Bush has often found himself boxed in by his own statements, sometimes making it hard to act until the pressure becomes overwhelming.
"He is not the most subtle president in terms of leaving escape clauses in his statements about what he stands for," said American University political scientist James Thurber. "So he seems as if he's digging in his heels - and then is forced to compromise."
It's a pattern Bush has set before, one of seeming to be intractable even to the point of political damage:
_He waited until the last minute last December before lifting 20-month-old tariffs on foreign steel. By delaying so long, Bush made it look like he bowed to pressure from the European Union, which was poised to slap $2.2 billion in sanctions on U.S. products. Bush's move will hurt steel makers in states critical in the November presidential election.
_He has never taken responsibility for the fact that weapons of mass destruction haven't been found in Iraq, or acknowledged that intelligence on them may have been faulty. His public jokes about not finding such weapons didn't help, drawing protests from military families.
- It took Bush weeks to take personal responsibility for his erroneous State of the Union claim in January 2002 that Saddam Hussein was shopping for nuclear materials in Africa. First, he let CIA Director George Tenet and a national security aide take the blame, giving ammunition to Democrats and other Iraq war critics.
_The White House continues to refuse to budge on releasing information about closed-door meetings of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, which crafted the administration's energy policy. The matter is now before the Supreme Court.
_His dogged insistence in 2001 on creating a national defense against incoming ballistic missiles from hostile states wore down most of his international and domestic critics.The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, using airplanes, undercut his early emphasis on missile attacks as the nation's biggest security concern.
http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20040404/D81NO8D80.html
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