White House chief of staff defends Bush's decisions

The president doesn't get to make 'easy decisions,' his chief of staff says.
By DAVID SKOLNICK
VINDICATOR POLITICS WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, acknowledges that President Bush has made some minor tactical errors during his three-plus years in the Oval Office.
But when it comes to major strategic decisions, President Bush hasn't been incorrect even once, Card said.
"The president doesn't get to make easy decisions," the chief of staff said Thursday during an interview with The Vindicator. "Some of the decisions are lonely ones that only he can make. The strategic decisions are right, even the hard ones. The tactical decisions may not be as right as we'd like . . . . He's made tactical decisions that may not have always been right, but the strategic decisions have been right."
Card didn't disclose any of the tactical errors made by Bush, the Republican incumbent being challenged by Democrat John Kerry.
Disagreement
"Bush's errors aren't simply tactical, they are catastrophic," countered Brendon Cull, spokesman for the Ohio Democratic Coordinated Campaign. Cull said Bush's errors include doing nothing to stop job outsourcing, the inability to catch Osama bin Laden and divert attention from that failure by invading Iraq, and raising Medicare premiums by 17 percent.
Card said he and other White House officials sometimes disagree with Bush, but that's the way the president likes it.
"I have a very candid relationship with him," he said. "The president doesn't have any shrinking violets in his administration. The president gets a lot of advice and counsel. He's offended if he sees a memo with only one option on a decision."
Card served during Bush's father's presidential administration as secretary of transportation, assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff. Card also served in the Reagan administration.
Before being named Bush's chief of staff, Card was a General Motors executive and president and chief executive officer for the former American Automobile Manufacturing Association.
Economy
During the interview, Card said Bush has a "growing empathy" for Ohio's economic struggles.
"He understands that the problems of Cleveland are really significant, and the problems in Youngstown are really significant," he said. "He has sympathy for the challenges of Ohio cities such as Cleveland and Youngstown. He's talked to people in Ohio about the growing problem."
The president stimulated the economy with his tax cut programs, helped steel companies by imposing an import tariff and has other ideas to help Ohio, Card said.
The president wants to devote money to permit people to attend community colleges to be retrained for the jobs of the 21st century, as well as make education reforms and improve transportation systems.
Card said Bush's proposed Opportunity Zone program would assist inner cities such as Youngstown that lost manufacturing or textile industries and need to change to a more diverse economy.
The zones provide federal money and assistance for continuing education, job training and affordable housing, and create partnerships between local, county, state and federal entities to reduce state regulatory barriers, he said.
"It's not enough that he is empathetic about the Ohio economy," Cull said. "Empathy and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee. Long ago, the president should have stopped wallowing in empathy and proposed a real job-creation program. But he hasn't, and it's time for a fresh start."
Challenges
The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks combined with an economic recession posed great challenges to the Bush administration to move the nation forward, Card said. Without the tax cuts, the damage to the economy would have been worse, he said.
"Every expectation the president had four years ago, he hasn't met," Card said.
But that is primarily because many programs are held up in the U.S. Senate, where Republicans hold a slim majority, Card said.
Voters need to elect more Republicans to the Senate in order for the president's programs to become reality.
Card said recent statements by administration officials that the loss of about 250,000 jobs in Ohio while Bush has been president is a "myth," and that outsourcing jobs is a good thing weren't appropriate to say.
"There is a recognition that Ohio is having problems with the economy," he said. "I won't deny they were said, but it didn't include the context of myth. The explanation was Bush is being compared to Herbert Hoover," president during the Great Depression.
Cull said the reporter who wrote the "myth" article insists nothing was taken out of context.
Card also said the recent flu vaccine shortage can be called a "success story."
Half of the nation's flu vaccines weren't delivered after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and a similar British organization determined vaccines made by a Great Britain company were not safe to use.
"If it made it into our supply, it would have been bad," Card said. "The FDA and its Great Britain counterparts realized the problems and stopped this."
skolnick@vindy.com