Battered Bush watches as support ebbs away

With memories of his poll victory still fresh, the President already seems a lame duck. Backing for the Iraq war has collapsed and his domestic agenda is in disarray. Even his party is rebelling.

On Tuesday (June 28, 2005) at 8pm President George W Bush will speak to the American people. The setting will be Fort Bragg, a North Carolina military base that acts as a springboard for many soldiers on their way to the war zone of Iraq. It will be a rare prime-time appearance for a President notoriously shy of such performances.

But these are not ordinary times. Beset on all sides by the bloodshed in Iraq, rebellions in the Republican party and Democrat attacks on his domestic agenda, Bush faces the derailment of his second term only six months after his inauguration.

It is a remarkable turnaround. After his 2004 victory, Republican advisers spoke of a 'Bush unshackled', freed by the fact he will not fight another election and buoyed by winning 12 million new voters to his cause. Bush boasted of spending 'political capital' in a radical second term to transform America.

No longer. Bush is confronting the nightmare of any American President in his second term: he is becoming a lame duck.

At the centre of Bush's troubles is the Iraq war. Nightly images of mayhem in Baghdad have pushed the jubilant scenes of the Iraqi elections to the back of America's consciousness. For the first time, more now oppose than support the war. Even some Republicans are talking about withdrawal. The ghost of Vietnam stalks Washington's corridors of power.

But Bush's troubles go deeper. His relentless plans to sell social security reform to the public have floundered. His energy bill is mired in trouble. Democrats have blocked the nomination of the radical John Bolton as UN ambassador. Once disciplined Republican senators and congressmen snipe at the White House on everything from the environment to stem cell research. 'It's an old rule of thumb: the power of a second-term President peaks on the day after he wins the election. It's all downhill from there,' said Larry Haas, a former Clinton White House aide.

Walter Jones has credentials that should have seen him flourish in Bush's second term. The North Carolina congressman has 60,000 military retirees among his constituents. Counties in Jones's district went for Bush in 2004 with a support level of around 65 per cent. But Jones's real claim to fame is that in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 11 September he organised the renaming of the French fries served in the Capitol's cafeteria to freedom fries.

It made him an icon of the right (and derision from the left). But Jones is now a rebel, not a loyalist. He has called for Bush to set a timetable for US withdrawal, stunning top Republicans. 'No one is talking about cutting and running ... but we cannot forever be depended upon as the prime defence force in Iraq,' he wrote to his North Carolina supporters.

For the White House, the facts are simple: if you are losing the support of people like Jones, you are in trouble. There has clearly been a fundamental shift in attitudes and many Republicans fear they will pay the price in elections.

The polls are brutal. A survey by Gallup last week said 59 per cent of Americans now favoured US withdrawal. Polls by Pew and Zogby International also revealed that a clear majority of Americans believed they were on the wrong track in Iraq. Bush's approval ratings collapsed to 44 per cent in general and a paltry 39 per cent on Iraq. 'Iraq is at the front of Bush's troubles. Things are not going well and the American voting public sees that,' said John Zogby, head of the pollsters Zogby.

The talk in Washington is of the dreaded 'tipping point'. This is when Iraq's insurgency deepens into uncontrollable crisis at the same time as American public opinion collapses. That could spell the unthinkable: American defeat.

The tipping point has not arrived yet, but there are many Democrats, and some Republicans, who believe it is on the way if trends continue. '[Bush's] place in history will probably rest on Iraq becoming a stable democracy. Not too many historians, presidential watchers or political science professors believe that is a good bet,' said John Orman, who is professor of politics at Fairfield University in Connecticut.

Nebraska senator Chuck Hagel, who also hails from the Republican heartland, is speaking out. He recently angrily said the US was 'losing' the war. Hagel is one of the front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. For anyone with White House ambitions, distancing oneself from Bush is becoming a priority.

Iraq has also undermined the 'neoconservative' foreign policy of Bush's first four years. That has allowed Democrats, aided by a few Republicans, to block the appointment of the hawkish John Bolton as US ambassador to the UN. The White House is considering appointing Bolton on a temporary basis. Given that Bolton has the backing of Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the climbdown is a humiliation. Democrats and Republicans know that a Supreme Court nomination is looming. Lifted by their Bolton success, Democrats are hungry for that fight.

Last Thursday, however, Iraq was far from Bush's mind. He was on the stump in Silver Springs, Maryland, a slice of suburbia not far from Washington. In a nominally public meeting at a local high school, Bush touted his plans to reshape social security, the system of payments many elderly Americans rely on.

For Bush, tackling social security, set up during the 1930s in the Democrat Golden Age of the New Deal, is the centrepiece of his conservative revolution. Bush has devoted huge energy to partly privatising it. His speech on Thursday was his 34th on the issue in a campaign that has seen him visit 27 states. So far it has been to no avail. As hundreds of carefully selected Republicans queued to enter the school, they were outnumbered by 500 protesters. Their drums and shouts drowned out every other noise. That was no surprise. The social security campaign has been a disaster for Bush. The more he has travelled, the more public approval of his handling of the issue has collapsed. A survey for the New York Times put it at just 25 per cent.

