Plain speaking
The president talks with U.S. News about plans for the new year, racism--and the prospect of war
As President Bush wraps up his second year in the White House, he finds himself juggling an armful of new crises and old problems. In recent weeks, he fired his two chief economic advisers and replaced them with a supposedly more telegenic and persuasive team led by Treasury Secretary-designate John Snow. He ordered the construction of a rudimentary and controversial antimissile system to be based in Alaska and California. He tried to balance his calls for "compassionate conservatism" with tepid support for the besieged Mississippi conservative Trent Lott, who finally withdrew from his post as Senate Republican leader five days before Christmas. Most important, the president took another step toward war by citing omissions and deceptions in Saddam Hussein's new United Nations-required report on the status of Iraq's weapons programs.
Yet, in a revealing year-end interview with U.S. News, Bush was optimistic about the future even as he acknowledged the daunting tasks ahead. He showed none of the cowboy swagger and Lone Ranger impulses for which he has been caricatured. "I hope the American people trust me," Bush said, sitting in front of an Oval Office fireplace bordered with pine cones, apples, and holiday greenery. "I hope they trust me when it comes to fighting this war on terror, and I hope they trust me when it comes to leading toward a more compassionate tomorrow, because I'm a compassionate person. The only thing I know to do is to speak my mind, show my heart as best I can, and to lead."
What came across most vividly was his desire not to settle for small victories in 2003 but to think big. In a separate interview, White House counselor Karl Rove told U.S. News: "You've got to stick with trying to achieve what you set out to do in the first place. But leadership is creating political capital and then expending it on behalf of big things, new big things that are in keeping with your philosophical approach. Once you pass a big idea that's part of your platform--tax cut, education reform, trade promotion authority, and so forth--you have to go back and refresh the agenda and keep expanding it."
No bigotry. Lott's withdrawal as Senate leader gives the president the opportunity to renew his campaign to prove he is a different kind of Republican, without the complication of working with a man tainted as a sometime defender of segregation. In the interview, Bush was eager, for the first time, to detail his views on America's continuing racial divide. But just 48 hours before Lott stepped down, Bush said Lott "shouldn't leave his position." The president did not want to give Lott the final public shove, even while his allies were working behind the scenes to force Lott out. "My attitude about race is that we ought to confront bigotry, all forms of bigotry," Bush said, "and I believe the American--I know the American people are good, honorable, decent people. And occasionally the bigot has his day. I don't think Trent Lott is a bigot. I find him to be a, you know, he's a friend. . . . My job is to continue to work for an America that welcomes all and that is nondiscriminatory, and I will do that."
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