STEVE INSKEEP, host:
We're going to get some analysis here from NPR senior correspondent Juan Williams.
Good morning, Juan.
JUAN WILLIAMS reporting:
Good morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: I want to ask you about something that David just said. He said that many Republicans are more interested in getting re-elected than in rallying around an increasingly unpopular president. How does the president try to turn this around?
WILLIAMS: You know, the president spoke in Pennsylvania on Friday in which he said, you know, Democrats are trying to rewrite history. He's got another speech today at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska as he departs on his trip to Asia, and again he will try to make the case that the Democrats had the same intelligence that he saw before he made the decision to go war and that they're rewriting history. It's a very difficult task for him at this moment, though, Steve, because you'll see even in the gubernatorial elections that took place last week in which Republicans lost in New Jersey and Virginia, both candidates felt that the president's lack of popularity really was a hindrance, it was a drag on their political ambition. And the same is true up on Capitol Hill. So what you see is a lot of the pressure that the White House was able to exert earlier to keep moderate and conservative Republicans together is now going into candidates who are positioning themselves with concern about where they will be in the next election cycle, 2006, and in some cases saying, `It's better to have a distance from this White House.'
INSKEEP: What is the debate over Iraq intensifying at this particular moment?
WILLIAMS: Well, you've had the Libby indictments. You've had the increased number of deaths, the ongoing violence in Iraq. I think you see Democrats on the offensive as well because of poll numbers. You know, we thought that the president's poll numbers were down a couple weeks ago in the immediate aftermath of the Libby indictment, but they have continued to drop, 37 percent now approval ratings, questions about his honesty, about the conduct of the war. So what you see is that there are more and more questions being raised and confidence even about his ability handle it. So I think that that's why you see at this moment this tremendous pressure rising about exactly what took place, and if you'll recall even two weeks ago, the Democrats forcing the Senate to close and forcing the Republicans to look into whether or not intelligence on weapons of mass destruction had been manipulated by the White House.
INSKEEP: People are looking backward but also looking forward at this moment, asking about an exit strategy.
WILLIAMS: That's the part of this story I think at times people don't pick up on away from Washington. There is a tremendous pressure here, and again, you see the visions within the Republican Party, Steve. Senator McCain says the president, for example, should increase troops; meanwhile, you have a widely circulated document by Larry Korb, the former assistant secretary of Defense under President Reagan, who says that President Bush should pull out 80,000 troops. You've had Tony Blair in Britain and some of the Iraqi officials, the Iraqi president and vice president, saying that he can see coalition forces leaving in 2000--or beginning to leave in 2006. So what you have here is a great deal of discussion about what exit strategy should be. John Edwards, the vice presidential candidate on the Democratic side last time just wrote in The Washington Post yesterday that he made a mistake in voting for it, but it's time to get out. So everybody's looking for an exit strategy.
INSKEEP: Now I want to ask about this also, Juan. This is a White House that's been in trouble before. They stay disciplined. They stay on message. They have pulled out of it in the past. Are the people at the White House surprised that they've had so much trouble pulling out of this problem?
WILLIAMS: I think so, Steve. I think there was the sense that after they got by the indictments and especially that Karl Rove wasn't indicted that, you know, we got past the 2,000 casualty mark, things were going to improve, but you still have a cloud hanging over the White House because the special prosecutor has not said whether or not he will indict Karl Rove, although that seems less likely, but you have a push, I think, in the White House then maybe for some new faces, the questions about whether or not Rove should stay. And you also have Rove last week back on the hustings, gave a speech to the Federalist Society at which he got a standing ovation. But the question is whether or not the president really should advance his agenda in it before the State of the Union in January, and that means getting after spending cuts, immigration, rebuilding support for the war with new vigor once he returns from Asia.
INSKEEP: Juan, thanks very much.
WILLIAMS: Your pleasure, Steve. My pleasure.
INSKEEP: (Laughs) Either way, you're welcome.
NPR senior correspondent Juan Williams with us on this Monday morning.
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