Now Republicans are beginning to look for an exit strategy in social security too. In less than six months the central plank of Bush's domestic agenda looks like being toppled. If Bush does succeed in getting any sort of reform on social security, it will be far from his initial aims. Last week several Republican senators began drafting compromise legislation leaving much of the system in place.

Bush is starting to sound desperate. 'You've got a good idea, step up with it,' he told his Maryland audience. 'I'm more than willing to listen.' For a politician famed for his direct style, such comments feel more like Clinton's 'I feel your pain' campaigning than hard-nosed conservatism.

But social security is just one of several cherished projects that have hit the skids. Plans to reform the tax system have been delayed until the end of September. Bush's energy bill is stalled. He is facing huge criticism on environment and climate change, where concerns span party lines. On issues from global warming to evolution, Bush's hardline denials look increasingly out of touch.

The only genuinely popular piece of legislation likely to land on the President's desk is backing an increase in stem cell research. The move was supported by 50 Republican congressmen in the face of White House opposition. But Bush, with an eye on his Christian conservative base, has vowed to veto the bill.

Other mistakes have been made. Bush, and the right wing of the Republican party, devoted huge efforts to the Terri Schiavo case. But not only did their efforts fail to keep the brain-damaged woman alive; an autopsy revealed their whole premise - that she had been sentient - was wrong. For many the Schiavo case disintegrated into an ugly political battle. It brought out a weariness with the 'culture wars' that have marked Bush's rise to power.

The hot-button issue of gay marriage has also fallen off the national radar. In fact Americans are most concerned about rising petrol prices, a possible housing market crash and job creation: issues that Bush rarely touches. 'Bush's second-term agenda has been very strange. He is not talk ing about anything America cares about,' said Zogby. For Bush, who has fought his last campaign, that might not be a problem. But for Republican senators and congressmen, facing a tough re-election fight in 2006, it is a paramount concern. Not only does Bush appear out of touch with voters; he is out of touch with his party's needs.

That may explain why senior Republicans in the Senate were summoned to the White House last week for a 'policy luncheon' with Bush. It is the first time such a meeting has been held since the Reagan administration. One senate aide said Bush presented the politicians with a 'shopping list' of issues he expected action on.

But such brow-beating may be in vain. The interests of the White House and the Republican party have diverged. Bush and Dick Cheney are still radicals, concerned with leading a conservative revolution that transforms America. But Republicans troops just want to win the next election, and voters seem to favour a more moderate stance. 'The President has decided that his legacy is more important to him than popularity. But you cannot get the legacy without the people behind you,' Haas said.

All this has transformed the Democrats. After Senator John Kerry's defeat, the party was seemingly headed for the political wilderness. Now it is united and winning battles. The post-election gloom has disappeared.

More significantly, these events have changed Republicans. The name leading the race to be the party's presidential nominee in 2008 is John McCain, the maverick Arizona senator who represents a centrism far removed from the religious shock troops schooled by Karl Rove. McCain is pro-life but no religious radical. He is socially liberal, pro-military but famously critical of Donald Rumsfeld. He was even approached by Kerry as a possible running mate last year.

The religious right hates him with a passion. But McCain is now overwhelmingly the most popular Republican hopeful in the country. For some observers, McCain's popularity represents the return of moderate America and an end to the red/blue divide of the Bush years. 'The polarisation of America is starting to crack. The next election will be all about a battle for the centre,' said John Zogby. History may just be on the move again - leaving Bush behind.

SECOND-TERM TROUBLES
American presidents have historically suffered from scandals and setbacks in their second terms:

Bill Clinton
He may have balanced the budget and showed that a Democratic President could be re-elected, but Bill Clinton's second term will be remembered forever for that Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.

Ronald Reagan
Reagan's second term was dogged by the Iran-Contra scandal, which dragged on for months and ended with a public apology to the nation.

Lyndon Johnson
Catapulted into office after the assassination of John F Kennedy, he won the 1964 election, then had his presidency destroyed by the worsening war in Vietnam.

Richard Nixon
Nixon's second term was marked by the explosion of the Watergate scandal. Marred by disgrace, Nixon resigned part-way through his second term.

Dwight Eisenhower
Eisenhower, who led the nation in the fabled era of 1950s prosperity, had his second term spoiled by the launch of a Sputnik by the Russians, leading to a belief that Ike had let America fall behind in the arms race at the start of the Cold War.

Woodrow Wilson
Led the nation into and out of the First World War, but his victory and second term were tarnished by his failure to persuade America to join the League of Nations.

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Copyright 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
FROM THE OBSERVER, UK http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1514898,00.html