“You understand what I am facing,” he said. “I have to alert the American people to the ongoing dangers without creating alarm and irrational fear. How do I walk that line?” Worry was justified. “Another crisis could hit us, more terrible than this one,” he said, according to notes and recollections of several clergy. “It could be more terrible–biological, chemical or plutonium. I don’t have direct evidence,” he said, “but I have enough evidence.” (A White House spokesman later said that Bush was speaking in general of possible threats.)
Bush said he could identify all too well with the public’s fears: the White House itself had been an intended target. “It’s a very old structure of plaster and brick,” he said. “A lot of people could have been killed… including my wife.” The answer, Bush had concluded, was to fight for peace and justice–and to pray. “Pray for patience, pray it will not happen again,” he said. As for him, he was healthy and rested, focused and feeling “confident without being Pollyannaish.” But he needed divine help, too. “Pray for wisdom, strength, clear thinking,” he said, and joined hands with the circle as they did so.
In the new world of war, God matters–to both sides. Unblinkingly resolute before a cheering Congress, George Bush defiantly vowed in God’s name to lead an anxious nation and the civilized world in a decisive campaign against the forces of terror. The fight would focus initially, he said, on Islamic extremist Osama bin Laden and his Qaeda network in the mountains of Afghanistan. As the president spoke, American warplanes, ships and troops were speeding bin Laden’s way–and the dictatorial clerics who rule the country prepared for what they later called a “showdown of might” in an Islamic “holy war.”
As dangerous as that conflict may be, Bush portrayed it as just the start of a decades-long struggle–a choosing of sides based not on territorial claims or clashing theories of government, but on the goal of ending terror as an instrument of human affairs. “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make,” he declared. “From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” Besides allies, Bush said, America would need–and receive–assistance from Above. “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war,” he said, “and we know that God is not neutral between them.”
Flawlessly delivering a speech that he and his aides had labored on all week, Bush appeared in the well of the House at a time of peril as severe as any since Pearl Harbor. Around the world, leaders pledged allegiance to America’s new cause. But except for Britain’s Tony Blair (who flew to Washington for briefings and to sit in the Gallery beside Laura Bush), it wasn’t clear which countries would answer an American call for men, materiel and diplomatic muscle. Saudi Arabia, the economic and religious linchpin of the region, is allowing the use of its military bases. But it and other moderate Islamic states, facing their own threats from militants, were wary of aiding the United States too openly.
At home, the shock of the plane-bomb attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon gave way to a mounting toll of death, economic damage and anxiety about the long-term impact on psyches and civil liberties. As the estimates for the missing grew to some 6,000, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani cautioned that the numbers could go down as various reports were coordinated. But the region was still forced to endure a procession of funerals and camera-toting visitors flocking to the jagged ruins of ground zero.
The full dimension of economic devastation was becoming apparent. The stock markets reopened but reeled, losing $1.4 trillion in book value as shares plummeted faster than they had since the depths of the Depression. The airline industry was crippled, suffering a staggering 80,000 layoffs and facing numerous bankruptcies–a crisis that prompted Bush and Congress to enact a $15 billion bailout. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan told congressional leaders in a somber private meeting that the $10 trillion-a-year economy would recover–but not any time soon. “The outlook is uncertain at best,” one leader quoted him as saying.
The threat to the country’s social fabric was less quantifiable but no less real, as officials and average citizens sought to find a new balance between security and privacy, antiterrorism measures and open-mindedness. A package of tough new law-enforcement measures, put forward by Attorney General John Ashcroft, sparked debate in Congress and brought assurances of compromise from the White House. Bush announced a new Office of Homeland Security to oversee border patrols, immigration, public-health threats and water supplies, and named Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge to head it. Responding to scattered incidents of violence and widespread concern, the president pleaded for tolerance, especially for the nation’s 6 million Muslim citizens. “We are in a fight for our principles,” he declared to Congress, “and our first responsibility is to live by them.”
The challenges were daunting, but the country seemed determined to meet them–and eager to embrace the disciplined and confident leadership Bush displayed in his 36-minute address. Americans share a faith of the Founders: that democratic destiny will furnish leaders the times require. Thus far, Bush has more than met the challenge of that belief. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, conducted before and after the speech, voters, by an 86-10 percent margin, approved of the way he was handling his job. Asked specifically about his stewardship in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, voters approved by an 87-7 percent margin before the speech, by a 90-7 percent margin afterward.
