[Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory?]
Financial Times; Feb 12, 2003
THE AMERICAS & INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY: Bush in danger of losing hold on domestic initiatives
By Deborah McGregor in Washington
The term "dead on arrival" was often used to describe the budgets of former president Ronald Reagan when they landed in Congress. Now George W. Bush is trying hard to rescue several of his recent domestic policy initiatives from a similar fate.
On issues ranging from big tax cuts to ambitious healthcare reforms, the White House is facing unexpected resistance in a Republican-dominated Congress that the Bush team has so far failed to mobilise in support of the president's agenda.
The lack of support even among some Bush loyalists in Congress reflects a sense that the president's team has not properly laid the groundwork for sweeping policy proposals. The White House, meanwhile, is anxious to recapture the political momentum it enjoyed after last year's mid-term elections, when control of both houses held such tantalising prospects for the president's legislative priorities.
Recent Bush proposals that would radically reshape individual retirement savings plans are considered unlikely to pass. Several Republicans normally supportive of Mr Bush have voiced their surprise that the proposals were sprung on Congress with virtually no attempt to build consensus.
Mr Bush's healthcare advisers have been forced back to the drawing boards to try to come up with a reform plan for Medicare, the federal healthcare plan for the elderly.
No details are yet in sight. But the aborted roll-out of an earlier proposal may have fatally undermined administration hopes to include a prescription drug benefit in a broad Medicare overhaul. "It's just not going to happen," predicted one senior Republican aide of the Medicare reforms.
Not helping the president's case is the fact that his advisers appeared stunningly out of touch with the political implications of their proposals. There are, for example, no managed-care companies in Iowa - the home state of Charles Grassley, the influential chairman of the Senate Finance committee, who will oversee any Medicare legislation. Democrats chortled privately at the White House's gaffe. Such elementary mis-steps are not normally associated with the Bush White House.
Sceptics in Congress cite a president preoccupied with foreign policy issues and an unrealistic assessment of what is possible to accomplish, particularly in the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow 51-49 edge.
Even Republican strategists acknowledge that the window for legislating will be open for only a short period between now and next year's presidential elections. "If you don't nail it down going into the fall then it's not going to happen," says one congressional Republican.
On tax cuts many moderate Republicans remain unconvinced.
Yesterday, Mr Bush summoned congressional leaders to the White House to press yet again for action on welfare reform - another of his languishing domestic priorities.
Fred Greenstein, a presidential scholar at Princeton University, suggests that, in the end, Mr Bush is likely to claim victory even in the face of what others might view as defeat. "Bush is not someone to start by trimming his sails," he says. But this year, it seems, others may do the trimming for him.