Oliphant and Lowry Discuss President Bush’s Address to the Nation About Iraq

GWEN IFILL:

A new USA Today/Gallup Poll out today says only one in three Americans believe the United States and its allies are winning the war in Iraq. So what does the president need to accomplish tonight? For that, we turn to National Review editor Rich Lowry and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant.

Tom, since you're sitting right in front of me, you get that question: What does the president get to accomplish tonight?

TOM OLIPHANT:

Well, at least from what they've been telling us since the morning, have a sense of what he's going to do. I think this is a campaign of reassurance, rather than a report to the nation that we're going to hear tonight with two purposes: One, to reassure the country that he has a strategy that 60 percent of the people think he doesn't have, both to win militarily and for further progress politically and economically.

And there will be a lot of very hot rhetoric about not quitting, not providing any timetables, not leaving until Iraq has a stable democracy. And, finally, we may see a return of some old language from last year's campaign mixing up the war in Iraq with the broader war on terrorism.

GWEN IFILL:

Rich, I want you to talk about that last observation there, but also, why do you think he's doing this now?

RICHARD LOWRY:

Well, because, obviously, the polls have slipped somewhat, and the White House is very forthright about the fact that they're facing a head wind in the public opinion polls here. Now, the public is not panicking. It's not a hemorrhage by any means. If you look at the Washington Post poll that was in the paper this morning, only one out of eight people say we should pull out immediately, and I would wager none of those people supported the war in the first place.

And you have slim, very slim majorities saying that they're optimistic about the situation in Iraq, that it's enhanced our security, and that it's increased the stability in the Middle East. So there is something there for the president to work with. But over the last several months he hasn't been attempting to sell the war. He's been trying to do other things, talking about Social Security, and that has not entirely accounted for the slippage, but it's at least contributed to it. So they're trying to —

GWEN IFILL:

Well, how about this link that Tom was talking about between the war in Iraq and the war on terror, do you anticipate the president will try to make that case again?

RICHARD LOWRY:

Absolutely. That will be a key theme tonight. And they'll emphasize two points there: one whether you can you argue about whether terrorists were there before we started, but they're certainly there now. And you can't get a sort of worse terrorist poster boy than (Abu Musab Al-) Zarqawi, who is, you know, one of our fiercest enemies there in Iraq. And he'll also, I think, make the broader case, which is that if you want to win the war on terror, you're going to have to try to create a better, more democratic and freer Middle East to change the political culture there, and Iraq is a crucial piece of that.

GWEN IFILL:

Tom, we've heard in the past couple of weeks kind of a shifting serious of rationales about how serious this insurgency is and what it's going to take to get out. Dick Cheney said it's going to — that the insurgency is in its last throes; Donald Rumsfeld said something like 12 years. We even heard (Ibrahim) al-Jaafari, the prime minister of Iraq, saying only two years. Is part of the president's goal tonight to kind of shift down all mixed messages?

TOM OLIPHANT:

Absolutely. And he will, I think. One thing you can do in a White House is concentrate the minds so there is one message. Furthermore, we're encountering this tonight in mid-campaign. It really started with the visit of the Iraqi prime minister last week, and there is not anything that the president is going to say tonight that's particularly different from what he's been saying since last week.

I think, however, that to the extent this is argumentative, that this is a rally speech — that it is something that will be taken on the road, not unlike the Social Security proposal. To that extent, people looking for a more realistic report to the nation, some kind of detailed look ahead of what people can expect will probably be a little frustrated. I noticed administration officials today speaking privately, looking ahead. They're looking for moments like that election in January, where you did see a spike in the president's approval. And right now they really don't see anything coming until August, really the end of the year —

GWEN IFILL:

Do you think this might be a political speech?

TOM OLIPHANT:

It is very much — what's missing, of course, is the 100-plus million dollars of advertising that accompanied the political speeches last week. I think what most people want, however, is a more detailed, sober discussion of a campaign that most Americans want to succeed, but suspect isn't going as well as it could.

GWEN IFILL:

Rich, how much of this is a political speech?

RICHARD LOWRY:

Oh, that's a huge part of it, and you have to maintain political support for the war, because if we don't, you're, you know, potentially facing a real difficulty. It's extremely difficult to wage an unpopular war. So he wants to bump up those numbers a little bit. And Tom's right; there have been some mixed messages from the administration, the foremost example being the Dick Cheney "last throes of the insurgency" comment, which was contradicted by Gen. (John) Abazaid.

You will not hear anything like that from President Bush tonight. He will be candid about the difficulties there and forthright about them. And that's something with some few exceptions, the mission accomplished event being the biggest one, he's been pretty good at saying this is going to be difficult all along, sometimes to the point of being paretic, in those presidential debates, when he was saying tough and difficult over and over again.

GWEN IFILL:

Is anybody listening, Rich?

RICHARD LOWRY:

Well, I think that has to be a fear because so much of this has already been said before, and the most important factor is obviously the facts on the ground, and you kind of have dual tracks, and I think this will be another theme of the speech tonight.

We heard from John Burns about the deterioration of the security situation, and that makes the most dramatic news, obviously and understandably, you know, bombings can't be ignored by the media, but people tend to hear about that more than they do the political process, where there has been substantial progress, and you do see the Shiites reaching out to the Sunnis, and you do see Sunnis saying that it was a mistake not to participate in the January election, and joining the legitimate political process. And that ultimately is the key to taking a huge step towards wearing down this insurgency.

GWEN IFILL:

Briefly, very briefly, Mr. Oliphant. Is anyone listening?

TOM OLIPHANT:

Yeah. Not particularly. He's going to have to build an audience. And that's why in a political campaign, Gwen, what's important is not so much what you say as what you repeat over and over again.

GWEN IFILL:

Okay, guys, see you both later on tonight.

RICHARD LOWRY:

Thanks, Gwen.