|
Sending in the troops When the Going Got Tough...By Rick Horowitz
It wasn't the thing he wanted to do, or expected to do. But sometimes even a president finds himself running out of options. There was only so long he could deny the reality of the situation, to hope that something would turn up to reverse the dangerous momentum he sensed building steadily against him. And when he could wait no longer, when all other options had vanished, he moved, and moved boldly. Which is how President Bush sent the National Guard to Congress. This was way back in the spring of '06, although sometimes it seems like just yesterday. The president had been through rough patches before, but this was a particularly tough time. The war in Iraq was still in its early years, but already the country was ill at ease, with large majorities convinced we were off on the wrong track -- on the war, and on a variety of other things. The president's own poll numbers were at an all-time low, with a growing number of people questioning his leadership and his ability to manage the issues that were most important to them, from the war to high gas prices to illegal immigration. But the most worrisome trend of all, from where the president sat: His base was abandoning him. In survey after survey, conservatives said they were losing faith in George W. Bush, who'd been their hero for so long. Their reasons were varied, but the consequences were clear -- if the president ever did lose his base, his administration would be dead in the water. Any chance of lasting achievements in his final years in office would be gone. So the president did what he rarely did. He asked for time -- prime time -- on all the TV networks, and he spoke directly to the nation from the Oval Office. "We must begin," the president said that evening, "by recognizing the problems with our governing system. For months, the White House has not been in complete control of its caucus." Dozens and dozens of Republican congressmen, the president reported, had been slipping across the street each day to the House and Senate TV studios to raise objections to various parts of his agenda. Still others had begun living a double life, praising the president in public but doing all they could from the shadows to undermine his efforts. This breakdown in party discipline had to stop, the president declared. And to correct the situation: 6,000 National Guard troops, to be deployed immediately to Capitol Hill. "The White House is not going to militarize Congress," the president insisted. "Congress is our neighbor and our friend." The Guard troops, he said, would merely "assist" the House and Senate Republican leadership in restoring order. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush made clear, those Republicans who had opposed the White House would not be given "amnesty," but rather an opportunity to "pay their debt to society" and earn their way back into the president's good graces by supporting him as enthusiastically as they'd always done in the past. The initial reaction on Capitol Hill was cautious, but largely positive. If the president felt that 6,000 National Guard troops were necessary, many Republicans said, then they'd find a way to accommodate them, at least temporarily -- and they did. Still, as several made clear, they had no intention of "riding the president's coattails into the Dumpster" in the upcoming midterm elections. They would do, they said publicly, what was best for them and for their constituents. It may have been at that moment that relations between the White House and fellow Republicans in Congress started moving inescapably toward the boiling point. Some later claimed that the presence of the troops was provocation enough, while others said that had the Guard deployment been the full extent of White House pressure, matters might still have been resolved amicably without spinning out of control. The fighter jets, everyone agreed, were Dick Cheney's idea. Posted 5/16/06. Show
your friends you know what counts -- click to "Rick's" for award-winning
commentary!
|
  |
Rick Horowitz
