WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- As the president jogs across the Central Texas prairie at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, this holiday week, he cannot help but reflect on the astounding year that has passed, for America and for himself.
When he took office a year ago, he came with a hotly debated victory over Vice President Al Gore, shaky oratorical skills, and no track record in foreign policy, and facing a widely held perception in Washington that Vice President Dick Cheney would really run the government.
Sept. 11 changed all that.
In four short months, President Bush has rallied a shaken nation, comforted the families of the victims, mounted the largest investigation in the nation's history and built a worldwide coalition of nations against terrorism, gaining varying forms of support from 196 different countries.
Less than a month after the terrorist attacks, Bush ordered military operations in Afghanistan that by early December had destroyed the Taliban and put al Qaida on the run. He has pressed an international money-tracking program that is routing out and freezing the assets of not only al Qaida, but other Middle Eastern terrorist groups as well.
Now, of course, comes the really tricky part.
First there is the scope of the war he declared. For more than two decades the U.S. has been the victim of terrorism and attack arising from the Muslim world. Four presidents, including his father and his hero, Ronald Reagan, have stopped short of confronting it. Carter was defeated because he couldn't handle the Iran takeover, Reagan pulled back from dealing with the Beirut debacle, Bush 41 couldn't take his coalition to Baghdad, and Clinton's response to al Qaida was half-hearted at best.
Bush knows he will have to go all the way. Deposing Saddam Hussein is a given, pressed by leaders in both parties. If U.S. forces had snared Osama bin Laden and the top Taliban leadership, Iraq could have been chapter two of the campaign as early as the spring of 2002. But bin Laden's disappearance is a loose end, and the shakiness of civil order in Afghanistan means the U.S. will have a major commitment there for months to come.
The president is more likely to choose Yemen, Somalia and Sudan as the next theaters of his war, because victory can be achieved by pressing chastened Middle Eastern leaders to destroy the terrorist organs in their midst. If Bush can rid those three states of terrorist resources, it further isolates Iraq and softens Saddam Hussein's position.
The problem for Bush is money. At the same time government surpluses are disappearing in a shaky economy, Bush plans to continue development of a $60 billion satellite defense system and spend billions beefing up security and emergency preparedness across the U.S. With public approval ratings for Bush topping 90 percent and war fervor sweeping the country last fall, Congress largely gave him what he wanted.
But by December, Senate Democrats were putting on the brakes, claiming that Bush was pushing partisan Republican programs, like the energy bill, under the guise of anti-terrorism. Even his own party has balked at some of his plans, stalling airport safety for six weeks because House Republicans didn't want the baggage screeners to be government employees. This spring Bush's plans to reorganize the Immigration and Naturalization Service could provoke a major fight with House Republicans.
And then there is the economy, which in a year of midterm elections could rival the war on terrorism as an issue for the White House.
(Nicholas M. Horrock is United Press International's Senior White House Correspondent. He has covered every president since Richard Nixon.)