The president was a man on a mission–aware, aides said, that his every move was freighted with significance for the country and the free world. The Bush watchword was “focus.” The battle against terrorism, at home and abroad, now would “be the focus of our administration,” he told the cabinet (and probably, one top adviser said later, “of administrations to come”). “I’ve never seem him so focused,” said another adviser. After Jacques Chirac met with Bush, the French president privately expressed astonishment to aides at the American’s sure grasp of the nuances of the situation. At a staff meeting last Friday, Bush moved swiftly through a long agenda of complex items, practically barking out orders as he went. To some he seemed a bit lonely. “He’s in the loneliest job in the world,” observed Karl Rove, his old friend and top political adviser. Yet the president seemed comfortable with his fate. “Things have a way of being the way they are supposed to be,” he told Rove with a shrug. “This is my responsibility.”
To meet his responsibilities, Bush has always demanded game plans–or at least the outlines of them. The one he announced last week was devised in momentous day-long meetings a week ago Saturday at Camp David. Bush and his circle of commanders agreed on a two-pronged approach, at once sweeping (to give them latitude and time) and specific (to provide “focus” and at least one clear goal). The administration would call on all nations to join in the antiterrorism campaign, or risk becoming a foe–the Bush doctrine. Meanwhile, they would marshal military, diplomatic and economic force for the tough but unavoidable goal of destroying bin Laden and, perhaps, the Taliban.
As usual, Bush delegated the implementation. Vice President Dick Cheney, in effect, was appointed War minister–the Mr. Inside who would stay largely out of sight and oversee the campaign. Ridge, whom Bush has known since 1980, would take control of the new homeland effort. Josh Bolten, a former investment banker and White House aide known for his policy mastery and meticulous sense of organization, would chair the Domestic Consequences Group–a blandly worded euphemism for the economic-crisis-management team.
That left the president with one enormous and indispensable job: to explain the mission. His vehicle would be a meticulously crafted, carefully worded speech. There would be no freelancing of the kind that had led him to describe the task at hand as a “crusade”–a word with an unfortunately specific historical and theological meaning that had outraged Muslims when he used it. On the Sunday Bush offhandedly uttered the term, there had been no morning “message meeting.” Thereafter, no day would be complete without one–and national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice would always be in them.
Bush began planning for the speech last Monday morning, days before aides would ask Hill leaders to invite the president to speak to a joint session of Congress. Bush didn’t want to commit to the momentous venue unless he had a speech to match it. He asked for a draft by close of business that day. “Mr. President, I think that will be difficult, if not impossible,” counselor Karen Hughes told him. His reply: “By 7.” A team of speechwriters worked on the document, aiming for the blunt simplicity and muted expressions of faith he favors.
There were 19 drafts, many pencil-edited by Bush, and repeated practices before the Teleprompter in the family theater. Bush rejected suggestions for an extended discussion of the economy; he wanted the text streamlined–and didn’t want to pre-empt congressional leaders, who would have their own ideas about “stimulus” measures. Bush agreed with Hughes that he should take time for plain explanation: Who was bin Laden? What was the Taliban?
But the president, who views the world in personal terms, wanted to conclude with his own witness, his own declaration of purpose. Hughes suggested that he dramatize it by showing the world the brass badge given to him by the grieving mother of a cop who had died at the World Trade Center. Bush agreed. “This is my reminder of lives that ended,” he said, holding the badge aloft at a pivot point of history, “and a task that does not end.”
In the Oval Office the next morning, he reminded his aides of his message. “We have to be patient,” he told one. “This is going to take a long time.” The atmosphere in the White House had changed since Black Tuesday–aides learned about evacuation plans, sought counseling, surfed antiterror Web sites. But the president himself was determined to return to a life that was, as he said in his speech, “almost normal.” He was jogging outside again. As usual, he talked to his dad. The president asked one of his oldest friends, Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, to join him at Camp David for the weekend. They could talk about the economy. Then again, it was Evans who, long ago in west Texas, introduced Bush to Bible study. There might be time for that, too.
