"Panic on the Hill"

Eleanor Clift, Newsweek

Like the movie, "No Way Out," Iraq can only get worse; it can't get
better. Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, said as much when
he testified this week before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the
violence would increase after the June 30 handover and that the Iraqis won't
be ready to assume responsibility for security until April 2005.

Who is President Bush kidding when he talks of turning over sovereignty to
the Iraqis? No one yet has been identified to give power to, and the
Pentagon's love affair with Iraqi exile leader Ahmad Chalabi is over.
American troops stormed Chalabi's residence and offices in Baghdad, a
remarkable reversal of fortune for a man who was on the U.S. payroll until
this month, and who provided most of the phony intelligence that formed the
Bush administration's basis for war.The Bush juggernaut looks like the Keystone Cops. What's going on would be
pure farce, except it's tragedy because so many people are dying. Missiles
slam into what Iraqis said was a wedding ceremony, leaving women and
children among the dead. Israel is going crazy in the Gaza Strip, bulldozing
Palestinian homes and shooting into a crowd of peaceful demonstrators. At
home, gas prices are rising to an all-time high and in Canton, Ohio, a steel
plant that Bush touted as a model last year announced it was closing,
costing another 1,300 jobs in a state that has already lost 170,000 in the
manufacturing sector.

Surveying the wreckage, an aide to a prominent Senate Republican termed it a
"perfect storm of bad events."

It came home to Republicans this week in a way it hasn't before that Bush
could lose in November. The disarray is not only about Iraq, where it's
particularly vicious, but spills over into budget negotiations and court
appointments, where Bush's conservative base is turning up the heat on
wobbly Republicans. The high anxiety was evident when the normally genial
House speaker, Denny Hastert, had the gall to question whether Arizona Sen.
John McCain understood the meaning of sacrifice during wartime. "Is he a
Republican?" Hastert snidely asked, before suggesting McCain might want to
visit some of the wounded if he didn't think Americans were making
sacrifices.

What prompted Hastert's outburst was McCain's insistence on spending
restraints to pay for future tax cuts, as opposed to simply running up the
deficit. Where is the sacrifice, McCain asked, pointing out that no war
president has cut taxes while defense costs are mounting. Considering that
McCain spent five years as a POW in Vietnam, Hastert's remarks were
particularly impolitic. "He better watch it or he'll turn our ticket,"
chuckled a Democratic strategist, keeping in play the notion that McCain
might become John Kerry's running mate.

That won't happen. The gulf on issues is too great, and McCain's party
loyalty too strong. But keeping the hope alive sends a signal to Republican
moderates that Kerry is acceptable should they bolt from Bush.

What's going on is a reassessment of Bush's leadership. It's not the first
time. Before the terrorist attacks, Bush was widely seen as lacking, a
genial caretaker with no agenda beyond cutting taxes, a likely one-termer.
After 9/11, voters saw him in a different light, and Bush's handlers have
worked hard to prop up the man to match the myth. "Now they're re-evaluating
the re-evaluation," says a Republican strategist. "People, particularly
women, are reassessing, and what looked resolute and decisive now looks
wrongheaded."

Bush is the first president to hold an M.B.A., and the streamlined way he
runs the White House and makes decisions won him praise—especially in
contrast to his predecessor. Bill Clinton's White House was more like a
graduate-school seminar with issues endlessly debated and discussed, and
decisions rarely made in a timely way.

Now Bush's management style is under fire just as Ronald Reagan's was after
the Iran-contra scandal broke. The week the country learned the Reagan
administration was secretly trading arms for hostages in Iran, and that
Reagan was allegedly unaware members of his staff were diverting money from
the arms deal to fund a rebel uprising in Central America, Reagan appeared
on the cover of Fortune as a model CEO. In a similar awakening, The Wall
Street Journal this week observed that the traits that mark Bush's
leadership—reliance on a small group of trusted advisors, equating dissent
with disloyalty and never admitting a mistake—may not be the right mix given
the combustible issues Bush faces.

There is panic on the Hill among Republicans because if the bottom falls out
of the Bush campaign, they could lose the Senate. Except for the seat of
retiring Democrat Zell Miller in Georgia, which will be an easy pick-up for
the GOP, Democratic victories are within reach in both Carolinas, Louisiana
and Florida, as well as Oklahoma, Colorado and Illinois. "If it wasn't for
the rape of Texas, the House would be in play," says a Democratic
strategist, referring to the redistricting pushed through by the GOP that
ensures them an additional five seats.

Granted, it's early and a lot can happen. But a Senate Republican said the
week's events convinced him there won't be a Bush landslide. "And if Bush
narrowly wins, think how acrid the political atmosphere will be." If Kerry
wins, Iraq becomes his war, and he'll have to answer the question he posed
more than three decades ago: how do you ask the last man to die for a
mistake?