Bush errs in ceding the future
CORAL GABLES, Fla.
The White House is already hard at work making sure those off-putting displays of presidential arrogance are not seen again. Those kinds of atmospheric mistakes are the easiest to fix. What will be harder to fix is Bush's campaign preoccupation with Kerry and his difficulty projecting ahead. The result is that he is at risk of not only arguing that the present is satisfactory but of leaving the issue of the future blank. The weakness showed in the debate on foreign policy, with Bush failing to capitalize on his strongest suit; it will be even more obvious as the debates turn to domestic policy subjects. Consider, for example, homeland security, where inadequacy is the order of the day more than three years after the 9/11 attacks. "We're doing everything we can at home," said Bush, taking the odd position of satisfaction in an area where dissatisfaction is the wise policy, but also revealing the complete absence of any plans to improve domestic preparedness. Kerry offered a completely opposite approach -- dissatisfaction plus a plan. The government, he said, is cutting aid to state and local governments for the hiring of police officers and firefighters (the first responders of antiterrorism) at the same time it is sending a half-billion dollars to Iraq for the same purposes. When Bush celebrated the reformation of the FBI into primarily a counter-terrorism agency, Kerry was ready to wonder why a lack of staff has produced a backlog of 100,000 hours of covert wiretaps of potential terrorists. So much for the present, where Kerry put Bush on the defensive in an area where he is supposed to be dominant. For the future, Kerry could not have been more detailed -- a doubling of Special Forces personnel for covert operations abroad, an acceleration of the shoring up of bridges and tunnels, a doubling of the inspection rates of ship containers, tougher protections at chemical and nuclear power plants, and a tripling of the pace of securing "loose" weapons of the former Soviet Union. Bush literally had nothing to say about the homeland security future, save a grumpy line about how much all of Kerry's ideas were going to cost, which only gave the senator a chance to note that the president had preferred a tax cut for wealthy individuals over funds for fighting terrorism. Continued... |
