Waving the bloody shirt: For Bush's campaign, 9/11 is defining theme
Posted on Sunday, March 07 @ 09:26:33 EST His ads and speeches focus on
the terrorist attacks. Experts say he's invoking a time-tested tactic,
but that it could rebound against him.

By Edwin Chen, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — As his reelection bid kicks into gear, President Bush is
offering a catchall explanation designed to inoculate himself against
potential vulnerabilities — from a weak economy and massive budget
deficits to the growth of government and a curtailment of civil rights.

In a phrase, it's 9/11.

As Bush tells it, the anemic economy he inherited was just coming out of
the doldrums when the terrorists struck New York City and the Pentagon
on Sept. 11, 2001. And the nation only now is recovering from the severe
dislocations those attacks wrought.

"The attack hurt our economy," Bush said in Bakersfield last week.

Few would dispute that. But far from clear is whether voters will buy
his view of the far-reaching effect of Sept. 11 and its aftermath on the
economy.



Barry P. Bosworth, an economist who served in the administrations of
presidents Nixon and Carter, said Bush was exaggerating the extent to
which the war on terrorism had contributed to the annual budget
deficits, which this year could top $500 billion. Bosworth said the
president was also minimizing the role played by pushing into law
across-the-board tax cuts.

It is hardly surprising for Bush to invoke Sept. 11; the tragedy has
defined his presidency.

"It's a time-tested tactic in American politics to recall for people
some horror as a voting cue," said Ross Baker, a political science
professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Using a phrase invoked for decades by Republicans after the Civil War,
he added: "It's important for presidents to wave the bloody shirt."

But Bush's gambit also looms as a double-edged sword, as became evident
last week. Some relatives of victims of the terror attacks and a
firefighters union condemned him for using images of the World Trade
Center tragedy in his reelection campaign's first television ads. The
critics called the spots insensitive and offensive.

Top Bush aides politely but vehemently disagreed. "The ad is a reminder
of our shared experience. Sept. 11 is not some distant event in the
past. It's a defining event for our future," Karen P. Hughes, one of the
president's closest advisors, said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Bush personally defended the imagery Saturday, saying, "I will continue
to speak about the effects of Sept. 11 on our country and my presidency."

"How this administration handled that day, as well as the war on terror,
is worthy of discussion. And I look forward to discussing that with the
American people," Bush told reporters at his ranch outside Crawford,
Texas, after a summit meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox. "And I
look forward to the debate about who is best to lead this country in the
war on terror."

In New York, relatives of some of those who died in the attack released
a letter Saturday supporting Bush and his use of Sept. 11 images in his
TV ads.

Three of the ads show the ruins of a World Trade Center tower; two ads
show firefighters carrying the flag-draped remains of a victim from
ground zero.

Families of some of the Sept. 11 victims have been at odds with the
administration over its level of cooperation with the commission
investigating the attacks, and the firefighters union is backing Bush's
presumptive Democratic challenger, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts.
But if a wider swath of voters concludes that Bush is exploiting a
national tragedy for political gain, they may punish him on Nov. 2,
analysts said.

"He can hit a nerve where people resent that he's trying to use
something so tragic — something that was such a special moment in the
country's history — as a political protection shield," said Harvard
University pollster Robert Blendon.

David Gergen, an advisor to Republican and Democratic presidents alike,
agreed. "There are no bright lines on this kind of issue," he said.

"It's a perfectly legitimate and time-honored tradition to recall the
defining moment of your first term. And if Bush is reelected, it will be
because of the way he responded," Gergen said. "But there are limits on
how far he should go in drawing upon it.''

This is not the first time Bush has drawn criticism over the use of
images from the day of the attacks. In May 2002, he was criticized for
allowing Republican fundraisers to sell a photograph of him taken aboard
Air Force One that day.

In the unfolding presidential campaign, Bush has been arguing that the
attacks not only sapped consumer confidence and delayed an economic
recovery, but necessitated massive spending at home and abroad for the
war on terrorism.

In speeches around the country, Bush has specifically cited Sept. 11 as
one factor that plunged the federal budget back into red ink.

As he put it in Indianapolis in early September: "About half of the
deficit is caused by the recession that we're trying to get out of. A
quarter of the deficit is caused by the fact that we're spending money
to defend America…. And about a quarter of the deficit was caused by the
tax relief."

But Bosworth, the Nixon economic aide who directed the Council of Wage
and Price Stability during the Carter administration, took issue with
Bush's assertions.

Now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in
Washington, Bosworth said Bush's tax cuts accounted for about 40% of the
deficit and that spending for the war had contributed less to the red
ink than Bush has said.

"He's putting too small a weight on his own tax reductions and trying to
blame the war too much for the deficit," Bosworth said.

He said he believed the recession contributed no more than a third of
the deficit — largely by cutting into federal tax receipts — not the
approximately 50% Bush has cited.

Bush has called on Congress to make the tax cuts permanent. Some of them
are due to expire as soon as the end of this year. The president has
argued that the cuts averted deeper economic problems and over the long
term will spur significant economic growth.

He also contends that his new budget, if adopted by Congress, would
chart a course to halve the deficit in five years, in part by virtually
flat-lining all discretionary spending outside of defense and homeland
security.

Bush also cites Sept. 11 as justification for the curtailment of civil
liberties under the Patriot Act. That law has drawn strong criticism
from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.

"For years, we've used similar provisions to catch embezzlers or drug
traffickers," Bush noted this month as he observed the first anniversary
of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. "If these
methods are good enough for hunting criminals, they're even more
important for hunting terrorists," he said.

In keeping alive memories of Sept. 11, Bush is attempting to create a
framework for the presidential campaign, said Lawrence R. Jacobs, a
political scientist at the University of Minnesota.

"If the context is 9/11, then the disappointing results on a number of
fronts — the deficit, the economy, the failure to find [weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq], the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan — are seen as a
cost of fighting an external threat," Jacobs said.

"In that framework or context, the president will probably win the
election," he said. "But if George Bush has to run on the classic
question of a presidential reelection campaign — are you better off now
than four years ago? — then he may well lose."

The flap over Bush's TV ads, Jacobs said, is symptomatic of the ongoing
struggle to control "the defining question of this election."

Times staff writer Maura Reynolds contributed to this report from
Crawford, Texas.