They all got more than they bargained for. The meeting didn’t last minutes, but half an hour. The president, relaxed and in control, drew Sen. Hillary Clinton into a warm, familial exchange. He treated Sen. Charles Schumer like a long-lost fraternity brother. As for their aid request, “I’m with ya,” the president said eagerly–and it was approved by Congress the next day. The Virginians got promises of aid, too, and the warlike words all four senators yearned for. “When I take action,” he said, “I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.”
Winston Churchill might not have used those words, but he’d have loved the sentiment–and admired the maturation of the man who uttered them. Like Churchill and FDR, George Walker Bush must weld and wield a worldwide coalition in a war of breathtaking scope. And once again, as is his habit in life, he’s exceeding expectations, learning on the run before our eyes.
With the World Trade Center in ruins and the Pentagon sliced apart, Americans knew what they wanted from their 43d president–firm, cleareyed, inspirational leadership–but didn’t know what to expect. By all accounts, he was calm and commanding in private from the start. But on day one, hounded by security threats and lacking information, he was less than that in public. Dramatic acts and eloquent words are not his forte, and there weren’t any as he flew from Florida to Louisiana to Nebraska to Washington aboard Air Force One, maintaining radio silence at the Secret Service’s insistence.
But by day four, his feet were on the ground, his bearings set: a late bloomer blossoming in the nick of time. From a pulpit in Washington, he led the country in graceful prayer. From atop Manhattan’s smoldering “pile,” megaphone in hand, he roused the crowd of rescue workers in the manner of the Andover cheerleader he once was. At a gut-wrenching private meeting, Bush cried along with the families of dead firemen as they shared their stories. Working the phone at all hours, he put military and world leaders through a to-do list of astonishing length at astonishing speed. Cheered on by voters’ hopes, he’d become, in the words of a priest at the National Cathedral, “our George”: the designated dragon slayer, a boyish knight in a helmet of graying hair.
Americans rally round a president in a crisis but require a credible figure in the role. Bush, by the end of the week, had become that man in the voters’ eyes. By an 82-11 percent margin, voters in the new NEWSWEEK Poll approved of the way he was handling his job. That’s about where Roosevelt’s rating stood immediately after Pearl Harbor, and higher than the rating received by any other modern president, including Bush’s father during the gulf war. An even higher ratio–89-8–specifically approved of his handling of the terrorist crisis. And by a big margin of 83-13 percent, voters said that the president is coming across as a “strong leader.” All that unity produced results in Congress: a prac- tically unanimous use-of-force authorization, $40 billion for home defense and reconstruction.
Bush passed his first tests, but like the medieval knight, he’s only begun his quest–and ours–for security and a new architecture to preserve it. The president came to power with “unilateralist” tendencies but must now assemble the most complex diplomatic armada since the Allies in World War II. He lined up–in some cases was handed–support from the United Nations, NATO, Russia and ANZUS. The tricky part will be winning backing (or forbearance) from the world’s Islamic states. Bush can no longer allow them to sanction or ignore Osama bin Laden’s twisted theory of holy war. But insisting that they become allies, as Bush is doing, could open them to “de-stabilization” by fundamentalists, who see America as satanic. It’s a labyrinth more tangled than the one Bush’s father, with far more experience, had to navigate.
The challenges at home are just as tough. Bush has called Americans to “war,” but to win it will take years and, almost certainly, American casualties. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, voters favor attacking bin Laden by a 54-40 percent margin; they want to go after terrorist bases and countries that harbor terrorists by 71-21 percent. But will that resolve last if our losses mount–or, worse, if our actions provoke new terrorist attacks? For in the new world war, civilians are combat-ants, whether they want to be or not.
Providing a state-of-the-art “homeland defense”–Washington’s new buzz term–will be costly. “Hardening” the transportation, communications and energy infrastructure could cost a half-trillion dollars; ongoing personnel costs could be staggering. The much-predicted clash between the old and the young could finally materialize as a recession shrinks the “surpluses” and defense spending absorbs the rest.
Security will require another type of sacrifice–of freedoms. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, voters say they are willing to give up privacy in air travel, but they are more skeptical of other measures, such as surveillance of e-mail and phone conversations. By a 62-32 percent margin, they reject “special surveillance” of Arab-Americans. Yet even before last week’s attacks, the Senate intelligence committee had voted extra funds for Internet surveillance and “profiling” measures, and agitation for more is sure to mount.
The challenges are enormous. And now it is the Bush family and its liegemen, wedded to public service for 50 years, who are summoned to meet them. Last Monday night–the last day of The World As We Knew It–Bush’s parents came to Washington, though their son had flown off to talk about education in Florida. Dad had a speech to give, and groused to friends that too many (in the media especially) underestimated his son.
Four days later “Old 41” was back in the capital, sitting with Barbara in the first pew of the National Cathedral as their eldest son spoke. “In every generation,” the 43d president said, “the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom’s home and defender. And the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.” When the son returned to the pew, his father patted him on the hand as if to say “Well done.” And the country, gladly, agreed.
