Bush's Goals Are Clear, But Means Remain Murky
George W. Bush's second term likely will be shaped far more by what he did not say in his inaugural address than by what he did say.
Like all presidents, Bush centered his speech more on his goals than his means of accomplishing them. But it is his means, more than his ends, that ignite such impassioned division at home and abroad.
Few Americans would quarrel with the twin ambitions that anchored Bush's speech: encouraging the spread of liberty abroad and increasing ownership and economic choice at home. But the looming question is whether Bush's policies are moving the nation and the world toward achieving those aims, much less at a price most Americans consider acceptable.
This debate is most advanced on foreign policy. Bush framed America's international mission with a messianic sweep. Only by expanding liberty across the globe, Bush insisted, can America drain the resentments and hatreds that inspire terrorism.
Most experts are probably willing to grant Bush's premise that a world in which more citizens could express their beliefs and elect representative governments would be a tougher place for terrorists to recruit. Far less certain is whether his strategy is bringing us closer to such a world.
Relentless bombings and bloodshed underscore the distance Iraq must travel to reach a stable democracy, even after its Jan. 30 election. The chaos has also dimmed the odds that the election will produce a domino effect that pressures other Middle Eastern autocrats to loosen their own yokes. At least for now, emulating Iraq can't be much of a rallying cry.
Even some observers generally critical of Bush acknowledge that the removal of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has encouraged democratic activists across the Middle East. The paradox is that the invasion of Iraq and the continuing violence there has so damaged America's reputation in the region that the reformers -- and even the idea of democracy itself -- may be losing legitimacy in the Arab world.
Equally thorny is the issue of cost. In his 1961 inaugural, John F. Kennedy stirringly asked Americans "to pay any price, bear any burden" in defense of liberty. But Americans proved unwilling to write such an open-ended check when such soaring poetry crashed into the mud and blood of Vietnam.
