President Bush’s re-election team said Sunday the Bush campaign will soon shift into a more active phase, as many Republicans express concern about the president’s falling job approval numbers.
The Bush-Cheney ’04 campaign said the shift was not in response to the polls, but was a long-planned natural progression given that the Democrats appear poised to settle on Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts as their opponent to Bush in the November election.
“We are rapidly approaching a time when this will be a two-person race,” said campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel. “We are now entering a phase when we’ll be comparing President Bush’s steady leadership in times of change, with a politician’s fuzziness on issues from Iraq to education.”
An ad campaign was in the works that will begin tapping some of the campaign’s $100 million or so in cash on hand.
Struggling to regain control
The shift comes as Bush tries to get off the defensive and regain control of the political debate.
Republicans complain Bush has been off his stride all year, beset by a number of problems, chief among them the failure to find the promised weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In the last week the famously on-message White House was knocked around by Democratic charges that Bush shirked his Air National Guard duties in Alabama during the Vietnam war.
“A lot of Republicans were shocked by the poll numbers in the past few weeks, and clearly the White House was unprepared for the attack on the National Guard issue,” said one plugged-in Republican official. “The good news is that this is happening now rather than several months from now.”
But the National Guard flap was only one example. Bush’s State of the Union speech was considered more political than inspiring. The budget deficit is projected to hit a record, costs of a new Medicare prescription drug plan were vastly underestimated, and his attempt to address the Iraq unconventional weapons issue head-on on NBC’s “Meet the Press” a week ago failed to calm Republican nerves.
Poll numbers down
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll released Friday found Bush at a low point in public approval, his popularity depressed by questions about the Iraq war, continued economic frustration and interest in his leading Democratic rival.
It said Bush’s overall job approval rating had fallen to 50 percent and his rating for honesty and trustworthiness, typically a hallmark of his presidency, had fallen to 52 percent, down 7 points from late October.
FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane
FOR SUBSCRIBERSThe debate over AI’s future rages on both coasts
FOR SUBSCRIBERSA harrowing ordeal aboard an Israel-bound plane
FOR SUBSCRIBERSThe debate over AI’s future rages on both coasts
Presidential scholar Stephen Hess said Bush had hit a rough patch but that “if you’re going to have one it’s a pretty good time to have one now” more than eight months before the election.
“Maybe they were getting complacent, we shall see,” Hess said. “People are right to worry, sure. It was a bad month for him. Some were self-inflicted wounds, some were not, but it’s not going to be any easier.”
'Overselling' war policy?
David Gergen, who worked for Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, as well as Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the Bush team erred in how it made the case for war against Iraq.
“You get so enthusiastic about a policy that you oversell, you make claims for your policy that just don’t hold up with the facts. It’s not the first time it’s happened, nor the last, but they’re sure paying a price,” said Gergen, now director of Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership.
But he said the underlying fundamentals still favor Bush for re-election, with the job situation brightening and the president likely to bring some troops back from Iraq before the election.
“Things should shore up for him soon,” Gergen said.