WASHINGTON – Democrats and their pals in the press
say President Bush’s poll numbers are slipping because
Americans don’t like his policies.
Of course, these are the same folks who have been
telling Americans what to think of his policies for
the past six months. Not the best flacks.
Most political polls are just echo chambers – what
the Potomac punditry says, the public repeats. If the
punditry caricatures Bush as someone no more sensitive
to the environment than the captain of the Exxon
Valdez, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that most
Americans say they don’t like his positions on the
environment and energy when the punditry polls them.
But every president has a powerful special weapon to
counter the echo chamber, so I don’t pity Bush. A
previous Republican president used it effectively.
It’s called the bully pulpit.
Ronald Reagan didn’t let the press explain his
positions on sensitive issues for him. He leapfrogged
the media by talking directly to the American people
in TV addresses or other forums.
Reagan didn’t just deliver talking points. He
successfully sold his controversial ideas – indeed,
his whole anti-big-government, pro-individualism theme
– by knitting them into human-interest stories that
everyone could understand.
Bush hasn’t learned that lesson. In fact, he’s
practically turned over his bully pulpit to Dick
Cheney and Colin Powell.
They may be more articulate, but they’re not the
president. People want to hear the president explain
his own positions. They don’t want to hear from
surrogates, no matter how good they sound on the
Sunday morning talk shows.
Bush’s failure to bring his case directly to the
people may be the real reason more and more of them
don’t like the job he’s doing. The honeymoon ended
because he wouldn’t communicate.
By not facing the public, he also risks turning people
off to the one quality most people like about him –
his personality.
Bush may be thinking, like he did during much of the
campaign, that he can win on these tough issues
sitting up in the luxury skybox, insulated by his
blue-blooded political legacy, rather than mixing it
up down on the field. Big mistake if he is, because
some are already starting to sense an undercurrent of
snobbishness in this White House.
By not stepping forward to explain himself, he also
has set himself up for charges he’s really flint-hearted, and not a “compassionate,” conservative
– and closer to the media’s cartoon version of
Republicans overall. The lasting impression is that
the real Bush wants to sneak arsenic into the water,
leaky oil rigs into the virgin Alaskan wilderness and
quick profits into the pockets of fat-cat corporate
donors.
No one may honestly believe that, but no one likes a
sneak, either. And Bush is at least looking more and
more like a sneak.
Few accused Reagan of trying to hide his agenda.
That’s because he came right out and explained it to
the people every chance he could in simple, yet
philosophically rich terms.
No one can match raconteur Reagan’s ability to
communicate ideas and principles to average folks, and
it’s unfair to hold Bush up to that standard.
But let’s face it: So far Bush is proving to be one of
the country’s most inarticulate presidents. It’s not
that he doesn’t talk. He talks, all right – at press
conferences, at speeches, at dinners, at Cabinet
meetings. It’s just that he doesn’t say anything.
Enter the stump factor.
Six months into his job, polls show a big chunk of
Americans still don’t know what to make of Bush, one
way or the other. I think a lot are left wondering if
he’s real, or just a cardboard cut-out of a president.
Don’t get me wrong. I want Bush to succeed in much of
what he’s proposing, particularly missile defense and
Social Security reform.
But he won’t succeed if he keeps giving the impression
he’s out of his depth on these issues. There’s a big
difference between delegating and deferring – to
Cheney, Powell or to whomever else can string together
some coherent sentences.
Bush has already lost the battle over reforming public
education through private-school vouchers. And on
taxes, he won the battle, but didn’t win the greater
philosophical argument.
That’s why his tax cut was compromised into a phony
relief package that doesn’t really benefit anyone for
years to come – meaning many taxpayers may never even
see the promised cuts.
When Bush signed the tax-cut bill earlier this month,
he praised others for explaining it better than he.
Give him credit for knowing his weaknesses and knowing
when to delegate.
But the main power of the president is his bully
pulpit. He can’t delegate that.
