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Coming back to Washington after a month abroad
is like returning to a land which has changed beyond comprehension in so
short a time. It is okay once again to poke fun at POTUS, the president of
the United States. Talk show hosts like Bill Maher are no longer in danger
of their contracts being annulled for openly expressing their thoughts,
and veterans of the small screen like Phil Donahue need no longer worry
too much about what they say about the war in Iraq lest they are pulled
off the air as in February this year. Driving home to the capital from New
York’s JFK airport, there was the news on the car radio that the
department of homeland security was scrapping a discredited system of
registering, fingerprinting, photographing and investigating Muslim men
and boys in the United States of America, known by its pompous-sounding
official name: the national security entry exit registration system, or
NEERS.
Then there were reports that as many as 140 of
the 660 detainees who have been held at the US prison camp in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, would be released, perhaps as early as Christmas. These reports
followed an equally unexpected decision by the US Sup- reme Court to hear
cases on whether the Guantanamo detainees, who have been in legal limbo
since January 2002, are eligible to challenge their incarceration through
the American legal system.
Last weekend, George W. Bush withdrew tariffs on
steel imported into America in the face of threats by the European Union
of imposing retaliatory duties of up to $ 2.2 billion on US products,
including oranges from Florida. Florida’s votes in the electoral college
may once again decide whether Bush will stay in the White House when his
first presidential term expires in a year. Japan had added muscle to the
EU threat by announcing its own plans for sanctions of $ 458 million for
the first time in the history of US-Japan trade.
But more striking than any of these
administrative climbdowns, which have either been formalized or are in the
pipeline, has been the state of political discourse in America’s
television studios. In a month, conservative panelists and experts on
talk-shows have become like balloons which have been pricked. Gone is
their arrogance, their righteousness and their impatience, which often
translated on TV screens into efforts to silence everyone else with a
differing point of view. This unexpected, but welcome, sense of humility
is not confined to those who routinely go on TV. When officials of the
Bush administration appear in public, it is not difficult to see that for
the first time since January 2001, many of them are on the defensive.
The change is not because of Iraq alone. Nor is
it a consequence of the pitfalls that lie ahead in the area of the
economy. It has come about from a realization that after nearly three
years of untiring efforts to wreck international institutions, impose
Washington’s ways and will on the rest of the world and replace ideals and
principles with a one-point agenda of expediency, the Bush administration
finds itself in a cul-de-sac. This has been brought about by a
combination of policies pursued by the White House, ranging from the
environment and protectionism to defence and ill-conceived efforts to
export democracy. Larry Summers, the president of Harvard University, who
was Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, put it succinctly the other day
when he spoke at the London School of Economics. The US, Summers said, is
“at the zenith of its power but at the nadir of its influence”.
However brave a front they may put up, many
members of the Bush administration are reading the writing on the wall.
Look at the resignations that are plaguing the administration,
notwithstanding the promise of another four-year term in an election,
which is yet to throw up a credible rival to the president from the ranks
of the Democratic party. In the crucial area of public relations, there
have been three high-profile departures from the administration: Ari
Fleischer, the White House spokesman; Charlotte Beers, the former
advertising executive, who was in charge of improving America’s image
among Muslims worldwide; and Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon spokeswoman,
whose boss, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was last week
“honoured” with a much-publicized “foot in mouth” award.
Did General Tommy Franks, who led the US assault
on Iraq as commander of the American army’s central command, know what
would be in store for his forces after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein?
Franks decided to go at a time when everyone was praising him for the
brilliance with which he conducted the successful military assault, which
cast aside the Baathist regime in Baghdad and made it history. Indeed,
Franks continues to be praised: the latest instalment of praise came last
weekend from the former House-of-Representatives speaker and
arch-conservative, Newt Gingrich, much to the annoyance of the White
House.
A month after Franks announced his plans to
quit, General Eric Shinseki, the chief of army staff said he would call it
a day. Around the same time, Rumsfeld had forced Thomas White, the army
secretary, to quit. The first cabinet-level official to leave the
administration was Paul O’Neill, the treasury secretary. Along with him
went Larry Lindsey, Bush’s economic adviser. But the haemorrhaging of the
Bush economic team did not stop there. Rosario Marin, US treasurer and the
highest-ranking Latin American woman in the Bush administration, followed
suit. And then Glenn Hubbard, chairman of the White House council of
economic advisers, followed by Peter Fisher, the treasury department’s
under-secretary for domestic finance, and Mitch Daniels, the White House
budget director. It is, of course, well known that Harvey Pitt, chairman
of the securities and exchange commission, did not want to go, but was
forced out by scandal.
Indeed, there is practically no agency of the US
government, which not been racked by resignations. The environment
protection agency has been shaken up by departures, starting with its
boss, Christine Todd Whitman, a member of the cabinet. The department of
justice, the state department, the health and human services department —
all have suffered demoralizing personnel loss.
Is it that rats are deserting a sinking ship? In
the case of some of those leaving the government, it is a legitimate
conclusion to make. But some others have left the administration simply
because they feel that the Bush White House has trashed America’s
cherished ideals and find it impossible to function in such a set-up.
Unlike the post-war scenario in Iraq, when the
White House was caught off-guard, Bush clearly sees the dangers to his
future stemming from a conservative retreat and a loss of morale within
his administration. So, in a typically political reaction, Bush let it be
known last week that in the final year of his first term, he would make an
effort to send Americans back to the moon. Obviously, Bush reckons that,
like John F. Kennedy’s call in 1962 for launching a sustained lunar
initiative, he could now rouse nationalistic and patriotic fervour with a
fresh effort to conquer the moon and thus pull up his presidential
campaign for a second term by its boot straps.
The irony is that America is approaching record
budget deficits and any effort to land man on the moon all over again will
cost billions of dollars. And there is no guarantee that such a strategy
will yield political results. After all, Indians remember that in May
1998, the government, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, tested nuclear
weapons, but lost miserably to the Congress in state assembly elections a
few months later. | 
