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Washington Post - September 3, 2004 Domestic questions remain By Dan Balz NEW YORK, Sept. 2 -- The biggest unanswered question about President Bush's reelection campaign has been whether he has a second-term economic and domestic agenda to match his commitment to fighting terrorists. He began to provide the answers here Thursday night with an acceptance speech long on ambitions but far shorter on the ways or the means to accomplish them. Bush is a politician who prefers the bold stroke over the workaday plan, and his speech wrapping up the Republican National Convention was a model of inspiring rhetoric, well-turned phrases and big themes, from planting the seeds of democracy in one of the most troubled regions of the world to remaking some of the largest areas of domestic government to meet the realities of family life in 21st-century America. It also continued the relentless attack on his challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry, that has been one of the principal themes of the GOP convention. If Bush ran for the presidency in 2000 with a tightly focused agenda, what he offered domestically Thursday was a laundry list of ideas, big and small, that would have made former president Bill Clinton envious for its length. What the domestic agenda lacked was both a sense of priorities that has been the hallmark of his political style and the passion that animated the second half of his speech, when he turned to foreign policy. Many of the domestic proposals are not new, including some of the largest. Bush again proposed Social Security reform but made no pledge to lead on it as he has on battling terrorism, which some GOP congressional leaders say is the only way it can pass. He again called for a plan for energy independence but offered little assurance that he has a strategy for breaking the impasse in a narrowly divided Congress. There were some notable omissions in the president's speech. Nowhere did he confront directly what he has heard along the campaign trail in battleground states such as Ohio and Michigan, which is the loss of jobs during his presidency and uneven economic recovery that casts a shadow over his hopes for reelection. The next report card on his economic stewardship will come Friday morning with the latest government statistics on employment and both his and the Kerry campaigns are braced for what they show. Bush offered many proposals for the economy, but before he gains acceptance for them, he may need to regain the confidence of voters who give him negative ratings for what he has done in his first term. Bush said, "Because we acted, our economy is growing again and creating jobs and nothing will hold us back." But public opinion polls show that a solid majority of voters reject that argument and see an economy far more troubled…… But from his theater-in-the round stage in the middle of Madison Square Garden, Bush cast the election as a choice between the "policies of the past" and "the path to the future." Time and again, he offered a critique of Kerry's record -- on taxes and spending, on health care, defense spending and fighting terrorism, singling out Kerry's vote against the $87 billion authorization for the military and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. He mocked Kerry for saying he had voted both for and against it and for describing the choice as complicated. "There is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat," Bush said. He also challenged the Massachusetts senator's claim to be the candidate of conservative values. Kerry has often made this case, but Bush sought to demolish the argument with a telling bit of opposition research, Kerry's own words from the 1988 Democratic convention. "If you gave a speech, as my opponent did, calling the Reagan presidency eight years of 'moral darkness,' then you may be a lot of things," Bush said, "but the candidate of conservative values is not one of them." The first three nights of the Republican National Convention, however focused, pointed and effective, left Bush with a sizable challenge -- namely the entire burden of defending his administration's record on the economy and offering voters a clear sense of what he would do in a second term….. Bush's foreign policy, particularly his policy in Iraq, may be controversial with a considerable share of the electorate, but few doubt his willingness to act and act aggressively in the face of terrorist threats. But after nearly four years in office, questions remain about his passion or commitment to the economy or domestic policy…. On Thursday, Bush began to put some flesh on the domestic bones of his reelection message. But he has yet to persuade the voters to have confidence in his leadership in those areas. His advisers still prefer to fight Kerry where Bush is strongest. It will be left to the voters to say if that was the right choice. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A57590-2004Sep2?language=printer |