NYT: Bush’s Gamble: Turning the Spotlight on the Iraq War as Republicans Try to Dim It
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: October 26, 2006
WASHINGTON, Oct. 25 — With a shift in tone and the suggestion of flexibility on tactics in Iraq, President Bush gambled Wednesday that he could rescue Republican candidates who are having a hard time defending the war and an even harder time running away from it.
With less than two weeks until Election Day, Mr. Bush’s decision to address the war and its problems so prominently carries the risk that he will strengthen the Democrats’ case that the midterm election is primarily a referendum on his own handling of the war.
Republican candidates around the country have been trying for months to de-emphasize the war as an issue, and to distance themselves from Mr. Bush more generally. In an interview with The Concord Monitor in New Hampshire on Tuesday, the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, said his party’s challenge “is to get Americans to focus on pocketbook issues, and not on the Iraq and terror issue.”
If his party’s candidates want to change the subject, Mr. Bush surely did not help them on Wednesday. While the deteriorating situation in Iraq and the tumult over the war has already thrust the issue to the center of the political stage, Mr. Bush spent more than an hour discussing Iraq with reporters at the White House, acknowledging the overriding importance of the issue and stating flatly that he should ultimately be held accountable....
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George C. Edwards III, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M University, said the president’s appearance on Wednesday was both an act of political desperation and a possible turning point in the war. He cautioned, however, that little in Mr. Bush’s record indicated he was capable of a radical change of direction....
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/washington/26assess.html
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