WHO was President Bush trying to convert with his speech about Iraq last night? For all the suddenness with which it was announced, the address to the nation, the first since September 12, was hardly a casual affair; the White House carefully timed it for 8.01 pm on the East Coast to allow a smooth introduction from the network anchormen.
The answer is not Congress. It has hardly acted as opposition over Iraq, and on Sunday, the Democratic leader of the Senate, Tom Daschle, finally acknowledged that the Senate would back Bush in the use of force, if sourly.
The answer is those Americans, of both political persuasions, who are ambivalent about the prospect of war, as the weekend’s anti-war demonstrations and the latest opinion polls both show. You can throw into that a small number of leaders abroad, but Bush has made more headway with the United Nations than some in his team expected.
No, the constituency that he is targeting is at home. The most important point of the speech was that he senses a vulnerability on that flank. And he is right. Americans are worried about the economy and think that Bush is spending too much time on Iraq, according to the latest New York Times/CBS opinion poll, published yesterday. It is hardly surprising that those fears have grown since the summer, given the stock market’s fall, and the dependence of many ordinary Americans on stock-market-based savings plans, for retirement and their children’s education.
Even more serious for Bush, nearly half of Americans fear that they or one of their family will be out of a job within a year. That dread of “downsizing” has not shown up in the opinion polls as clearly for a decade. It is the factor which most clearly did for Bush’s father, and could quickly turn off the tap of consumer spending, which so far has kept the economy moving along more robustly than many feared.
This has not, on its own, undermined support for a war against Saddam Hussein. But more Americans now say that they are worried about the consequences — from a long and disruptive conflict across the Middle East, to more terrorist strikes at home.
This matters more for Bush than for Congress, now on the home stretch to the elections on November 5. These are issues which Americans will hold against their President more fervently than against their local representatives.
Analysing Congress’s lack of impact on the war debate, the New York Times commentator Thomas Friedman argues that the only three people Bush felt a need to court were Secretary of State Colin Powell, Tony Blair, and Senator and Vietnam veteran John McCain. They are “the only three people who could take big constituencies with them if they openly parted company with the president on an issue like Iraq”, he says.
Of those, Blair, for the moment can be taken for granted. He has already helped Bush build support within the UN, and his mistake in inviting Bill Clinton to address the Labour party conference last week has put him at a disadvantage in the relationship to Washington, as shown by his immediate phone call to Bush distancing himself from Clinton’s criticism of Republicans. Bush is right that his greatest weakness at the moment is at home, in the diffuse but growing worries which voters of both parties could well hold against him in two years’ time.
State of the unions
A SMALL local row, thousands of miles away from Washington? No, the West Coast ports strike is a serious threat to the US economy, to some of its trading partners, and presents Bush with one of his hardest decisions to date, with inevitable repercussions for the November 5 elections.
We know that the White House is taking it seriously. The dispute may only be in its second week, but its uniquely photogenic disruption — with ships of rotting fruit and Christmas toys sitting paralysed along the West Coast — is having a real impact on businesses. Farm processors began shutting down yesterday; car plants are stalling for lack of parts.
Jobs, not pay, are the point of contention. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union wants control of all jobs involving new technology — which is most of them. On the face of it, this is a demand that shipping lines and terminal operators cannot afford to meet.
Estimates of the cost of the dispute to the US economy range from $1 billion a day to double that figure. Some warn that Asian exporters will shut down (the US is their biggest consumer), and that it could push East Asia into recession.
In public the White House has been carefully evenhanded, issuing a bland statement that “the President’s message to labour and management is simple: you are hurting the economy. Go back to work and resolve the problems”.
That scout leader tone ignores Bush’s dilemma, however. There is a weapon that he can use — the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act — under which he can order workers back to their jobs for an 80-day “cooling off” period, on the grounds that their action is “imperilling the national health or safety”.
But the Act is politically explosive. It is widely seen as an anti-labour weapon fashioned by arch-conservatives. It could rally workers from many unions against him as the economy slows. Presidents have not rushed to invoke it, and it has an imperfect record of success. Of the 31 presidential orders since the Act was passed, courts have backed 29. Jimmy Carter was the last to try, when he failed to win a 1978 injunction against coal miners.
Despite the risk, the White House has let it be known that it may appoint a board of inquiry to determine damage to the economy, the first step required under the Act.
Manipulation of power
THE heat is off Californian Governor Gray Davis. Voters seem prepared to forgive him the biggest debacle of his tenure, the 2001 power blackouts in his state. Increasingly it seems that voters may blame companies and spare politicians. Reports from the California Public Utilities Commission have put more force behind allegations that companies may have manipulated the power that they sold to push up prices, even though it led to blackouts. It is a point that the power generators contest. But the new reports offer the politicians who devised and watched over the deregulation an escape route.
