Two weeks ago today, President Bush did what presidents get to do when they're in trouble: He addressed the nation live in prime time from the White House. ...
... The president's problem with asking for $87 billion -- aside from its being enough money to choke an economy -- was that it poked at not one, but three different current raw nerves.
1) Why is this costing so much more than we were told it would? ...
... they kept arguing that Iraq was an oil-rich country and could pay for its own restoration. ... ... reminding people of one prewar miscalculation also makes them think of others.
"This is a country in which it doesn't matter what you say if you succeed," Walter Pincus of the Washington Post recently told The Nation magazine. "But if you fail, people go back and look at why."
2) Why are we paying for this operation by ourselves? ...
... Americans have noticed that despite the president's claim that our allies have a duty to pay for the outcome of the war they opposed, nobody is rushing to do it -- or to send their own troops. ...
3) The money comes from where? ...
... "I'd like to see a public-works project in our country," says Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio. "It's hard to say we don't have the money for sewers, roads and schools here, but we are able to put money over there."
And will be for a long time.
For the past two years, asked to square oceans of red ink with campaign pledges to balance the budget, President Bush has insisted that he left himself three outs: war, economic downtown and national emergency, and, "Lucky me. I hit the trifecta."
Actually, research has failed to find any campaign occasion when Bush listed the three exceptions -- although there does seem to be a speech when Al Gore did. But now, Bush has offered a plan that sets off three different voter concerns: miscalculation, isolation and a deficit the size of Texas.
