White House Week
When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Out of Town
President Bush and his strategists are hoping to draw the media's attention away from bad news in Iraq, turmoil in Washington, and Bush's anemic poll ratings next month when he makes two high-profile foreign trips. He is scheduled to visit Vietnam just before Thanksgiving for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that he hopes will demonstrate that old antagonists-Vietnam and the United States-can eventually heal their differences. He also will visit Estonia, then Latvia, which is hosting a NATO summit November 28-29, to demonstrate unity with America's European allies. White House advisers say the trips should give Bush a boost, since the presidency remains a very powerful office abroad even if Bush is not personally popular in many nations. The problem: The trips will come after the midterm elections November 7, so they won't help GOP candidates campaigning for their political lives.
Panic on the Hill, and Some Look to Bail
The Foley-page scandal has sent fear throughout the majority staffs of House committees and politically embattled member offices. To wit, administration officials and lobbying and public relations shops report that they've received numerous calls from GOP staffers seeking jobs off the Hill. "They're worried that they really will lose the majority," said one administration official. True enough, but the page scandal, coupled with unusual party infighting at the top, has sent new and strong signals that it is time to seek a soft landing away from Congress, says one connected K Street lawyer. "This is bad, very bad," he said.
Gee, and He Used to Be One of the Team
White House insiders are more than a bit miffed at former Secretary of State Colin Powell. They consider him one of the prime sources for Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial, which faults President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and others for botching the war in Iraq and misleading the country about how it is going. Powell lost many internal debates over the war and now is getting even, White House officials say. But they don't want to take on Powell directly because he is highly respected by most Americans, and they fear he could do more damage to Bush if he feels under sustained attack by his former colleagues.
With Iran, It's No More Mr. Nice Guys
Foreign ministers met in London last week, setting the stage to move the issue of Iran's nuclear programs to the United Nations Security Council, where a resolution on sanctions could be ready by the end of this week. There is already agreement on the contours of the expected sanctions, which are aimed at "starving the nuclear and ballistic missile programs" of funds and materiel from overseas, says a senior State Department official. They will also most likely target individual Iranian officials, denying them the ability to travel overseas and freezing any overseas assets. Under discussion still is an arms embargo on Iran of yet-to-be-determined broadness. Despite their publicly stated resistance to sanctions, Russia and China are expected to go along with the new U.N. effort, European talks with Iran having faltered, says the official. "Nobody out there is saying, 'We need to give this more time.'"
PHOTO OP: 2:27 p.m., October 3, Stockton Calif.
Child safety was on the mind of President Bush when he met Sylvia Ulmer, principal of George W. Bush Elementary School, and her students. The president had scheduled a conference on school violence following a spate of school shootings, and he also declared his support for an FBI investigation into the congressional page scandal.
With Kenneth T. Walsh, Paul Bedard and Thomas Omestad
This story appears in the October 16, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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