington Bureau
July 1, 2004

The vice president upbraids a senator on the floor of the chamber for what he calls personal attacks, then ends the conversation with a transitive verb straight from the barnyard.

A chief architect of the Iraq war refers to journalists covering the conflict as cowardly rumor-mongers during a congressional hearing, and is forced to apologize the following day.

The president himself finds it necessary to be questioned by a special prosecutor probing the outing of a covert CIA operative by someone in the administration bent on political retaliation.

The White House, faced with a prisoner abuse scandal that won't go away, is forced into the ultimate embarrassment of a Clinton-style document dump - only to discover that the new material only fuels the controversy.

Washington-watchers have seen these tropisms before, and they are not symptoms of health. They are the hallmarks of an administration under increasing pressure, and starting to stagger and stumble under the accumulated weight.

Indeed, the best news for President George W. Bush in the recent flood of poll numbers is the fact that he is still essentially even with Democratic opponent John Kerry despite all the recent setbacks and missteps.

But Bush's good news begins and ends there. A new CBS- New York Times poll puts his approval rating at 42 percent, the lowest of his presidency.

Then there is what might be called the poll of the box office. Movie-goers are lining up to watch "Fahrenheit 911," which portrays the president as clueless, duplicitous and corrupt.

Most worrisome for Bush is the finding in the latest Gallup poll that for the first time a majority of Americans say it was a mistake to go to war in Iraq. It took three years for a majority to turn against the war in Vietnam - but once that happened, Gallup notes, support for the war never regained 50 percent.

Even the relatively good news from Iraq has not come unalloyed. The United States turned over formal sovereignty to an interim government two days early; but the reason for the early handoff, to forestall insurgent attacks, and the setting, in a heavily fortified compound, hardly inspires confidence.

As events in Iraq and elsewhere have driven its support down, an administration that once prided itself on discipline and sure-footedness has begun to appear wobbly and off-balance. Like a metal structure subjected to increasing stress over time, the damage is gradual rather than catastrophic - but difficult to reverse.

One error that stands out as especially costly is the decision last year to blame the CIA for the president's inaccurate claim that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa. Picking a fight with the agency is never a good idea given its capacity for self-protective retaliation, and the administration has paid a stiff price. The latest installment came last month when the CIA cleared a new book by a senior official calling the Iraq war a blunder.

The handling of the prisoner abuse mess has been equally ham-handed. The old rule of get the bad news out early, get it over with quickly and put your own spin on it was ignored for weeks. Finally, last week, the White House swallowed its pride and resorted to a favorite Clinton tactic: releasing hundreds of pages of documents so late in the day that reporters had time for only a limited look before deadline.

If the document dump was an embarrassing reminder of an administration the current White House loves to hate, Bush's interview with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald must have been as well. Bill Clinton spent most of his presidency dogged by special prosecutors. Bush ended every rally in 2000 by vowing to restore "the honor and dignity" of the presidency. For Bush to face a new incarnation of this presidential nemesis could not have been pleasant.

If the warning signals of a foundering administration are visible, the outcome of the voyage is far from certain. Other presidents have stumbled badly amid adversity only to right themselves - think Clinton winning easy re-election in 1996 just two years after crushing defeats in Congress and at the polls.

But once a perception of fecklessness settles in around an administration, it is difficult to reverse - especially in the fevered climate of a campaign. It is not clear that such a turning point has been reached. But the extraordinary polarization of the electorate gives Bush little margin for error, and recent events do not project an image of an administration confidently marching toward success.
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