Success in Iraq will alter U.S. image
There’s probably not much that President Bush can say or do to convince the world’s population — and most Democrats — that he’s not a reckless foreign policy cowboy.
He’s just going to have to win the Iraq war in short order and with minimal casualties, hope that Iraqis dance in the streets, and then start swiftly building democracy in the Middle East.
“This isn’t a popularity contest. It’s a test of leadership,” the White House’s chief of global communications, Tucker Eskew, told me in an interview.
Eskew, who was communications director of Bush’s 2000 South Carolina primary campaign, now coordinates the daily communications on the Iraq crisis that emanate from various government agencies. He also performs mid-range message planning and develops long-range strategy. He insists that the administration has studiously timed and energetically executed its information strategy, including the buildup to Bush’s pursuit of Congressional authorization, his United Nations strategy, and, lately, the unveiling of his post-war humanitarian and Middle East democracy initiatives.
Despite undeniably insistent administration efforts to sell administration policy, the evidence suggests that the sales job has largely failed to convince world public opinion and domestic skeptics.
In late February, for instance, a poll for The Sunday Times of London found that when British citizens were asked who was the greatest threat to world peace, 45 percent named Hussein and 45 percent named Bush.
By a margin of 47 percent to 23 percent, respondents agreed the U.S. is “a bully that wants to dominate the world” rather than “a force for good.” A Pew Research Center poll last November found that in France, Germany and Russia, the majority of citizens believe that the prime U.S. aim in Iraq is control of its oil.
In the United States, polls consistently show that about 60 percent of Americans support Bush’s policy. But a January poll by Public Opinion Strategies showed that “core” Democratic primary voters have views similar to those prevailing in Europe. Fifty-eight percent of these voters believe that Bush is after Iraq’s oil. Sixty-two percent say he’s trying to make up for the fact that his father failed to overthrow Hussein in 1991. And 61 percent say he’s trying to draw attention away from a failed economy.
Such views put leftward pressure on Democratic presidential candidates, all of whom have to find something negative to say about Bush’s foreign policy.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean refers to Bush’s policy as “reckless,” and even Sen. Joe Lieberman, who supports Bush on Iraq, accuses him of “engaging the world too haphazardly, too arrogantly and too belatedly.”
Eskew professes to see progress in British polls that show slight increases in support for the Iraq war — though it’s contingent on a U.N. authorization of war.
He also points to declarations of support from governments in 30-odd countries, including Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia and most countries in Eastern Europe and the Persian Gulf.
In the short run, top U.S. officials are working at a frenetic pace to set up interviews with foreign media outlets in an attempt to better explain the U.S. policy. In the end, though, what counts is whether the United States wins a clean victory in Iraq and uncovers a vast cache of illegal weapons, and if it can set up a stable government.
We should know whether Bush is a hero or a goat in about six months. Then, of course, he has to handle North Korea and work on peace in the Middle East.
(Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.)