NEWS ANALYSIS: THE OUTLOOK Bush's Urgent Task: To Calm Public's Growing Impatience

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

By Richard W. Stevenson

New York Times Writer

"This president appears to lack the leadership skills required to do what is necessary to successfully stabilize and reconstruct Iraq before the window of opportunity closes. Instead, President Bush seems content to pursue the current flawed plan, unwilling to do what is necessary to encourage our friends and allies to assist, incapable of taking the steps necessary to expedite the transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis, and content to direct billions of dollars to special interests like Halliburton."

-- Howard Dean

WASHINGTON -- NYT
Early on Tuesday morning, as many Americans were scanning newspaper headlines about the latest wave of deadly bombings in Iraq, President Bush met with his press secretary and his communications director in the Oval Office. He told them, aides said, that he wanted to hold a full-scale news conference a few hours later.

The idea had been under consideration for several weeks, but it was only after the attacks in Baghdad on Monday that Mr. Bush decided to take his message directly to the voters and the world.

For weeks, while opinion polls showed diminished support for his postwar leadership, he had accused the press of filtering out good news from Iraq and overplaying the bad.

The decision reflects how urgent it is for the White House to keep public opinion about Iraq from deteriorating to the point that it could limit the president's policy choices and threaten his chances for re-election.

With Election Day just over a year away, Mr. Bush will come under increasing pressure to start showing results in Iraq and bringing troops home. But, faced with an evolving threat that will require military flexibility, he also may be counting on an electorate patient enough to deal with what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld now calls a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The president will be called on to show results for the $87 billion that Congress is close to granting him for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(More: NYTimes.com)
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Dan