Fact-Checking the President

"His renewed defense of the war and his refusal to concede mistakes or set a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals sent another message: He is staking the rest of his presidency on his conviction that the conflict can be won. 'We will never back down, we will never give in and we will never accept anything less than complete victory,' Bush said.

"But slogans and rhetoric alone won't reverse sagging support for the war or Americans' declining confidence in Bush's leadership, as shown by several polls. Tangible progress and a decline in violence in Iraq may be the only way to solve his political problems."

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "Mr. Bush chose his venue carefully: the midshipmen at the Naval Academy cheered his arrival, a military band punctuated his arrival and departure, and the stage of a huge hall on the famous campus was adorned with a giant background emblazoned with the words, 'Plan for Victory.'

"It continued his recent trend of giving speeches on the war at military settings where public access is limited and protests are unheard of, including air bases in Alaska and South Korea and a National Guard installation in Pennsylvania.

"Democrats quickly declared the speech a triumph of spin over true strategic overhaul. Leading Congressional Democrats said Mr. Bush never directly addressed the statements by commanders that the large presence of American troops is itself helping to fuel the insurgency. They argued that the 'Plan for Victory' sign was reminiscent of Mr. Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech on an aircraft carrier in May 2003. . . .

"Mr. Bush came the closest to acknowledging mistakes in the war -- without calling them that -- since an interview in August 2004 in which he acknowledged a 'miscalculation' in assessing how quickly an insurgency might develop.

"He said that when American and allied forces arrived, 'we began the process of creating an Iraqi Army to defend the country from external threats,' and creating civil defense forces for suppressing trouble within the country's borders."

Craig Gordon writes in Newsday: "For a man trying to convince Americans that he has a way out of Iraq, President George W. Bush had an unusual way yesterday of going about it.

"He offered no timetables for withdrawal, no new benchmarks for when that could start and not a word about a possible drawdown next year, as others in his administration have hinted at in recent days.

"In fact, Bush even appeared to raise the bar on what it would take to bring American troops out of Iraq -- saying he would settle for nothing less than 'complete victory,' something he admitted would be hard to detect and harder to achieve."

Mike Allen writes for Time: "[R]ead between the lines, and it is clear that the administration is setting a predicate for substantially reducing the 155,000 troops now in Iraq ahead of the midterm congressional elections in November 2006. . . .

"Bush advisers tell Time that the speech and document are aimed at framing a graduated departure from Iraq in the President's own terms, so that he can make it appeared principled and deliberate, rather than a response to pressure from public polls or needling by Democrats. 'People on the Hill say he has to get out of there,' a senior administration official said. 'We're reminding folks there's a plan. The President wants to talk about the way in which we measure progress, going beyond stay-the-course versus a change.' This administration is big on consistency, so the document is laced with quotations from past Bush speeches. But it also gives him leeway by noting that part of staying the course is adapting to changing conditions on the ground."

The Role of the 2006 Elections

Conventional wisdom has it that Bush is under enormous pressure to show progress in Iraq and pull out a sizeable number of troops before the 2006 elections -- or risk a major backlash against his party.

But Elisabeth Bumiller writes in the New York Times today that the White House evidently sees 2008 -- not 2006 -- as the real deadline.

"The political calculation behind President Bush's speech in Annapolis on Wednesday is that Washington, not Baghdad, is the battlefront that will decide the ultimate outcome of the war in Iraq, but that Mr. Bush's decisions do not have to be driven by fears of heavy Republican losses in the 2006 midterm elections.

"At a time of increasing Democratic attacks on Mr. Bush's handling of the war and a drop in public support for the conflict, Mr. Bush's political advisers assert that they can still hold Congress next year. By their reasoning, there will be only 35 to 40 competitive seats in the House of Representatives, and at this point they see no evidence that the war will be the determining factor in those races. While there may be Democratic gains in the Senate, both parties doubt that the Republicans will lose control. . . .

"The longer term worry of the White House, Mr. Bush's advisers say, is that support for the war could drop so precipitously by the 2008 presidential election that a majority in Congress could demand withdrawal and start to hold back financing -- the 'cut and run' strategy that Mr. Bush both derides and fears."

Newspaper Editorials

A spectrum:

The New York Times: "We've seen it before: an embattled president so swathed in his inner circle that he completely loses touch with the public and wanders around among small knots of people who agree with him. There was Lyndon Johnson in the 1960's, Richard Nixon in the 1970's, and George H. W. Bush in the 1990's. Now it's his son's turn.

"It has been obvious for months that Americans don't believe the war is going just fine, and they needed to hear that President Bush gets that. They wanted to see that he had learned from his mistakes and adjusted his course, and that he had a measurable and realistic plan for making Iraq safe enough to withdraw United States troops. Americans didn't need to be convinced of Mr. Bush's commitment to his idealized version of the war. They needed to be reassured that he recognized the reality of the war."

