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Girding for battle
The experts on what to expect and what to watch out for in the second Bush administration
BY DEIRDRE FULTON

WE’RE STUCK WITH George W. Bush for four more years, and it’s a prospect that makes us shudder. To get an idea of what might be in store, the Phoenix interviewed several foreign- and domestic-policy experts and advocates. Here, they offer their perspectives on what we can expect and what we should watch out for. It’s enough to make us want to take the gloves off this time around.

Ted Widmer

I think Iraq is actually going to define the Bush presidency. I think Bush has had sort of an amazing pass on Iraq, and I think over the next couple years the press — and more importantly, the people — are going to grow weary of a really extended presence in Iraq, with the same kinds of casualties month after month. I think that will calm all this talk about Bush’s successful presidency, and it’ll begin to be like Lyndon Johnson in the mid ’60s, where you have all these conversations going on all at the same time about how much the president is getting done and how unpleasant this foreign-policy adventure is, and eventually it’ll all become the same conversation. Because you can’t keep them separate for that long. They’re very, very skillful at shifting attention away when things don’t look so good. But I think that that’s just going to be harder and harder. I think Iraq isn’t insignificant at all. I now think it has become what Bush said it was — falsely — two years ago. It has become the defining battleground for all these really important ideas. And it wasn’t that when we invaded, but it now is.

I pay attention to the words presidents use, because I’m a former speechwriter. And I thought last week’s speech was a lot worse than a lot of the commentators seemed to think it was. I thought it was really self-centered. No president can afford to get too far away from sounding confident and upbeat, but I think right now a lot of people would really appreciate some modesty and some realism coming from the president of the United States. I just don’t think we heard that. You can’t talk about freedom and liberty when no one knows what you’re talking about. I mean, it makes sense to an American audience, but the rest of the world kind of looks with amazement and skepticism.

If you think about it, there has never been a moment of really creative, personal diplomacy in this presidency. I don’t think there’s a modern president who’s put less time into difficult diplomacy than this one. He goes up to the lectern and writes a kind of ringing speech about freedom, but then he’s never there when you need him to roll up his sleeves and make something happen behind the scenes.

Ted Widmer is director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College, in Maryland. He served as a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and is the author of several books, including American Presidents: Martin Van Buren (Times Books).

Jim Wallis

As long as the only two moral issues are abortion and gay marriage, we’re going to continue to see this whole partisan use of the whole faith-and-values question.

I’d like to see George Bush go back to compassionate conservatism, and then back it up with some resources. But I don’t expect that with a budget that looks like it’s going to put the burden of deficit reduction and fiscal responsibility on those least able to bear the burden. I say that budgets are moral documents, and they reveal the values and priorities of the family, or the church, or the nation. I just think this budget fails — I’m afraid it’s going to fail — the values test in terms of who loses, who suffers, who benefits.

In terms of foreign policy, I thought the inaugural speech was an alarming claim. To say that freedom is God’s gift to humankind, and not the possession of any nation, is a good thing, but then to act like the last remaining superpower, the richest and most powerful nation, is now the definer and defender — the harbinger — of when and where freedom is at stake? If Iraq is the practical expression of the Bush doctrine of extending freedom and liberty, the world is in serious trouble. This war was conceived in confusion, carried out in arrogance, and resulting in chaos now.

I think we really have to not concede the language of faith and values to conservatives, to Republicans. Because they’ll then define those in really partisan terms. Progressive politics won’t succeed without progressive religion, and there has to be a real reclaiming of a very strong tradition in this country — of those movements that have, in part, been fueled by religion or spiritual values. I believe in the separation of church and state strongly, but that doesn’t mean the segregation of religious language or moral values from public discourse. [Martin Luther] King showed us how to do that best, of course. Everyone felt part of that conversation. I think the religious community, especially, needs to frame its opposition — to the war in Iraq, for example, or to a budget that makes tax cuts for the wealthy a higher priority than reducing poverty for local families — in moral, and even religious, terms.

George Bush is going to face a Christian opposition as part of the opposition. My hope is that the progressive forces in this country will be inclusive enough to embrace religious and moral values as part of their conversation too. And that the religious community will not be afraid to challenge the Bush Doctrine on specifically moral and religious grounds.

Jim Wallis is a liberal evangelical, the author of God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (HarperSanFrancisco), and a founder of Sojourners, a Christian organization advocating justice and peace. He will speak at Trinity Church, in Copley Square, on Sunday, January 30, at 4 p.m.

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Issue Date: January 28 - February 3, 2005
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