Criticism of Leadership Tests Bush's Best Asset
WASHINGTON — With polls showing most voters unhappy about President Bush's handling of the economy and divided over his course in Iraq, the president's strongest asset in the 2004 campaign has been the unwavering sense among most Americans that he is providing resolute leadership against terrorism.
But two days of public testimony before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks -- along with the release this week of a critical book by the president's former top counterterrorism advisor -- have offered the most forceful challenge yet to Bush's record in combating the terrorist threat.
The allegations from former advisor Richard Clarke -- that Bush slighted the war against terrorism to focus on Iraq -- dovetail so closely with so many Democratic criticisms of the president that some party strategists believe this week's events could mark a turning point in public attitudes about the administration's national security record.
"Their entire presidency is based on whatever leadership they can point to as a result of Sept. 11," said one senior Democratic strategist familiar with the thinking inside the campaign of Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, that party's presumptive nominee. "If the credibility of that leadership is questioned, his entire presidency hangs in the balance."
But most Republicans remain cautiously optimistic that this week's events won't significantly erode public approval of Bush's handling of the terrorist threat. They base their view largely on the belief that that confidence is rooted in real-world events -- the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan and of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and, above all, the absence of additional attacks inside the United States since that searing day in 2001.
Some independent analysts agree that those critical of Bush's terrorism tactics face the same problem the president does on the economy: Voters' actual experiences, rather than arguments from either side, are most likely to shape their attitudes.
"People aren't going to judge Bush on the basis of what the commission says; they are going to judge him on the basis of performance," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, an independent polling organization.
Even so, Clarke's allegations -- seconded to some extent by reports released by the commission staff and comments from the panel members -- have raised difficult questions on an issue the administration expected to be an unalloyed benefit.
