Bush Is Golden Goose in GOP Bid for Congress

After 26 days away from the White House, President Bush returns today to the nation’s capital facing an intense period of political maneuvering and policy debate that is likely to shape the second half of his term.

Since leaving Washington on Aug. 6, Bush has helped collect $8.75 million for Republican candidates nationwide. Including the contributions from events he attended just before his vacation, the total topped $10 million for August and $100 million for the year, surpassing the pace of the previous fund-raiser-in-chief, Bill Clinton.

Now that he has raised the money, Bush’s task is to get out enough support to retain the party’s majority in the House, where it has a six-vote edge, and regain control of the Senate, where the Democrats have a one-seat margin.

He is taking on this mission against a background of stratospheric support among Republicans--a better than 90% approval rating, polls show--but steadily falling numbers among independents and Democrats.

With candidates in the closest races needing cross-party support, it adds up to this, said Charles Cook, whose Cook Political Report newsletter tracks congressional elections: “He’s an asset for Republicans only in his ability to raise money. His ability to run interference for Republican candidates is minimal.”

Nevertheless, much of the president’s schedule for the next two months is being prepared with elections in mind--not only those in November, but also two years away, when, presumably, he will be seeking a second term. He has already made 16 visits this year to four states--Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico--in which fewer than 6,000 votes decided the outcome in the 2000 election.

According to a senior White House official, the thread that will run through Bush’s message on these trips will be the three “securities” that are the underpinning of his presidency: national, homeland and economic security.

As polls show where Bush can most help GOP candidates, the schedule will be adjusted to create a “very tactical” itinerary, as one aide put it. The next eight days, for example, will see Bush traveling to Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Indiana, Minnesota and Michigan.

“A lot of this has to do with his own election in 2004,” said Stephen Hess, a scholar of the presidency at the Brookings Institution, a centrist think tank in Washington. “A lot of places he’s going into are places he has to win, or won very closely in 2000.”

Bush will return to Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, visiting the site where United Flight 93 crashed, and then spend three days in New York.

His immediate agenda will be to pressure Congress to enact his plan for a Department of Homeland Security, stalled by a dispute with Senate Democrats who say that it does too little to protect the rights of the new agency’s workers. It is an important point for organized labor, a core Democratic constituency.

Bush’s top priorities, said White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan, will be “winning the war on terrorism, protecting the homeland and strengthening our economy.” Within that framework, he said, sit specific legislative goals, including providing insurance against terrorist acts and enacting the administration’s energy plan.

In his appearances, Bush also is likely to focus on initiatives facing difficulty in Congress. These include revisions to the welfare program and Bush’s proposal to make it easier for religious groups to take over some of the social welfare projects carried out by government agencies, McClellan said.

In the month before Bush arrived at his 1,600-acre ranch outside this crossroads in central Texas, the national landscape was gloomy; news reports were filled with accounts of a tumbling stock market and corporate corruption.

A senior White House official said the nation’s needs called for a busy vacation. This meant more work--and public visibility--than the president would have preferred, as he sought to demonstrate concern for the economy and to keep his agenda in the public eye.

Since leaving Washington, he has set down in 10 states, traveling on eight of the 26 days. He had lunch one day at the ranch with Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. On another day, he held a morning-long meeting with most of his senior national security team on proposals to transform the military to meet the needs of the 21st century. Early in his vacation, he spent a morning at Baylor University in nearby Waco for a White House economic conference.

But as the ranch visit ends, economic matters no longer monopolize public debate.

Democrats have been scattered all over the country. To the extent they could draw attention, it has been in small doses in their home districts.

Meanwhile, Hess said, Bush “had an opportunity to tell his story,” at least to those who were paying attention during a month of little Washington news.

Now, he added, “Iraq has moved from the back burner to the front burner, with a vengeance.”

Indeed, the question of whether the United States will launch a military operation to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power looms over nearly everything Bush is likely to do in the coming month. It also is likely to dominate his Sept. 12 visit to the United Nations, where he will speak at the opening of the General Assembly.

A war against Iraq is being presented as an extension of the response to the Sept. 11 attacks, as the president seeks to carry the fight against terrorism into a broader territory that would, if he is successful, remove Iraq’s ability to produce chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

With the economic outlook uncertain, and other elements of Bush’s domestic agenda bringing division, seeking to rally the nation on the war against terrorism may have a political benefit.

“I don’t think they’re talking it up for political purposes, but there’s a political benefit to talking about foreign policy when the other topics aren’t politically favorable,” Cook said.

He said that with each passing month, Bush’s overall poll numbers, measuring whether voters have a favorable impression of him, are slipping.

“It is getting more and more like it was before Sept. 11,” Cook said, when a Gallup Poll found that 51% of those surveyed approved of Bush’s job performance.

Sept. 11, of course, frames Bush’s presidency.

On Saturday, in his weekly radio speech, the president set out a new call to volunteer action. He urged Americans to “answer the call to help those in need, and make this month a September of service,” and “honor the memory of those lost by serving others.”