Crisis Forces Bush to Be Communicator-in-Chief

The terrorist assault on New York and Washington has thrust President Bush into a role he’s studiously resisted through the first stages of his administration: communicator-in-chief.

Handed the enormous microphone of the presidency, Bush’s response in his first eight months often has been to turn down the volume. He’s consistently avoided opportunities to inject himself into social debates that his predecessors might have seized.

Now Bush is being challenged to find words that comfort, reassure, direct and rally the nation. The mixed responses to his first attempts suggest Bush is still searching for a voice that meets those demands.

In the short run, as the country instinctively rallies to the president at a time of crisis, Bush’s skill at mobilizing the public probably doesn’t matter much, most analysts agree. The real question is whether he can sustain confidence in his leadership if the counterattack he has pledged produces unanticipated reversals in the weeks and months ahead.

“It gets harder at the point where the first reaction is over, and the problems associated with [the U.S. response] are starting to come in,” said Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas, Austin. “Because you know there’s an eager critical mass waiting to descend on him.”

President Assumes Grave Responsibility

From Abraham Lincoln’s stirring messages during the Civil War to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” address after Pearl Harbor, providing the country direction and inspiration during wartime has been one of the president’s gravest responsibilities. In a similar way, President Clinton eloquently crystallized the nation’s grief after the Oklahoma City bombing--and reinvigorated his presidency in the process.

“Especially in something like this, the president is the only figure the country can look to understand what is happening, for guidance or for a prospect to deal with this effectively,” said Richard Goodwin, who served as a speech writer for President Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

Several factors could make the challenge facing Bush particularly acute. One is that the threat he’s mobilizing the country to confront is more diffuse than in the past. “The question is, rallying for what?” says historian John Milton Cooper of the University of Wisconsin. “Sure we want to fight back on this, but how and against whom?”

Like Kennedy, Bush also faces his crisis after a bitterly contested election that’s left many in the electorate unsure whether he’s up to the job; in recent polls prior to Tuesday’s assault, 40% to 45% of Americans consistently told pollsters they were uncertain whether he had the experience and personal qualities the presidency demands.

Though polls show those uncertainties have been initially swept away in the aftermath of the attacks, some believe those underlying sentiments could leave Bush more open to second-guessing if events go badly down the road.

Finally, these events are demanding that Bush speak to and guide the nation in a concentrated way he hasn’t shown much interest in--or, some would argue, affinity for--in the past.

As Texas governor, Bush tried to advance his policy priorities more by building personal relations with legislators rather than mobilizing public support through speeches and appearances. “The inside game was his forte,” says Buchanan.

Bush brought that pattern with him to Washington. Though he has campaigned aggressively around the country for several of his key initiatives--particularly his tax cut and education reform plan--those appearances tended to be low-key events that repeated familiar and carefully scripted messages.

Until now, Bush and his aides arguably showed less interest in wielding the megaphone of the presidency than any predecessor since at least Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bush’s address to the nation after Tuesday’s attacks was his first from the Oval Office. He has held few formal press conferences. And he’s let a series of high-profile events pass with no more than a perfunctory comment, and sometimes no comment at all. Among them: school shootings in California, a racial disturbance in Cincinnati and the return of the U.S. plane crew detained in China.

Shaping the national dialogue “is not a role that Bush has sought out or played,” says veteran GOP pollster Bob Teeter. “Sometimes he went out of his way not to play it.”

Many observers say, this relatively modest vision of the president’s communications role is a reflection of the widespread sense in Republican circles that President Clinton was too quick to insert himself into too many controversies.

“It’s entirely plausible that . . . until Tuesday the presidency had sought to place itself too much in American life at a time of peace,” says Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speech writer and now a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Low-Profile, Personal Style

But many believe Bush’s relatively lower profile has also reflected the sense among him and his advisors that he does not come across best in big set speeches, or formal encounters like prime-time news conferences. “He is at his best when it is a spontaneous, unscripted communication,” says Mark McKinnon, Bush’s chief media advisor during the 2000 campaign.

That seems apparent even in the reaction to Bush’s appearances over the past week. Hardly anyone in either party will publicly criticize Bush at a time of crisis. But many observers in both parties say they were disappointed in his first remarks to the country Tuesday night.

“He was flat; he didn’t fill the Oval Office,” said a well-connected GOP political operative who asked not to be identified. “If we are headed for a sustained period of war against terrorism, you have to wonder if he can keep the country rallied beyond a quick point of revenge.”

This operative, like others, says Bush’s initial response also was hurt by the uncertainty over why he stopped at two Air Force bases before returning to Washington in the hours after the attacks; White House aides later argued it was because they had information the White House or Air Force One was a terrorist target.

Several analysts in both parties said Bush’s speech Friday at the National Cathedral gave them much more confidence about his ability to mobilize the country over the long run. “I thought he was great at the cathedral,” said Goodwin, the former Democratic speech writer. “It was brief, it had a certain eloquence . . . it was by far the best I’ve seen him.”

Added Robinson, the former Reagan speech writer: “There is a sense he is learning as he goes. I think he got better in the campaign and I think in this crisis you can see him finding his feet just from Tuesday” through Friday.

Yet many say that compared to either of those formal speeches, Bush has been at his most compelling in two unscripted moments--a brief exchange with reporters after his phone conversation with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and New York Gov. George Pataki on Thursday, and his impromptu dialogue with rescue workers in New York on Friday.

The latter event generated what so far may have been Bush’s most stirring moment, his pledge that “the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

Even against the solemn backdrop of military conflict, McKinnon predicted Bush will continue to rely more heavily than his predecessors on such informal communications to reach and reassure the public.

“I just think he’s a better-open field runner,” McKinnon says.