Never As Planned
When you are president you have power, but that does not mean things always go your way. It’s the main lesson of the Bush administration when you compare the promises made by candidate George Bush in 2000 and what happened once he got the job.
The replay of the first Bush campaign is filled with irony and lessons to be applied to the current race for the White House. To be fair, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 dramatically altered the path President Bush intended to follow.
In the summer of 2000, candidate Bush could not name the President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf. He just called him “general.” Today Musharraf is one of Bush’s few post 9/11 allies still standing. During the debates of 2000, candidate Bush promised a foreign policy that was inclusive and not “arrogant” toward the concerns of other nations. Today his foreign policy is derided as a “go it alone-cowboy foreign policy.” He promised to maintain a balanced budget unless a catastrophic event like war made it impossible. He planned to make immigration reform one of his top priorities, but the war on terror got in the way.
In short, nothing turned out as planned. Eight years later, the disaster left behind is fueling unprecedented turnout in primary voting and an apparent burning desire for change. The early results in Iowa and New Hampshire were not only anti-Bush and anti-Republican, they were anti-Washington. The first candidates to fall out of the race were those with the most insider experience. Sen. Chris Dodd, Sen. Joe Biden, Gov. Bill Richardson were all tossed aside. In Iowa, Republicans favored former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee over John McCain, despite McCain’s decades of experience.
The fundamental issue of the 2008 race is finding the right mix of change and experience. Change itself is a given.
The vote in Iowa for Huckabee and Barack Obama said “we are ready to try something new and radically different” because what’s happening now just isn’t working. Five days later in New Hampshire, the message was, “but we don’t want to be stupid about it.”
Although McCain is not the perfect Republican, he does command respect for his consistent stand on the issues. He may have years of experience as a Washington insider, but he also is seen as a maverick who is not willing to stick with his party when he thinks it is wrong. In this environment, if he is not buried by his lack of campaign funds, he might emerge as the Republican nominee. His candidacy would be a mix of experience and independence.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton faces Obama, who has become a living symbol of change and hope. The tide turned in her favor, in New Hampshire, when she began to argue her opponent’s promises of change are naïve in the dangerous world we live in. It wasn’t so much that she cried, it’s that she got through in a way that reminded voters of the risk of putting a likeable but untested candidate into the most difficult job in the world. Good intentions are not enough once you have made it to the Oval Office.
As the final year of the Bush administration comes to a close, his time in office shows a candidate’s position on the issues of today may not be as important as how he handles the unpredictable, because once you have the job, things never go as planned. In the end, the grilling the candidates face on the campaign trail is helpful to voters as a personality test more than an IQ test.
Dean Pagani is a former gubernatorial advisor. He is V.P. of Public Affairs for Cashman and Katz Integrated Communications in Glastonbury.
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