Facing Questions, Bush Calls News Conference

President Bush has scheduled a rare prime-time news conference for tonight, ending days of relative seclusion amid one of the most politically treacherous periods of his presidency.

The event, set for 5:30 p.m. PDT in the East Room of the White House, will probably focus on the growing chaos in Iraq and mounting questions over Bush’s leadership before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Those topics have grown in prominence in recent days and remain central to Bush’s reelection strategy, but the president has remained largely out of view.

“I’m interested in answering more questions for you all,” Bush told reporters Monday at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, after an appearance with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Asked if he was referring to a solo news conference -- the 12th of his presidency and a format that he is known to dislike -- Bush replied confidently: “Why not?” It will be his first formal news conference since December.

Tonight’s nationally televised event comes as polls suggest growing public discomfort with Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq, which has turned increasingly violent and complicated as insurgents have taken hostages and killed U.S. troops.

Adding to pressures on the White House, the widely followed testimony last week by national security advisor Condoleezza Rice before a commission studying government failings before the Sept. 11 attacks did not put to rest all questions about the administration’s handling of terrorism. On Saturday, the White House was pressured to release a confidential memo suggesting that Bush had early indications that Al Qaeda terrorist network leader Osama bin Laden was planning major attacks in the United States.

Through much of the latest uproar, Bush has left the talking to his underlings. Even in his own party, some have said the commander in chief needs to do more to prove that he is in command.

“The American people need to be told in no uncertain terms how tough this challenge is,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to the military challenge that U.S. forces face in Iraq. “The American people are not uninformed. They know what’s at stake here. But they need to be told it, and they need to be told it in no uncertain terms.”

Bush suggested Monday that his administration was considering proposals for overhauling the nation’s intelligence services, which have been criticized for failures before the Sept. 11 attacks and the Iraq war. Bush did not hint at how the administration might seek to reform the intelligence community, which comprises the CIA, the FBI and 13 other agencies, and he did not say any reforms would be offered tonight.

But a series of reforms have been proposed for years by intelligence experts and advisory panels. They include creating a Cabinet-level position to oversee the intelligence community, set its agenda and control the allocation of its resources.

Other recommendations, such as streamlining the flow of information and boosting the deployment of new technologies, also could be rekindled. Members of Congress are divided on one of the most controversial of the perennial recommendations: the creation of a domestic intelligence service, similar to Britain’s MI5, which would strip that task from the FBI.

Rep. Jane Harman of Venice, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, reacted to Bush’s suggestion Monday by urging the White House to support reform bills already circulating in Congress. Bush’s remark, she said, “signals that he and other top officials may finally be snapping out of their deep state of denial over our intelligence failures.”

Bush aides said Monday that the president decided Thursday, the day of Rice’s testimony, that he wanted to hold a news conference. He held off for several days because of changing military operations in Iraq and because of the Easter holiday, said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.

Bush decided “it would be a good time to update the American people on where we are and where we are going in Iraq,” McClellan said.

Tonight’s appearance is likely to mark an milestone in this year’s presidential campaign, with presumptive Democratic nominee John F. Kerry angling to tear down Bush’s credibility on national security.

Kerry, who voted for the resolution authorizing the war in Iraq, has attacked Bush for failing to build more multinational support for the war.

The appearance, which comes at a time so dominated by Iraq and the Sept. 11 inquiry, could also underscore that the presidential campaign, which was once dominated by questions of jobs, tax cuts and the economy, has settled at least for now on one question: What do voters think of Bush’s leadership in the post-Sept. 11 world?

That dynamic holds true despite the efforts of both candidates, whose campaigns continue to orchestrate events designed to prove that the Bush administration has either helped or hurt the economy. The president, for instance, has scheduled a trip Thursday to Iowa to talk about his tax cuts and job-growth efforts.

The circumstances of today’s solo news conference are far more dicey than the situation Bush faced at his last one in December, shortly after the capture of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, when he wished the dictator “good riddance.”

“You see more of the unvarnished president in a press conference than you do in any other setting,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University in Maryland, who is writing a book about the history of presidential news conferences. “If you can stand up well to the kind of questioning you get from the press, then the public takes your leadership that much more seriously.”

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Times staff writers Greg Miller in Washington and Edwin Chen in Crawford, Texas, contributed to this report.