Bush Negotiates a Rhetorical Minefield
Specialists Satisfied With Effort to Balance Belligerence and Caution in Public Statements

By Dana Milbank and Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 20, 2001; Page A24

Since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington nine days ago, President Bush has been calibrating and recalibrating his public statements each day, crossing a rhetorical minefield as treacherous as the mountains of Afghanistan.

As he prepares for tonight's speech to a joint session of Congress, Bush has found that the crisis has elevated his visibility and turned his ordinary daily remarks into a conversation with the nation and the world. It is a conversation full of peril.

If his words are too "hot," or belligerent, he risks alienating allies, particularly moderate Arab nations. If his words are too determined, he risks giving Americans the impression that the war on terrorism can accomplish more than may be possible. If his rhetoric is too cautious, he risks getting out of step with a unified and furious public.

"He's facing a dilemma," said Leon Fuerth, who was Vice President Al Gore's national security adviser and now teaches at George Washington University. "To the extent he voices what Americans are feeling, he raises unrealistic expectations about what America is going to be able to do and raises a chill abroad that's going to make it hard for him to build the coalition he needs. But if he doesn't convey fire, he would be unable to lead the people."

When the crisis began last week, Bush was criticized for describing the terrorists as "folks," for treating the attacks as a crime rather than warfare and for suggesting that the government would continue "without interruption." This week, Bush stands accused of being too hot. He said he wants Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" and spoke of a "crusade" -- a harsh term in the Muslim world -- to "eradicate the evil of terrorism."

Yesterday, he was more measured. Seated in the Oval Office next to the president of Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, Bush did not invoke Osama bin Laden's name. He spoke not of "a war" but of a "series of battles" that "will be fought visibly sometimes, and sometimes we'll never see what may be taking place." He urged people not to "demand a certain clarity of a specific battlefield."

Given the choice of overstating or understating, a variety of foreign policy and public opinion specialists say they support Bush's decision to err on the side of hot rhetoric.

"This is a difficult set of minefields that the president is walking quite well," said Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, national security adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Fuerth, too, defends Bush's fire. "Leadership in a crisis cannot be cerebral," he said. "There has to be an emotional component, and people instinctively turn toward the president to express what they're feeling."

A poll released yesterday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center suggests that Bush has delivered the right message. Asked how well Bush was "speaking to the nation" about the attacks, 45 percent said "excellent" and 38 percent said "good." Pew's Andrew Kohut said Americans also seem to have "a pretty nuanced set of expectations" about what is possible militarily, with 69 percent saying it will take months or years to dismantle terrorist networks.

Reading the tea leaves of Bush's remarks is important because, for all the planning and discussion about communications strategy, a president's off-the-cuff remarks set the tone and sometimes enunciate policy in a crisis. Advisers can offer advice on tone and substance, but with Bush speaking informally several times a day, it is likely he will say things none of his advisers anticipates.

When Bush's father declared that Saddam Hussein's invasion "will not stand," there had been no plan for him to speak to reporters at all. "It was an affirmation of the decision he had made privately, but it was stronger than the decision that had [been] transmitted to his advisers," said a veteran of the first Bush administration.

"If you look back to our situation, everyone held the president's words as the benchmark or the threshold," said another person who served in the first Bush administration. "That's going to be the same thing here."

It is not uncommon for presidents to have trouble finding the right tone in international crises. During the buildup for the Persian Gulf War, Bush's father repeatedly compared the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to Germany's invasion of Poland and demonized the Iraqi president as a modern-day Hitler, despite suggestions from advisers that he not personalize the war. Bush then developed a military plan that did not include as an objective removing Hussein from power, mindful that he could not muster international support for such a goal. When that war abruptly ended with Hussein still in Baghdad, Bush found himself second-guessed for not allowing the military to go further.

For the younger Bush, "it's very difficult to find exactly the right tone," said Clinton diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke. Bush does not need to stir Americans to battle -- he needs to channel their anger. "He should make sure the American public understands we need to be patient and it's going to take a little while."

Some public opinion experts say the tough talk could cause Bush to over-promise if the looming military campaign proves long and slow. Sometimes "he seems to be blurting out stuff," said Wayne Fields, who studies presidential rhetoric as director of American culture studies at Washington University in St. Louis. "It increases the confusion about what we actually expect to happen."

An official in the first Bush administration said the current president should increasingly let actions -- ship movements or the mobilization of military reservists -- demonstrate his resolve. "You don't have to communicate hot rhetoric. You just have to say here's what I'm doing," he said.

One of the most sweeping claims from the administration during the crisis came last Thursday from Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense, who said the goal of the coming campaign would be "ending states who sponsor terrorism." That was later clarified to mean ending state sponsorship of terrorism.

Speaking at Washington National Cathedral on Friday, Bush made a sweeping promise: "to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. . . . This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others. It will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing." To some diplomats, that implied a final victory over terrorism that is not realistic. Later that day, standing amid the rubble of the World Trade Center, Bush shouted into a bullhorn: "The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon."

Bush's rhetoric took a fierce turn on Sunday, when he spoke offhand about a "crusade" against terrorism, a word he hasn't used since. At the Pentagon on Monday, asked by a reporter if he wanted bin Laden dead, Bush replied: "I want justice. And there's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive.' "

The phrase was more rhetoric than policy, but even more than his father did with Saddam Hussein, Bush has set for himself the difficult goal of capturing or killing the elusive terrorist leader who has been called the prime suspect in last week's attacks. That could take years, some analysts say, and even then might not happen. On Tuesday, Bush received a gentle rebuke in the use of language from visiting French President Jacques Chirac. "I don't know whether we should use the word 'war,' " he said.

Bush and his advisers are still talking about a broad military campaign, but increasingly they have encouraged Americans to scrap their stereotypes of what that means. "It's important for the world to understand that there are no beaches to storm, there are no islands to conquer, there are no battle lines to be drawn," Bush said.