Bush at midterm is reminiscent of Eisenhower

By CHUCK RAASCH
GNS Political Writer

WASHINGTON — It is no coincidence that George W. Bush has a bust of Dwight D. Eisenhower near his desk in the Oval Office and a portrait of the former president prominently displayed in the Cabinet room.

At the halfway point of his first term, Bush has more in common with the president nicknamed “Ike” than with any other of his predecessors. The connection gives context to the historical challenges facing Bush — whose job approval ratings have dipped in recent days — as his presidency enters a new phase.

Two years ago this week, Bush was inaugurated in a world months away from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and renewed tensions in the Middle East, Iraq and North Korea. The American economy was humming, but there were signs of a slowdown.
Yet through the adversity Bush has become a popular president, with job approval ratings since 9-11 strikingly similar to the high marks run up by Eisenhower through much of the 1950s. The similarities don’t end there.

Eisenhower guided the country through eight years of Cold War, but he was often at odds with the conservative wing of his own party. Ultimately, he did not leave a Republican legacy that lasted through the 1960s.

New challenges
Bush now faces challenges of Cold War dimensions in the U.S.-led war on terror and fresh flashpoints like Korea, which also confronted Ike in the early 1950s. And as Eisenhower faced, some current Republicans have not always been comfortable with Bush’s brand of “compassionate conservatism.”

Bush’s re-election chances will be determined far more by the next two years than the previous two. But he has surprised many with his unpredictability and willingness to take political risks.

Over the last three months alone, he unabashedly campaigned for Republican candidates in the 2002 congressional elections, an ultimately successful strategy that some saw as politically risky in an age of political parity. He proposed a much larger-than-expected package of tax cuts just when Democrats stepped up their attacks on the rising federal budget deficit. And he re-nominated two controversial, conservative judicial candidates rejected by Senate Democrats in the last Congress.

Largely because of his response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush has maintained high job-approval ratings for a far longer period than virtually anyone could have expected from a president who lost the popular vote in 2000.

Bush came into office a “mystery,” but has since become a president “who has a great sense of who he is, and what his strengths and his weaknesses are,” said former Bush speechwriter David Frum.

But there are warning signs: Bush’s approval ratings dipped below 60 percent for the first time in over 16 months in the latest USA TODAY-CNN-Gallup Poll. Democrats are lining up to oppose him in 2004, and stepping up criticism of Bush policies, especially on the economy.

“I think in some areas he has exceeded expectations,” said Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D. “He has conducted himself well … with regard to the war on terrorism. But I am concerned about many of the shortcomings” in economic policy.

In the 2000 election, Democrats attacked Bush as a foreign policy novice. But his handling of foreign policy matters often gets the highest approval ratings from Americans.

While his verbiage and style are ridiculed in the press and by his Democratic foes, Bush — like Ike — has gotten far better reviews on other presidential character tests, like trustworthiness.
Brookings Institute scholar Stephen Hess, who was a speechwriter for Eisenhower, said he told Bush he was “Eisenhower-esque” last November during a party celebrating the 100th anniversary of the White House’s West Wing.

Bush “smiled and seemed pleased,” Hess recalled.

Commanders in chief
The Bush-Eisenhower comparisons come on several fronts:

— Both men had to confront tensions on the Korean peninsula — Eisenhower in the aftermath of the Korean War; Bush in the nuclear saber-rattling currently emanating from the North Korean regime.

— Like the early stages of Eisenhower’s presidency, Bush’s Republican Party has a slight majority in Congress, but some right-wing Republicans are not always in agreement with his “compassionate conservatism.”

“He is trying to soften some of the hard edges of the Republican Party,” said Robert Gilbert, a political scientist at Boston’s Northeastern University.

But will Bush be more successful at reshaping his party than Eisenhower? “My guess is no,” Gilbert predicted. “President Eisenhower tried and he was enormously popular. He began to describe himself as a moderate Republican and he was furious at some of the conservatives in the party. But after he left, it went back” to a more conservative GOP, Gilbert said.

— Hess said that like Bush, Ike was often ridiculed early in his presidency for unsophisticated speech — even down to the way he pronounced the word “nuclear.” (Ike, like Bush, said “nook-u-lar,” according to Hess.) But in retrospect, Hess and other presidential scholars said, average Americans believed Ike was far more capable a leader than the “intelligentsia” believed.
In his new book, “The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush,” Frum said Bush is “impatient and quick to anger, sometimes glib, even dogmatic; often uncurious and as a result ill-informed; more conventional in his thinking than a leader probably should be. But outweighing the faults are his virtues: decency, honesty, rectitude, courage and tenacity.”

— Hess said the most striking similarity is in the organization of the two White Houses. Bush, like Ike, has surrounded himself with advisers who hold a “passion for anonymity,” Hess said.

— Eisenhower, and now Bush, ultimately became identified most prominently as commanders in chief. One difference: Bush had to earn the designation after the terror attacks while Eisenhower came into office as a five-star general and World War II hero.

“Bush didn’t start out as some kind of military hero,” said Charles Jones, a retired presidential scholar at the University of Wisconsin. “He had to win that support by his leadership after 9-11.”