Iraq war at the heart of Bush's legacy

Iraq war at the heart of Bush's legacy

By Tim Shipman in West Palm Beach, Florida
Last Updated: 1:46pm GMT 26/01/2008

George W.Bush will put Iraq back at the heart of the presidential election campaign when he makes the final State of the Union speech of his presidency.
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In a move that may help the candidacy of the Republican front-runner, John McCain, the sitting president will use his annual address to Congress to insist that America is now winning in Iraq - an argument that aides to Sen McCain believe will help him win conservative support in primary elections over the next 10 days.

George W Bush
Bush's legacy a statesman has been burnished by a recent trip to the Middle East

Mr Bush’s speech, designed in part to lay down a blueprint for his political legacy, will push his own record to the forefront of the race for the White House, a contest which has increasingly thrust him towards the margins of US politics.

Campaigning in West Palm Beach, Florida, ground zero in Mr Bush’s election victory in 2000, Mr McCain told The Sunday Telegraph that he had discussed the content of the speech with the president.

The former Vietnam war hero, who lost the Republican nomination to Mr Bush that year, has built himself into a frontrunner this time, partly through his espousal of the apparently successful surge strategy in Iraq, even before the Bush administration embraced troop increases.

If he wins his party’s nomination he seems likely to face Hillary Clinton as his Democrat opponent.

Mr McCain told The Sunday Telegraph: "I know what the president is going to say on Iraq. I have had many talks with him about it. We are succeeding. Al Qaeda is on the run. They are not defeated. We have a lot of work to do.

"For us to do what Senator Clinton wants to do, which is to declare surrender - if we do that, I can’t guarantee our security in the world.

"Listen to David Petraeus (the US commander in Iraq). He argues that Iraq is the central front in the battle with radical Islam. We have enormous challenges all around the world."

Mr McCain joked: "I’d like to see President Bush use the State of the Union address to embrace his unabashed support for my candidacy. I’d like him to lean towards that."

However, he added: "I don’t think the president is interested in a message that helps or hurts me."

A McCain adviser John Lehman, who was Ronald Reagan’s navy secretary and was a member of the 9/11 Commission, said a focus on Iraq would help Mr McCain draw distinctions between himself and Mrs Clinton, a central element in his case that he is the most electable Republican.

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "John wants to focus strictly ahead: what do we do now with the economy and Iraq? He wants to draw that stark contrast between his view of our role in Iraq and Hillary Clinton’s view."
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The most wide open primary election campaign in eight decades has almost entirely eclipsed Mr Bush’s position at the centre of American political life.

US media coverage of his economic stimulus package last week focused not on the plan, but on the reaction of the presidential candidates to it. Every Republican said it could have been better.

Mr Bush’s name is heard more regularly - but not complimentarily - at Democrat campaign rallies than at Republican ones.

The rival Republican candidates contest a primary election in Florida on Tuesday and a series of elections across the US a week later on Super Tuesday.

Mr McCain’s stump speech in West Palm Beach contained praise for President Bush’s work combatting terrorism.

"Don’t you think the President of the United States deserves a little credit for the fact that there has not been an attack on the US since 9/11?" he asked.

And the Arizona senator said he was "proud of the president’s efforts" on an Isreali-Palestinian peace deal.

But Mr McCain went on to dismiss the prospects of such a deal - and made a promise to "get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice" which highlighted one of the most embarrassing failures of the Bush years.

His complaint that "we’ve presided over the greatest increase in spending since" the 1960s, is an open repudiation of Mr Bush’s spending policies.

For his part, Mitt Romney - the other frontrunner in Florida - is campaigning as a Washington outsider.

When asked about the Bush administration’s economic record in a Republican debate on Thursday night, Mr Romney said: "I’m not going to run on that record, I’ll tell you that. I’ll run on my record; I’ll run away from the record of Washington."

Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas who is still in the Republican race, famously condemned the current president’s foreign policy as the result of an "arrogant bunker mentality".

Mr Bush has spent recent weeks attempting to burnish his legacy as a statesman, with a long trip to the Middle East.

But accompanying reporters ridiculed his willingness to spend more than an hour talking to them while he was in Saudi Arabia.

Newsweek magazine’s Michael Hirsch, reported: "It occurred to me: George W.Bush literally had nothing else to do this afternoon."

In his speech, Mr Bush will attempt to reassure voters that the US economy is fundamentally sound.

And in a bid to stress the positive role of America in the world, he will draw attention to what the president believes is an underappreciated aspect of his tenure: his investment in Africa, including a £30billion programme to combat Aids.

He will reinforce the case with a visit to that continent next month.

But Mr Bush’s bid to leave a positive legacy is being contested by a campaign group called Americans United for Change, who announced last week that they will spend $8.5 million on adverts condemning his record to try to make sure the president’s approval ratings don’t rise during his final days in the White House.

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