Where's the Leak?

Will Bush Listen?

With James A. Baker III's bipartisan Iraq Study Group officially releasing its report on Wednesday, Newsweek's cover asks: "Will Bush Listen?"; Time's cover states definitively that "Bush will listen."

Evan Thomas writes in Newsweek: "Persuading Bush to listen -- and to change course, even at the margins -- will be very difficult. One of the myths that the Bush camp has tried to perpetuate over the years is that the president follows the model, learned as a student at Harvard Business School, of a chief executive who delegates, listens to advice and only then decides. Bush is the 'decider,' as he calls himself, but there is little evidence that he listens to advice that he doesn't want to hear. . . .

"The tone of Bush's senior aides, who were interviewed this week by Newsweek, was dismissive, even condescending, toward Baker and the Iraq Study Group. The word from the White House was not entirely Stay the Course, but pretty close. . . . Bush may trim and fiddle here and there, say his advisers, but he is determined to send a signal of unwavering determination -- that he is in charge, and he will not abandon Iraq. . . .

"Bush seems determined to play the role of a 21st-century Winston Churchill, steadfast in the West's darkest hour, when many Americans see Bush as the captain on the bridge of the Titanic. But in fact the dire situation in Iraq -- and the reality that there are no magical fixes -- may push the president into listening to Baker and other advisers, if only for a moment, and then maybe with only half an ear. At least that is what Baker, according to those who know him, is hoping and maneuvering for -- a chance to get his foot in the door of the Oval Office, to make one last pass at getting Bush to make an attempt at true diplomacy in the Middle East."

Michael Duffy writes for Time: "George Bush has a history of long-overdue U-turns. He waited until he woke up, hungover, one morning at age 40 before giving up booze cold. He fought the idea of a homeland-security agency for eight months after 9/11 and then scampered aboard and called it his idea. He dumped Donald Rumsfeld last month as defense secretary, although lawmakers and even some generals had been calling for his head since 2005. Bush's biggest reversals usually come after months -- even years -- of stubborn resistance, when just about everyone has given up on his having any second thoughts at all. That's always been the point: he's a decider, he says, and deciders aren't supposed to undecide. When he does have to Kojak the car and head down the street in the opposite direction, he takes a little extra time getting it done.

"But Bush has never had to pull off a U-turn like the one he is contemplating now: to give up on his dream of turning Babylon into an oasis of freedom and democracy and instead begin a staged withdrawal from Iraq, rewrite the mission of the 150,000 U.S. troops there as they begin to draw down, and launch a diplomatic Olympics across the Middle East and between Israel and the Palestinians. Even calling all that a reversal is a misnomer; it would be more like a personality transplant.

"So it may take the 43rd president a little more time than it normally does to execute this particular U-turn. And he will do all he can to make it look more like a lane change. But sometime in the next month or so, Bush will begin the biggest foreign policy course correction of his presidency. No matter what else may get stapled onto it, the maneuver will be based on the agreement reached by the bipartisan commission led by former Secretary of State James Baker III and former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton."

Duffy's only question is whether Bush can pull it off.

"The hot word in Washington these days is bandwidth, as in, Does this Administration have the bandwidth to solve all these problems? Even those who back the Baker plan worry about whether there is anyone inside the Administration who can carry it out. There is widespread doubt that the Bush team is emotionally or ideologically able to execute a plan that is so at odds with its collective instincts and that many of its supporters might resist."

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "The debate that will engulf Washington and much of the country this week centers on a question that lurks at the intersection of war strategy and the personality of the commander in chief: after three and a half years, is President Bush ready to abandon his declaration that American forces cannot begin to leave Iraq until the Iraqis demonstrate that they are capable of defending themselves? . . .

"The answer may depend on the impact of the bruising political realities of 2006 -- and the prospect that Iraq could define Mr. Bush's presidency as Vietnam defined Lyndon B. Johnson's.

"Mr. Bush, of course, has never lacked for certainty about his strategies for Iraq."