The Sept. 11 commission is shaking up the 2004 presidential campaign, helping to make a key political issue of its recommended changes in the nation's intelligence system and reshaping the anti-terrorism platforms of President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry.
The commission's report criticized U.S. intelligence failures and cited systemic flaws in intelligence gathering. Since the report's release three weeks ago, the lobbying by commission members for action on their recommended policy changes not only has forced Congress and the White House to respond but also has driven the politics on one of the campaign's most important issues, the war on terrorism, analysts and advisers to both campaigns say.
Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, has seized on the report to bolster his anti-terrorism message and beat back accusations from Republicans that he is indecisive. He endorsed the panel's 41 recommended policy changes two days after they were issued, called on Congress to skip its August recess to write them into law and asked Bush to extend the life of the commission. This allowed Kerry to "become the leader on the 9/11 issue" for the first time, a senior Kerry adviser asserted. Now, the report is the heart of his anti-terrorism platform and campaign strategy.
Bush, who initially opposed creation of the commission, last week dropped his opposition to two of its most prominent recommendations: creation of a national director of intelligence post and of a federal intelligence clearinghouse. Yesterday, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice indicated that Bush might also accept giving budgetary and staffing authority to the new intelligence director.
The president has made clear he wants to go slower than the fast-tracked pace Kerry and the commission members want. The Bush campaign has accused Kerry of blindly endorsing the commission's work for political gain. Kerry is showing his "anti-terror agenda is whatever can get him short-term political advantage," Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman said in an interview.
The continued prominence of the Sept. 11 commission underscores how it, unlike the scores of commissions before it in U.S. history, will play an unusually important role in the presidential and congressional elections, advisers to Bush and Kerry and political historians say.
The commission is set to expire Aug. 21, but Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said in an interview last week that panel members hope to obtain private funding to sustain their lobbying campaign at least through the election. They want to pressure Bush, Kerry and Congress to cement their recommendations into law this year.
Kean and the nine other commissioners plan to appear before at least 10 congressional committees; hold public meetings in several cities, including some in election battleground states; and maintain their regular presence on television news programs. "We want to be part of the debate," Kean said.
In an interview with the New York Times, Kean said voters should factor candidates' responses to the commission's report into their voting decisions. Many relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks plan to monitor the presidential and congressional candidates and pressure those who do not aggressively seek to implement the proposed intelligence changes.
Even if the commissioners and victims' relatives recede into the background of the election -- which is unlikely considering that the third anniversary of the attacks is in the midst of the campaign and the issue of terrorism is such a dominating one -- Kerry is planning to make the commission report a major issue almost every week until Election Day, his advisers say.
The report has resonated with the public, leading strategists from both sides to say the Bush and Kerry campaigns must contend with the recommendations. The paperback version of the report is a national bestseller, a first for such a commission report, and polling shows nearly two-thirds of voters approve of the panel's deliberations. A Pew Foundation poll conducted a few days before the report was released indicated the commission enjoyed strong and similar support among Republicans, Democrats and independents. A new Gallup poll found that two-thirds of Americans want the commission to continue its work.
"Bush has got to act because if, God forbid, something happens, he's to blame" for not moving decisively, said Stephen J. Wayne, a political science professor at Georgetown University. "Kerry is trying to protect himself, too. If there is a terrorist attack . . . he wants to be able to say [Bush] did not do enough."
Not since the Kerner Commission on urban riots reported its findings in 1968 has an outside commission shaken up a presidential election the way the Sept. 11 panel has, historians say.
The Kerner Commission, named after its chairman, Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner, determined that urban rioting in places such as Detroit was attributable to a deep-seated racism in the United States that was fomenting "two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal." The report was a major issue in the Democratic primary but was often overwhelmed by Vietnam and other issues in the general election race between Hubert H. Humphrey and Richard M. Nixon. The Kerner report, which recommended education and employment initiatives, never prompted swift or widespread action from Congress or the White House. Nixon's victory doomed many of the recommendations.
