The politics of terrorism

Bush even seemed to abandon his pre-Sept. 11 approach to domestic issues. Instead of trying to win legislative battles by uniting his own party and picking off as few Democrats as narrow victories required, he sought broad majorities on emergency spending and war policy. He won over not only dissidents but also the Democratic leadership. For a moment, at least, Bush transformed a partisan administration into a kind of coalition presidency. Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and one of his party's best political analysts, saw Bush as having the opportunity "to reshape the image of the party from the top down." One could even imagine the reappearance of something like Eisenhower Republicanism.

The evidence of a new, less confrontational politics was everywhere. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt had almost nothing to do with each other until they were brought together by the need to agree on measures to combat terrorism. Suddenly, Republicans and the administration were rewriting the emergency anti-terror spending bills to accommodate the Democrats. Gephardt and Hastert joined to shepherd the $40 billion anti-terror appropriation to passage. In both houses, Democrats worked with Republicans to pass a war resolution promising retaliation for the attacks. Initially, Republicans hoped to ram through their own versions of both measures. Instead, they made concessions. "They could have rolled over us," said a very loyal and partisan Democratic leadership aide who resented the Republicans' initial approach but appreciated the spirit of compromise.

Yet eight days after 9/11, the Wall Street Journal editorial page was urging Bush to advance his whole conservative domestic agenda right away because "the bloody attacks have created a unique political moment when Americans of all stars and stripes are uniting behind their president." Drill for oil in the Arctic, the Journal preached, speed up the tax cut -- this while the country was spending tens of billions more than anyone anticipated before the crisis -- and even insist on pushing through confirmation of conservative judges. What did judges have to do with this war? Nothing, but the Journal's editorial writers saw political opportunity: "Democrats in the Senate will hesitate to carry out borkings that clearly undercut Mr. Bush's leadership." Bush, they concluded, should "use the moment to press a broad agenda that he believes is in the national interest."

So much for national unity.

Democrats lamented that such an approach would inevitably court bitterness. "To use this crisis as a launching pad for objectives that are unrelated" to the war on terror, said Representative Sandy Levin, a Michigan Democrat, "would unravel the bipartisanship that's needed even before it had a chance to work." And that is what happened.

For there was a flip side to the politics of national unity. It was the politics of terrorism. The new war on terror afforded Republicans a chance to regain all the advantages they had enjoyed during the last decade of the Cold War and then lost when it ended.

"Mr. President, the only way you are ever going to get this is to make a speech and scare the hell out of the country." So said Sen. Arthur Vandenberg to President Harry Truman in 1947. Vandenberg, a Republican, was giving Truman advice on how to get Congress to vote for aid to help Turkey and Greece in their fight against Communist insurgents. Vandenberg might as well have been laying out rule number one in the politics of the Cold War. From 1947 until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country was scared as hell about Soviet power and the threat of nuclear war. And these fears dominated political life.

If Vandenberg's words have a familiar ring, it's because the new politics of terrorism were remarkably similar to the old politics of the Cold War. Fear once again became a powerful tool and motivator.

Consider President Bush's speech to religious broadcasters in February 2003 as he built the case for war against Iraq. "Chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained," he declared. "Secretly, without fingerprints, Saddam Hussein could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists or help them develop their own. Saddam Hussein is a threat. He's a threat to the United States of America."

Bush scared the hell out of the country, and we followed him to Iraq. Vandenberg might have approved.

Fear provides political actors -- especially incumbents -- with new ways of beating back and intimidating opposition. In the post-9/11 period, Republicans became experts at the political version of Whack-a-Mole. Any time Democrats poked up their heads to challenge the president, especially on terrorism, they were beaten down and accused of lacking patriotism.

Leading Democrats -- Senators Tom Daschle and John Kerry and Rep. Richard Gephardt -- all received this treatment. Typical was House Speaker Dennis Hastert's comment about Daschle's criticism of Bush's diplomacy before the Iraq War. Daschle, Hastert said, had "come mighty close" to "giv[ing] comfort to our adversaries." That is Cold War talk -- guilt by association. This time, the bad associations were with Saddam and the French, not the Soviets.

The new politics of terrorism also revived the issues that had naturally favored Republicans. For three consecutive presidential elections beginning in 1980, foreign policy toughness was a central pillar of Republican strategy, causing defections to the GOP among neoconservative intellectuals and working-class New Dealers alike.

Next Page: The only thing the Republicans had to fear was the end of fear itself

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