Washington — The political rumblings are starting. The Democrats are about to readjust their presidential-nomination calendar to assure they get an early start at taking on President Bush. The president is using over-my-dead-body language to describe his dedication to opposing tax increases.
But at the same time, leading voices from both parties, recognizing that the nation is at war, in danger and, to a remarkable degree, united, are pleading: This is no time for politics as usual.
Indeed, there is almost no criticism in the capital about the administration's conduct of the war against terrorism. There is less ostentatious fund-raising and blatant political rhetoric than at any time since the beginning of the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. The Enron scandal, a tantalizing target for easy political advantage over a president and vice president with ties to the energy industry, is being handled with remarkable restraint by Democrats.
Even so, times when everyone agrees it's no time for politics are usually times when politics is practiced in subtle ways. Jimmy Carter eschewed traditional politics in early 1980, trying to transform his very abstinence into a virtue. It worked for a short time, helping him defeat Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in Democratic primaries, but he was beaten in the general election by Ronald Reagan. Lyndon B. Johnson wouldn't campaign in early 1968 political contests, hoping his forbearance would be regarded by the public as selflessness. He announced on March 31 he wouldn't seek another term, and in November his party was repudiated by Richard M. Nixon.
Now President Bush, who says the defeat of terrorism is his life's mission, is arguing that politics don't interest him in the least. It is true that the attacks of September transformed the president, giving him a calling and a voice that he lacked in his early days in the White House. But it also may be true that standing above politics might be good politics.
Such a posture permits the president to proceed with prosecuting the war without hindrance, without political calculation, without distraction. The United States has never had a threat quite like the one it faces today, and the effort military, diplomatic, economic, domestic and legal requires unusual resources and coordination. It is a full-time job, and more.
But the president and his advisers know that this is one of those rare moments where an old Washington chestnut good policy is good politics actually applies. (Good policy, whether viewed from the right or left, in addressing the nation's actuarial nightmares in entitlements is not good politics, which is why it has never been done. Good policy likewise in addressing the energy challenge is not good politics, with similarly discouraging results.) A president who can stand before the American people at this time and say that he'll do the right thing regardless of the political impact is a president who is doing the right thing politically as well.
Presidents, of course, are the ultimate politicians. "I never think about politics more than 18 hours a day," Lyndon Johnson once said. Henry Adams said of Theodore Roosevelt: "Theodore thinks of nothing, talks of nothing, and lives for nothing but his political interests. If you remark to him that God is Great, he asks naively how that will affect his election."
The Bush family, America's premier political dynasty, feels no differently. President Bush's father was part patrician, part politician, but he never forgot that he couldn't be a successful patrician president if he failed at being a conventional politician. The president himself is steeped in the political arts, many of which he learned at his father's arm in the latter's bruising and unsuccessful 1970 Senate race against Lloyd M. Bentsen in Texas, in his father's White House and in his father's unsuccessful 1992 re-election battle against Bill Clinton.
That is why, in the days when Republicans were clamoring for Gov. Bush to enter the campaign hustings in early 1999, he held back. He was encumbered by perhaps the weakest governorship in the union, and yet he argued that his gubernatorial duties prevented him from attending rallies and Lincoln Day dinners in Iowa and New Hampshire. As his aides laid the groundwork for the most successful GOP pre-primary campaign since Dwight Eisenhower's in 1952, Bush was able to portray himself as a man who took his responsibilities seriously, even as he created a sense of mystery and, thus, of allure.
Only a few months ago Bush was vulnerable to Democratic charges that, in favoring lazy weekends at Camp David, long respites at Crawford and undemanding days in Washington (in bed, Coolidge-style, by 9:30), he was cavalier about the presidency, even irresponsible. That argument has disappeared. And so has ordinary politics.
In this atmosphere, the nonpolitical is political. It also may be very potent.
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