Morning Political Note: Jan. 31
W A S H I N G T O N, Jan. 31 -- Only four more shopping days until the reality of Big Casino hits with the release of the federal budget —after the president's apparently casual acceptance of deficits in the State of the Union, and indications of some pretty serious rifts within the GOP over the whole affair.
Click here, and we'll let you know when the note is ready each day.
News Summary
Only four more shopping days until the reality of Big Casino hits with the release of the federal budget — after the President's apparently casual acceptance of deficits in the State of the Union, and indications of some pretty serious rifts within the GOP over the whole affair.
Subhead/your lead for this news cycle: President Bush continues to get overall high marks for the SOTU, but now that the press has had time to pick through it, and certain concerned parties have had time to react, the second-day focus is (still) on the "axis of evil."
The axis gets lots of coverage, with USA Today and others, for starters, playing up the reaction from the three named nations.
One thing is clear: they are plenty mad, with Iran seemingly trying to use Bush's words to mix things up further in the Middle East; ABCNEWS' London bureau reports that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today that Iran is honored to be the target of attack by the United States, calling it "the most hated Satan in the world." And China isn't happy with Bush's words, either. And the Europeans are at least scratching their heads.
And the South Koreans are probably unhappiest of all, since their fragile government has staked everything on rapprochement with the North, and all this, on the eve of the President's visit, makes things so very messy.
We may get more favorable reax from a closer-knit member of the coalition when President Bush meets with German Chancellor Schroeder later today.
But two more interesting and potentially more important storylines are growing out of the President's bellicose words.
First, in order to keep it from leaking, very little consultation was done, or heads-ups issued outside or even inside the Administration, and that appears to have caused all sorts of ruffled feathers.
Second, those not consulted inside the government and who think that the rhetoric, particularly regarding Iran and North Korea, was a bad idea, spent a lot of time yesterday trying to convince reporters that the President hadn't really dramatically changed the dynamics.
(And on the President's description of "tens of thousands" of al Qaeda-trained terrorists out there, and threats to US nuclear facilities, some in the Administration apparently are having to spend time arguing that he was not overstating the case. But we'll get to that in a sec.)
Imagine if the The Wall Street Journal carried these words about President Clinton, regarding the major policy shift of one of his States of the Union: "Aids say the president's words reflected his feelings, not a comprehensive strategy for military action." (See "Bush Administration Strategy/Personality" below for more on that theme.)
The walkback came from all quarters — even Ari Fleischer on the record, saying no US military attack is imminent.
But State Department and Pentagon officials spent a lot of their day on this yesterday, with each building playing its own historical institutional role, with the former always wanting to make nicey-nice with other nations, even if it means dissing its own president, and the latter resisting having to actually USE all the hardware they fight so fiercely to have the taxpayers purchase.
Per the The Wall Street Journal (and again: imagine if this happened in the Clinton Administration): "The language 'reflected what the president believes and what sounded best to the speechwriters,' one administration official says, adding, 'Now people can start talking' about the policy to go with it."
"The Bush passages were a clear blow to Secretary of State Colin Powell and his top aides, who had been hoping to keep alive the option of an eventual dialogue with Iran, and possibly North Korea as well."
From the Washington Post : "[S]everal Pentagon officials stressed yesterday that there is no impending military action against Iraq. 'It would be news to us,' said one defense official familiar with military planning. Another Pentagon official went even farther, saying that current military planning is focused primarily on other areas where al Qaeda and its sympathizers are believed to be active. 'We're looking more at Somalia, the Philippines, places like that,' the official said. Nor is it clear that military operations are the best way to address the threats posed by Iraq, Iran and North Korea, administration officials said."( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64527-2002Jan30.html )
The Washington Times takes a more gentle look: "Pentagon officials privately concede that the military's readiness problems of the late 1990s, and a dwindling supply of precision guided munitions, makes it unlikely the U.S. armed forces can attack Iraq anytime soon. The military is structured to be able to fight two regional conflicts at once. Some military analysts contend the force, at 1.4 million active personnel, is too small and stretched out globally to meet that goal."( http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020131-18790220.htm )
This from the Washington Post on the tens of thousands of al Qaeda-trained terrorists: "Administration and intelligence officials yesterday said all the elements of that portrait were 'for real,' although in each case Bush used the most expansive interpretation of available information."( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17-2002Jan30.html )
"In terms of training, 'the numbers get squishy,' one official said. 'You don't have tens of thousands of people doing terrorism out there, but there were tens of thousands who went through this training experience' since 1991, some of them al Qaeda-allied foreigners and some members of the Afghan Taliban forces."
"'The bottom line is that the figures are very inexact. But the president can say with high confidence that there are a lot of people, non-Afghans, who have gone through this process.'"
And on those threats to US nuclear facilities:
"Bush said Tuesday that U.S. forces in Afghanistan had 'found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world.'"
"The diagrams found in al Qaeda offices, homes and camps were 'simple drawings, but they showed that attention was being paid to particular sites,' one said. 'None were operational plans,' he added. Administration officials have said previously that the 'detailed instructions' were essentially chemical formulas for such weapons and that no firm evidence has been found that such chemicals were produced."
Making the case in the other direction, the Washington Times leads with an exclusive (we think) on a US intelligence internal alert "that Islamic terrorists are planning another spectacular attack to rival those carried out on September 11."( http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020131-617330.htm
"The detailed warning was issued within the past two weeks in a classified report that said one target was a U.S. nuclear power plant or one of the Energy Department's nuclear facilities … Officials familiar with the report said it contained six potential methods and targets of attack" via various bombings.
The Washington Post 's David Broder provides us with our segue from the war to budget politicking. Arguing that Bush paid too little notice Tuesday night to the rising costs of health care, at least for his taste (and note, your Note authors note, that Tommy Thompson's budget announcements aren't getting that much coverage … ), Broder argues, "It's clear this is not where Bush's mind is centered. The import and intent of this State of the Union was to wrench the nation's focus back to the subject that is all-consuming to the president: the war on terrorism."( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64990-2002Jan30.html )
Get ready, Mr. Duffy, for the drip drip drip of Robert Pear stories in the New York Times pegged to the release of the budget, laying bare the "best of times, the worst of times" effects of the budget cuts — or, in most cases, restraints in growth of spending.
The conventional wisdom throughout most of Washington is that the White House has chosen to live with deficits for awhile, because of the huge spending on defense and homeland security, rather than take on the political fights (particularly with The Appropriators) that saving even small amounts of money would instigate. Since you'd only be effectively getting nickels and dimes back, the argument goes, why pick the fight?
Well, the reality is, not only do they need the nickels and dimes, but the chump change has significance for GOP conservatives. So there will be some scaling back, but too much for some and not enough for others, and all that will be chronicled.
Today Pear leads: "Even though unemployment has increased sharply in recent months, President Bush's budget will seek cuts in several job-training programs for laid- off workers and young adults most affected by the rise in unemployment, budget documents and federal officials say." ( http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/31/politics/31BUDG.html )
He follows with this: "Budget documents also indicate that the administration will propose a cut of $9.1 billion, or 29 percent, in federal highway spending, to $22.7 billion next year from $31.8 billion this year."
And this: "The chairman of the House Transportation Committee, Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, and the panel's senior Democrat, Representative James L. Oberstar of Minnesota, said the proposed cut was unacceptable. In a joint statement, they said it would force states to abandon or postpone many highway projects and 'could result in hundreds of thousands of Americans being thrown out of work.'"
Related Stories
ABC News Live