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Bush catches critics off guard
Weakened president still can set terms of debate
 Charles Dharapak / AP President Bush speaks about terrorism to an audience that included lawmakers and family members of Sept. 11 victims in the East Room of the White House on Wednesday. |
With a series of forceful speeches on terrorism and a dramatic announcement that he has sent top-tier terrorism suspects to the Guantanamo Bay prison, President Bush this week has demonstrated anew the power of even a weakened commander in chief to set the terms of national debate.
All week, the White House has made plain its desire to refocus the attention of voters this fall away from a troubled and unpopular war in Iraq in favor of Bush's vision of a worldwide struggle against Islamic radicalism and terrorism. Yesterday, Bush sought to turn a legal defeat at the Supreme Court into a political opportunity.
His success in catching much of Washington by surprise showed that a president who polls show has his political back to the wall still has formidable tools: the ability to make well-timed course corrections on policy, dominate the news and shape the capital's agenda in the weeks before Election Day.
Bush's moves were partly a concession to those who have complained about secret CIA prisons abroad. Even as he acknowledged the existence of the prison program for the first time, Bush could argue that there are no terrorism suspects now in the CIA program.
At the same time, Bush sought to redefine the issue of CIA detentions from one of civil liberties to one of protecting Americans. He asserted that interrogators had reaped an intelligence bonanza from the questioning of top al-Qaeda leaders such as Mohammed -- the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- and Osama bin Laden deputy Abu Zubaida, and insisted Congress pass a law that would allow such interrogations to continue without legal jeopardy to soldiers and intelligence officers.
"We need to ensure that those questioning terrorists can continue to do everything within the limits of the law to get information that can save American lives," he said in his speech in the East Room of the White House.
9/11's anniversary
After months of mostly ineffectual efforts to reverse Bush's year-long decline in public approval -- driven in large measure by growing impatience with the Iraq war -- the White House in recent days has launched an aggressive campaign to use the five-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to regain momentum and prevent GOP congressional majorities from being routed this fall. Even Democratic aides on Capitol Hill said Bush's tactics this week have diminished their party's efforts to highlight the problems in Iraq and motivate an anti-Republican vote Nov. 7.
Bush's speech took place moments before the Senate launched a lengthy debate on a Democratic proposal urging the president to fire Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld as a step toward "a change of course" in Iraq. GOP senators denounced the resolution as partisan posturing, and prevented it from coming to a vote by ruling it not germane to the military spending bill on the Senate floor, and the president's announcement immediately overshadowed the debate.
The midterm elections may well hinge on whether Bush's new move proves effective. There is reason for skepticism. This is already the White House's third effort in the past year to reshape the Iraq debate with new rhetoric.
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