Bush made a rare visit to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue last week to shore support among a very nervous group of Republicans. Immediately after Bush’s speech, everyone was all smiles.
After the session, Republicans generally praised Mr. Bush for making the effort to come to Capitol Hill, and for paying attention to them.
“I thought he really looked good this morning,” said Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, who has a difficult relationship with the White House. “What he had to say was really very good; he touched on the issues that we needed to hear. He is a strong leader, and when you see him in situations like this, you feel it, it pulls us together and he gets us fired up.”
That was the immediate reaction, anyway. The next couple of days, however, showed that congressional Republicans weren’t terribly impressed.
Just 48 hours after the GOP rally on the Hill, one of the Republican caucuses most respected voices on foreign policy, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) blamed Bush for failures in Iraq.
Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar on Saturday said the United States isn’t doing enough to stave off terrorism and chided President Bush for failing to offer solid plans for Iraq’s future.
Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said “repairing and building alliances” is key to avoiding terrorism.
[…]
“To win the war against terrorism, the United States must assign U.S. economic and diplomatic capabilities the same strategic priority that we assign to military capabilities,” he said.
He later added, “Military action is necessary to defeat serious and immediate threats to our national security. But … military action will often breed more terrorists and more resentment of the United States.”
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one left uninspired by Bush’s pep talk.
As my friend Phil told me, Bob Novak was on CNN’s Inside Politics on Friday, describing the GOP rally as a “bust.”
Woodruff: All right. Another subject, the president went to Capitol Hill yesterday, met with Republicans. You’ve been talking to some Republicans. What do they say about it?
Novak: It was a bust. They were told that the president would make a few remarks, closed-door session, all the Republicans in the House and Senate, they had the microphones all set up, everybody would get to ask questions. The president went on for the better part of an hour and left without a single question being asked.
The Republicans I’ve talked to said he meandered, it was the same kind of thing he does in a fundraiser. Really a mistake to go up there and just give them a political speech.
Novak echoed those sentiments yesterday on Face the Nation, saying, “It was really not a good performance.”
The Post’s Dan Froomkin had an equally negative assessment of the gathering and its effects.
* He didn’t provide any new details about the June 30 transition of sovereignty in Iraq.
* He didn’t persuade a handful of balking Senate Republicans to go along with his tax plans.
* He didn’t dissuade House Republicans from approving provisions in the defense bill he has threatened to veto.
* He didn’t talk about embattled Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld or Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi.
* He didn’t comment on the prison-abuse scandal.
* He didn’t come up with a new speech.
* He didn’t take any questions.
* He didn’t say anything new.
Other than that, it was a sterling success.