Advice and Grudging Consent

By MICHAEL DUFFY, Mike Allen

The motorcade flew down Pennsylvania Avenue just after 8 a.m. last Tuesday, sirens screaming and lights flashing--two white police cruisers, five black town cars and a gray staff van. Was it the President? Or the Vice President? Nah--it was just the Iraq Study Group, Washington's new shadow government, on another emergency run, this time from the White House, where its members told George W. Bush how to get out of Iraq, up to Capitol Hill, where they preached bipartisanship and renewed diplomacy--as well as the promise of withdrawal from Iraq by 2008. It's not often that 10 unelected people, all in their 60s and 70s, can supersede the elected government of the U.S., but last week the panel, led by ex--Secretary of State James Baker and former Congressman Lee Hamilton, pulled it off for a couple of days.

Most blue-ribbon studies start gathering dust the minute they are printed. This one, with 79 recommendations in just 99 pages, was unveiled on network TV and in the first few days shot up to No. 3 on the Amazon best-seller list. The panel members worked overtime on the launch, doing carefully choreographed rounds of interviews with reporters and anchors before Baker and Hamilton motored back to the Hill to start selling their plan to Congress. The core message: the Bush Administration has to work and think a lot harder to achieve even modest goals in Iraq--and should start by accepting the report in its entirety. "I hope," said Baker, "we don't treat this like a fruit salad and say, 'I like this, but I don't like that.'"

The big rollout was designed to exert maximum pressure on the White House because, despite all the fanfare, the report was aimed at an audience of one--Bush. For most of the week, he looked none too pleased about the round-the-clock talking-to he was getting. As he received the report, he told cameras it was "interesting." Later he said it has "some very good ideas." But within a day, he was putting some distance between himself and the best seller: "I don't think Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton expect us to accept every recommendation."

That comment reflected the West Wing's exceeding bitterness about the report. Some of the pushback was substantive. The suggestions on how to engage directly with Iran and Syria--the parts resisted most unambiguously by the President--were surprisingly specific and prescriptive, not the platitudes the Administration had expected. Bush aides chafed at the patronizing directive "The President and the leadership of his national-security team should remain in close and frequent contact with the Iraqi leadership." Even some Democrats thought that Bush might have a point. "If you want to help the President," said Paul Goldman, a Democratic strategist, "you give the President a chance to lead. You don't set it up to look like he got forced into doing something."

But some White House reaction was plain personal. This is the second time in six years that Bush has had to turn to Baker to save his skin (the first was Tallahassee in 2000). All the stories about the father's vaunted foreign-policy team riding in to save the son had become "an irritant," admitted a senior Administration official. A former Bush adviser who worked closely with the President speculated that Bush and Karl Rove "don't want Baker to get instant gratification" and won't make concessions at the outset. But that will change. "After the short-term ego fit, he will eventually come around. He is a political realist," said the former adviser.

So, apparently, is Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican from Oregon who voted for the war. He went to the Senate floor last week to say the Iraq adventure was "absurd ... it may even be criminal." A few more speeches like that by Republicans, and the debate about a course correction will be over.

Already, Bush and his aides have promised changes. He said he would give a pre- Christmas speech that would chart what he last week alternately called "a new course" and "a new way forward." A presidential adviser said the address would include "a new policy direction but no apology." A senior Administration official said some aides hope for a note of contrition ("Things haven't turned out the way I intended") similar to Ronald Reagan's 1987 mea culpa after the Tower Commission concluded that his inattention had contributed to the Iran-contra arms scandal.

"They know this is the time," the official said, of Bush's inner circle. "We're not going to have many of them left. This is the moment. We have to take these recommendations and show that we're listening. They know that."