Redstate

Time To Play Rope-A-Dope

By Dan McLaughlin Posted in The White House — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

My initial, doleful reaction to the question "what should the President say tonight?" is, simply, that it doesn't much matter. Hardly anybody, friend or foe, is listening to him, especially on domestic policy. Obviously, part of the Bush Administration's long-term strategy should be to try and change that.

Traditionally, the best way for a struggling politician to do that is a rope-a-dope strategy - stay reactive, don't overcommit, then pounce on the other guy's mistakes. The Democrats have power? Fine, what will they do with it? It's always easy to show how the guy with the steering wheel is the one who is going too fast or heading in the wrong direction.

In some cases, events will put Bush back on center stage - foreign policy crises, a Supreme Court vacancy. Until then, he should carefully husband his remaining resources, and make clear that his main role is to prevent the Democrats from doing anything rash.

Here are my more specific suggestions:

1. Focus on foreign policy generally and on Iranian and Syrian interference in Iraq specifically. First of all, the president is still the Commander-in-Chief, and remains responsible for setting the terms of debate in foreign affairs even when his poll numbers aren't so hot. The American people are, plainly, sick of the Iraq situation generally - but people can and should understand that the key battle right now is not just refereeing bickering Iraqi ingrates but rather keeping Iraq's neighbors, some of whom have been after us since 1979, from taking over the place. That's a message that will only sink in if repeated.

2. Make the Democrats buy their Iraq position. Yes, as Commander-in-Chief, Bush should assume that he's still running the war, as he was elected to do. But he should make clear that if Congress forces us to back off in Iraq, Congress will be responsible for the consequences.

3. No. New. Taxes. On the one side, if there is a single issue on which Bush has held the conservative coalition together and mostly delivered his promises, it's been taxes. On the other side, the Democrats are nearly incapable of doing anything on domestic policy without raising taxes on somebody, yet "tax hiker" is the single label most likely to sink vulnerable freshman Democrats in swing districts. Bush should lay down the law, and at least implicitly make clear that he has learned his father's lesson: no new taxes means no new taxes.

(Unfortunately, it looks like Bush is heading in precisely the opposite direction, proposing an ambitious overhaul of the tax treatment of health insurance. It looks like wise policy from what I've seen so far, but its complexity is likely to dilute the contrast on taxes, while of course the chance of a Democratic Congress accepting any kind of Republican health care proposal is zero).

A weak hand can still be played to a position of strength - but only if Bush lets the Democrats open the bidding.