9
George Miller on education . . . asked a House GOP leader to explain. How could the party
leadership support this unholy alliance that so betrayed Republican principles” (Novak)? The
answer to that question was that in the conventional presidency, Bush could not plan on a
successful 2004 campaign relying only on core conservatives. But, five months into his
presidency, the public opinion polls suggested that the president’s effort to present as a moderate
might be failing. A New York Times-CBS News poll reported that only thirty
- nine percent of
respondents approved Bush’s handling of the environment and thirty-three percent approved his
energy policy. In the same poll, fifty-seven percent of respondents thought that Bush’s policies
favored “the rich.” Furthermore, sixty-four percent of respondents thought it preferable that
federal dollars be used for social security and Medicare rather than a tax cut (New York Times,
A1)).
Consequently, the White House sought to soften the president’s image by reshaping his
policy messages. As Frank Bruni reported: “The administration also intends to keep having Mr.
Bush promote his energy plan as an environmentally sensitive one. Today, he posed with giant
sequoias in California; next week, he is to be in the Everglades in Florida” (Bruni, 2001). The
president visited the Everglades, appearing in public with the state’s two Democratic senators
and with a Democratic congressperson and avoided appearing with Republican legislators (Berke
2001, A1).
During summer 2001, events conspired to additionally embarrass the administration. The
president’s judgment in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol on global warming was questioned by a
June 6 report of a National Academy of Sciences expert panel. It affirmed “the mainstream
scientific view that the earth’s atmosphere was getting warmer and that human activity was
largely responsible (Seelye, A1). Then Senator Jefford’s (Vt.) abandoned the Republicans,
Convention