It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This
BARNES, FRED
It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This In the past few weeks, President Bush has been lucky and good. BY FRED BARNES PRESIDENT BUSH has gotten a bigger reelection boost in a shorter period of time...
...Columnist Robert Novak reported that Sen...
...A full-blown recovery is now a given...
...Dean was wrong on all three counts...
...We're happy with success, but we're looking forward" to 2004, Bush adviser Karl Rove said...
...Shortly before Baker departed for France and Germany, a routine Defense Department memo formally limiting the contracts was reported in the press...
...Months ago, the administration made it known that countries not helping in Iraq would be ineligible for contracts to rebuild the country...
...The Democratic presidential candidates, along with Sen...
...Grabbing saddam produced a reversal in the iraq debate...
...Bush's idea is to give Americans ownership of their money for retirement, health care, and everything now in the hands of government or other providers...
...And that may be putting it mildly...
...But there was no evidence any country was prepared to dispatch troops...
...One, Bush had claimed a direct link between al Qae-da and Saddam and later retracted the claim...
...But, to Bush's credit, the string of accomplishments on the eve of 2004 are mostly his own doing...
...The result: They began to help, welcoming Baker and promising to forgive some or all of the Iraqi debt amassed by Saddam...
...it turns out more troops were not needed in iraq, at least not to seize saddam...
...Democrats were flummoxed by saddam's capture...
...Earlier he had said Saddam was a "threat" to the United States...
...If the terrorism directed by saddam's cronies continues to abate, as it did in the days after his capture, Bush will gain further...
...This was a non sequitur: Because Bush's policy in Iraq was working, it was time to change the policy...
...Once that was known, Dean could have revised his view...
...It created a media firestorm that Bush exploited to reiterate his policy and show the United States wouldn't be "played for patsies," as a White House official said...
...As the baseball saying goes, it's better to be lucky than good...
...Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington suggested Saddam was ripe for seizure any time and Bush had planned the event for political gain...
...Besides, documents from Saddam's briefcase showed he was in regular touch, by courier, with terrorist cells perpetrating attacks on American soldiers and Iraqis...
...Democrats exuded an air of unreality...
...He still faces daunting problems (job losses, post-saddam insurgency in iraq, al Qaeda, nukes in iran and North Korea, energized opponents at home...
...And the Saddam capture led to more conspiracy-theorizing by Democrats...
...Of course this clashed with the standard Democratic criticism that Bush had lost control of postwar Iraq...
...His captivity is the symbol of Bush's winning that battle...
...When the spotlight is on saddam in chains, Bush gains...
...Dick Durbin of Illinois, a top deputy to Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, had taped a radio statement, sneering at the prospects of seizing Saddam...
...The White House has refrained from gloating...
...it's better still to be in Bush's situation, lucky and good...
...He tossed out three charges against the president...
...The answer, as the administraFred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Bush's tax cuts, nearly everyone agrees, were the catalyst in rejuvenating the economy...
...Hillary Clinton, responded to the capture with the cliche that Bush must "internationalize" the war in Iraq...
...They called for the united Nations to assume a bigger role in Iraq just days after Secretary General Kofi Annan announced the united Nations had no intention of doing that...
...But those don't quite match the gust of good news for Bush between Thanksgiving and Christmas...
...That defies logic...
...BY FRED BARNES PRESIDENT BUSH has gotten a bigger reelection boost in a shorter period of time than any other president ever...
...He didn't...
...That occurred as he dispatched former secretary of state James Baker on a mission to win debt relief for Iraq...
...Here's the list: capture of saddam Hussein, Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi's about-face, enactment of a prescription drug entitlement, signing of the first rollback of Roe v. Wade, fastest economic growth in 19 years, quickest pace in worker productivity gains in 20 years, two-decade high in increased manufacturing activity, significant drop in jobless claims, lowest underlying rate of inflation in 38 years, and rock-bottom interest rates...
...When was Bush lucky...
...Two, Bush had said the United States knew where Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were...
...saddam at large was the symbol of Bush's losing the battle of postwar Iraq...
...The belated scoop was the lucky part for the president...
...Three, Bush had declared Saddam an "imminent danger...
...Bush has a theme, the "ownership society," and a fat agenda that includes "lifetime savings accounts"— essentially tax-free IRAs with no penalties for withdrawal—and Social Security investment accounts...
...tion insisted, was better intelligence...
...So Dean would have it that a threat was removed with no gain in safety for America...
...That is not a serious argument...
...Let's not give Bush a big head and declare his reelection a done deal...
...In any case, he's no longer on defense in the debate over Iraq...
...For months now, saddam will be the story—his imprisonment, his interrogation, his atrocities, his prosecution, his punishment...
...They said Bush should recruit more foreign troops to replace American soldiers in Iraq...
...And the French and others finally "understood the ground rule is you've got to help" in Iraq...
...Oh, yes, the stock market: A week before Christmas, the Dow's up 23 percent for the year, 4 percent since Thanksgiving...
...His foes are no longer on offense...
...It was to be broadcast the day after Saddam was captured...
...Yes, Sherman's taking of Atlanta in early september 1864 was critical to Lincoln's reelection, and Bill Clinton's signing of welfare reform in 1996 assured him a second term...
...The press missed this...
...Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean reacted with remarkable pigheadedness...
...Bush had helpers like Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and a good bit of luck...
...Achieving all this would be a major feat, almost as amazing as what Bush wrought in late 2003...
...He inserted in a speech the claim that Saddam's jailing did not make America safer...
Vol. 9 • December 2003 • No. 16
