George W. Bush, Peace President?

The audience has tired of George W. Bush’s performance as a war president. If he wants to save his presidency he will have to pivot like a ballet dancer and become our peace president.

He has gotten about as much as he can out of his role as a war president. Continuing in the role will only assure further declines in his popularity. Only by nimbly switching to our peace president does he have a chance to recover.

President Bush until now has been able expertly to capitalize on his status as a war president. In a crisis Americans naturally rally around their president. By playing on our continuing fears of another 9-11 he secured his re-election last November. But fear works as a political strategy only so long. The more a president becomes identified with our fears the more likely it becomes that an ever-growing number of Americans will turn to someone else who offers hope. (It was the Democrats’ misfortune that John Kerry last year neither seemed able to exploit peoples’ fears nor appeal to their hopes.)

The Iraq War was never going to be popular if it lasted. None of our long wars have enjoyed ongoing enthusiastic support except World War II. The War of 1812 provoked hostility in the New England states from the outset. In the Civil War President Lincoln faced so much northern opposition that he felt compelled to lock up his most vociferous critics. American participation in World War I, though brief—the war ended a year after we got in—came to be regarded within a few years as a mistake by more than 60 percent of the American people. Disenchantment with the Korean War became evident the first year after the Chinese entered the conflict. Support for the war declined from 66 percent to 39 percent in six months. In Vietnam a plurality believed by late 1967 that the war had been a mistake.

What Americans want in war is victory. Polls show that they are usually even willing to tolerate high casualties if they are convinced our soldiers are giving their lives in a winning cause. In 1999 Princeton Survey Research Associates found that Americans would be willing to suffer nearly 30,000 American deaths in a war to "prevent Iraq from obtaining weapons of mass destruction."

Immediate victory now in Iraq is no longer an option. But President Bush does not face the choice of either pulling out all of our forces as the war’s most determined critics demand or grimly “staying the course,” as he has been advocating. There is fortunately for his poll ratings a third option.

Perhaps we should call this the “Richard Nixon Option.” It was the option Nixon astutely chose in 1968 when the country was divided over another seemingly intractable war it didn’t know how to get out of.

Nixon knew Americans did not want to admit defeat. He also knew that they were tired of war. His solution? To offer himself up as the peace candidate who could deliver a compromise settlement that would redeem the great sacrifices made in the war.

His ingenious remedy involved withdrawing from Vietnam on the installment plan. The war continued for years, of course. But the public was willing to go along because Nixon convincingly could claim to be winding down American involvement.

I should hasten to add that I do not think that Nixon's course was necessarily correct. It ended in failure, after all. After the deaths of thousands more Americans and tens of thousands more Vietnamese and the expenditure of billions of dollars Vietnam went communist in the end. But we do not need to refight the Vietnam War here. My purpose is to show that an administration that wants to pursue a calibrated withdrawal plan can do so while maintaining public support.

President Bush has been maladroitly framing the issue of war and peace in such a manner that he is neither satisfying the hawks who want us to increase troop levels nor the doves who want out immediately. His lame claim that we will stand down as the Iraqis stand up is uninspiring.

If he wants to continue the war long enough to give the Iraqis a fighting chance to establish some kind of government he will have to offer himself up as a peace president with a withdrawal plan that will begin immediately in the new year to show results. He could electrify the country if he uses the State of the Union address in January to announce a convincing withdrawal plan.

Let me be clear. It will be insufficient to announce withdrawals. He must begin to employ the rhetoric of peace. Only a peace president announcing withdrawals has a chance to regain the public’s trust.

Unlike Richard Nixon he is not in a position to distance himself from the failed policies that led to the debacle in Iraq. But the country would breathe a sigh of relief.

Would a few more years of American involvement in the Iraq War mean the difference between a stable government or civil war? As Donald Rumsfeld would say, this is a known unknown. It may be that only a strongman can keep Iraq together. (I opposed this war because I did not believe the risks were worth the predictable price. Alternatives were available.)

A known known is that if the president does not change course and reinvent himself as a peace president who is bringing home the troops, public support for the war will collapse. Were that to happen he would face a revolt in his own party and the failure of his presidency.

If we are to remain in Iraq the president will of course have to redefine what he means by victory. It is unlikely Iraq is going to become a western-style democracy, as promised.

Can Mr. Bush reinvent himself? Alas, probably not. My hunch is that he achieves coherence as a leader only from his plans for war. If that is the case, another leader will have to step forward and offer us the hope he can’t.

But maybe he’ll surprise us.

Related Links:

Rick Shenkman: Iraq: A Way Out