The (losing) War President

This morning Paul Krugman talks about the attraction of war for leaders of nation states.

In this former imperial capital, every square seems to contain a giant statue of a Habsburg on horseback, posing as a conquering hero.

America's founders knew all too well how war appeals to the vanity of rulers and their thirst for glory. That's why they took care to deny presidents the kingly privilege of making war at their own discretion.

George W. Bush may have used 911 as an excuse but we all know now he planned on being a war president even before he was elected and relished the idea.

In November 2002, Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, told an audience, "I have never covered a president who actually wanted to go to war" - but she made it clear that Mr. Bush was the exception. And she was right.

Krugman goes on to explain that Bush was able to do it because congress failed to do it's job as the founding fathers intended.

This all ties in nicely when a piece by Leon Hadar that explains what happens when you are a war president that can't win the wars you start.

Mr. Bush is in danger of being transformed from a lame-duck president - who like many second-term White House occupants who are constrained in their ability to promote new legislative and policy initiatives - into a dead duck, that is, into a politically wounded president whose troubles infect not only his political party but the entire policy-making process in Washington.
[.....]
They were able to force Congress to provide the White House with sweeping powers to go to war and to tighten security at home and energized the political base of the Republican party, including the powerful Christian Right - which helped Mr. Bush win the 2004 presidential race by a small majority.

At the same time, Mr. Bush and his allies created deep political divisions in the country and failed in co-opting traditional Democratic demographic groups, such as blacks, Hispanics and Jews.

Now, it seems that the chickens are coming home to roost and that the war on terrorism that had helped to elevate Mr. Bush into a War President is now turning him into a Not-Winning-War President. The devastating images of 9/11 have become a distant memory and have been replaced by the daily bloody pictures of the war in Iraq that keeps dragging on and on, without any indication that the United States and its allies are close to winning it.

Indeed, polls conducted by Washington Post-ABC News and the Associated Press-Ipsos make it clear that the American people are losing their patience with the war in Iraq and are blaming Mr. Bush for the mess there.

According to the Washington Post-ABC polls, for the first time since the war in Iraq began, more than half of the American public believes that the fight there has not made the United States safe. Nearly three-quarters of Americans say the number of casualties in Iraq is unacceptable, while two-thirds say that US military is bogged down and nearly six in 10 Americans say the war was not worth fighting.

The AP-Ipsos poll indicates that just 41 per cent of Americans support Mr. Bush's handling of the war. Overall, 52 per cent of Americans disapprove of Mr. Bush's job performance.

"Wars are political killers and President George W Bush faces that prospect," according to Nicholas Berry, director of the Foreign Policy Forum in Washington, who notes that the morass in Korea in 1952 shattered President Harry S Truman's hopes for reelection, and he withdrew, while President Lyndon Johnson suffered the same fate in 1968 from the Vietnam quagmire. Although President Richard Nixon's downfall had domestic roots, his fight with Congress when he sought to bolster the sagging South Vietnamese regime contributed ammunition to his opponents.

One of the problems both Presidents Johnson and Nixon faced in their handling of the Vietnam war was the "credibility gap" between the expectations raised by Washington that there was a "light at the end of the tunnel" and the depressing reality on the ground in Southeast Asia. Mr. Berry points to a similar gulf between the current rhetoric of Mr. Bush and his ideas and the reality in Iraq.

Mr Hadar concludes that George W. Bush, like Johnson and Nixon beginninging to see the impact of being a war president who loses wars.

In any case, the problems in Iraq are also weakening Mr. Bush's ability to promote his domestic and trade agenda, suggesting that if you live (politically) by a war, the chances are that you'll also die (politically) by the same war if it doesn't go as well as expected.

I think this explains the problems Bush increasingly finds himself in.