President George Bush, in his first big meeting with a wide variety of Democratic members of Congress in six years, has clearly extended a rhetorical olive branch — formal notice that he is not suggesting they’re unpatriotic if they differ with him:
President Bush squarely addressed the issue most on the mind of House Democrats, saying Saturday that deep divisions over the Iraq war need not bring anyone’s patriotism into question.
“You know, I welcome debate in a time of war and I hope you know that,” Bush said in opening remarks at the guest speaker at a retreat that drew about 200 lawmakers to a Virginia resort.
He said disagreeing with him over the war — as many in the room do — does not mean “you don’t share the same sense of patriotism I do.”
“You can get that thought out of your mind, if that’s what some believe,” the president said. “These are tough times, but there’s no doubt in my mind that you want to secure this homeland as much as I do.”
Of course, Bush’s comments and comments by Vice President Dick Cheney and others over the past several years are all recorded for posterity on videotape and indicate that precisely the opposite was suggested — loudly and repeatedly — during the political campaigns.
This had several negative impacts for the White House and the GOP in general: (1) it meant a near-total loss of any support from Democrats and (2) it chased away some independent voters and centrists who were either scared off by such suggestions or who were so angry over the attempts to insinuate a lack of patriotism that they broke totally with the GOP.
Check any opinion polls and you can see the loss of Democratic and independent support — which meant that going into the 2006 elections Bush & Co administered government of the base, for the base and by the base. The irony is that when the 2006 votes were counted, it showed that the GOP also lost some of its base. MORE:
Bush told Democrats in private that he empathizes with their anguish on Iraq, saying the war is “sapping our soul,” according to two officials who attended the session. They spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a closed meeting.
Bush’s conciliatory words were similar to some of his previous statements. But the applause and acknowledgment that followed them offered some indication that this audience was happy to hear them so directly and in person.
The news story contains the predictable comments from Democrats expressing approval of the President’s comments and the statements of mutual respect from Bush and Democratic bigwigs.
The significance is that Bush appears to be trying to inch away from the kind of mega-polarizing tactics Bush has used and Karl Rove has championed. (Billionaire George Soros is now doing the same thing on the Democratic side. SEE THIS EARLIER POST). The question: does it represent a genuine shift, or a stance used for this meeting? Most likely: it’s testing the waters for an unnannounced shift in tone.
Can it improve the working relationship? That depends if there is follow-through and whether Cheney lowers suggestions that Democrats are enabling or encouraging terrorists or in anyway unpatriotic. Strictly from the standpoint of political astuteness, it’s wise for Bush & Co. to drop this hot-button implication since polls now show most Americans have soured on the war and hope the Democrats can provide a countervailing force to the administration via Congress.
NOTE: It’s clear Bush failed to take OUR EARLIER ADVICE (scroll to the bottom of that post to see it) on how to talk to the Democrats at that important meeting. But he seems to have come out intact. (GWB: Save our suggested opening remarks in that post for a later talk with the Demmies).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.