The Los Angeles Times: "President Bush's speech Wednesday before applauding midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy provided more detail and specifics than his usual 'stay the course' rhetoric on Iraq, but it still lacked a coherent definition of the U.S. military's mission, and therefore offered Americans no sense of when they can be assured that mission will be truly accomplished."

USA Today: "Perhaps by his nature, President Bush can't help but be a cheerleader. Perhaps given the nature of his audience Wednesday -- midshipmen at the Naval Academy training for war -- a resolutely upbeat description of the situation in Iraq was appropriate.

"But if the president's goal in kicking off a series of speeches detailing his Iraq policy was to rebuild support for the war, he missed his moment."

The Washington Post: "Mr. Bush rejected the Democrats' demand for a timetable for withdrawal, saying he would 'settle for nothing less than complete victory.' But such a timetable already exists, drawn up by the generals who report to Mr. Bush and supported by leading Democrats: It calls for the reduction of American forces from 160,000 to 100,000 during 2006. Such a 'phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq' was endorsed by the Senate two weeks ago by a vote of 79 to 19."

The New York Post : "President Bush yesterday traveled to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis to assert that America's overriding goal in the war in Iraq is -- victory.

"That's a strange declaration to be making 33 months after U.S. tanks first rolled into Iraq -- but it was timely, necessary and more than welcome."

The Wall Street Journal: "Our reading of history is that the American people will accept casualties in a war, even heavy casualties, as long as they think their leaders have a strategy to win. So we were glad to see President Bush yesterday begin what the White House says will be a consistent effort to counter the defeatism toward Iraq that has lately taken over so many American politicians and elites."

Bubble Watch

On CNN last night, Lou Dobbs and Dana Bash talked about the Bush bubble.

"DOBBS: President Bush once again today defended the war in Iraq in front of an audience comprised entirely of military personnel. The president appears to be avoiding any contact with average American, increasingly questioning his policies. Critics say the Bush presidency is becoming an isolated presidency."

Bash showed clips of recent Bush speeches at the Naval Academy, Elmendorf Air Base in Alaska and San Diego's naval air station.

"BASH: Lyndon Johnson tried military settings to boost morale for his unpopular war, even traveled to South Vietnam. But some historians say Mr. Bush breaks with presidential tradition by being so openly political with an audience of troops.

"ROBERT DALLEK, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, Harry Truman during Korea. They didn't go to military bases to contest what opponents were saying. They would make the argument in a political forum or in a speech before Congress, or in a State of the Union message.

"BASH: To Bush critics it is crass.

"SEN. JOHN KERRY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: The troops don't belong to his point of view. They belong to America and to Americans. They are Americans.

"BASH: The White House defends the events as wartime obligation, not opportunistic.

"NICOLLE WALLACE, DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS: There is nobody in this country with more at stake, and a deeper commitment, and a deeper impact on their lives.

"BASH: It is impressive stage craft, [though] some call it preaching to the converted and question whether Bush aides choose these backdrops to avoid confronting skeptical, everyday Americans.

"DALLEK: In the end, it doesn't help him very well, and in fact, I think it does him a disservice.

"BASH: What is not in dispute is that for the embattled president, this is his comfort zone."

In his mid-day briefing yesterday, Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked about Bush's use of troops as props.

McClellan's response: "The President talks to the American people in a lot of different settings. I guess maybe there's some level of frustration by some people, some of the critics, at the fact that our military fully understands the stakes that are involved, and they understand the importance of succeeding and completing the mission, and winning the war on terrorism."

Odds and Ends

Richard Wolffe and Holly Bailey write for Newsweek: "The much-hyped 'National Strategy for Victory in Iraq' -- which the White House excitedly described as 'declassified' -- was exceptionally glib in places. 'Our mission in Iraq,' it stated, 'is to win the war.' No, really? If the National Security Council needs to write this in a strategy document, then it really is struggling to find a way out.

"A more likely explanation is that this 'strategy' was never really written for internal consumption."

Wolffe and Bailey also address the credibility issue: "The critical problem for the president is whether the American people believe him. Along with the loss of credibility in the run-up to the invasion, the White House is also suffering from propaganda fatigue on the reconstruction. There have been so many premature declarations of progress, and so many major speeches on Iraq, that this moment sounds much like every other. The challenge now for President Bush lies as much at home as it does in Iraq: to convince Americans that he's being realistic this time without conceding that he hyped the story many times before."

CNN's Wolf Blitzer did a little counting: "The Bush White House is trying to get a fresh start in convincing Americans to stay the course in Iraq. But the president has been talking about Iraq for months. By our account, he's given at least seven major speeches on the war this year and all that talking has not helped his poll numbers."

So did the Think Progress blog, which notes that it took Bush all of 27 seconds to reference September 11.

And blogger Wonkette visually depicts how Bush's message has gone in reverse, from "Mission Accomplished" to "Strategy for Victory" to "Plan for Victory." She wonders if "Brainstorming about Victory" is next.