Unfinished Business
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

As the Republicans begin their convention in New York, many are feeling optimistic about President Bush’s chances for re-election. Several recent national polls show the president with a slight edge over Senator Kerry. We editorialized Friday about how we, like many New Yorkers, are grateful for Mr. Bush’s leadership in removing terror sponsoring regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the tax cuts that have helped grow the economy.
Yet we would be remiss were we to fail to note early in the week that there is much unfinished business. Some relates to domestic policy – particularly, to two points that Mr. Bush spoke of in his acceptance speech at the last Republican Convention, in Philadelphia in 2000.
One was Social Security reform. “Social Security has been called the third rail of American politics, the one you’re not supposed to touch because it might shock you. But if you don’t touch it, you cannot fix it,” Mr. Bush said back in 2000. “And I intend to fix it.”
As president, Mr. Bush appointed a bipartisan commission to consider Social Security reform. But he never got his ideas of private accounts into law, even though Republicans have controlled the House and Senate for most of his term. Meanwhile, Peter G. Petersen’s book “Running on Empty,” about the need to fix Social Security, is a campaign-season bestseller. Americans who were listening to Mr. Bush carefully four years ago might be left feeling he has failed so far to follow through on his promise.
Also in that Philadelphia speech four years ago, Mr. Bush spoke of education reform. “When a school district receives federal funds to teach poor children, we expect them to learn. And if they don’t, parents should get the money to make a different choice,” Mr. Bush said. In the event, the education legislation that became law did not give parents money that would allow them to choose a private or parochial school. Instead, “choice” was redefined to mean choice of government-run schools. Again, Americans who were listening to Mr. Bush carefully four years ago might be left feeling he didn’t follow through.
Mr. Bush’s defenders argue that it is natural that the president did not achieve his entire domestic agenda, because the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, put the war on terrorism quite properly on the top of the president’s agenda. In respect of the war, we don’t go along with the dismalist view of the Battle of Iraq.
But Mr. Bush has made some mistakes there, principally in failing to heed the oft-stated warnings of Ahmad Chalabi and the free Iraqi democrats who were calling attention to the need for postwar planning and the importance of Iraqi participation in their own liberation. The Battle of Iraq certainly made life better for Iraqis and the world safer for democracy, and, knowing what we do now, we would support it all over again without hesitation. But more Iraqi involvement from the start might have spared Mr. Bush and Iraqis much of the trouble that has ensued.
Mr. Bush’s main unfinished business in the war relates not to Iraq but to Iran and Communist North Korea. He named them in his January 2002 State of the Union address as part of an “axis of evil.” Two and a half years later, however, neither Iran nor North Korea is noticeably closer to being a free democracy. Iran is closer to getting nuclear weapons, and it is supporting anti-American terrorism. Iranian agents have been casing targets in America and reportedly have been supporting attacks on Americans in Iraq. And Iran is harboring elements of Al Qaeda.
It is a tremendous achievement of the Bush administration that America has not suffered, on its own soil, another major terrorist attack since September 11. It’s not a thing anyone likes to dwell on, for America’s enemies in this war may yet draw blood in the weeks between now and Election Day. But the fact is that Mr. Bush has mounted an extraordinary defense of this nation.
Yet more than anyone, he has pressed the idea that America will be truly safe from terrorism only after democracy and freedom spread through the Middle East. That is going to take some time. We are in the optimistic camp that believes this can happen and, in some countries, relatively soon. But in too many places,it hasn’t happened yet. Partly as a result, many Americans are left with the nagging feeling that the war on Islamic terrorism is not won and that we are still unsafe.
This war is still young when compared with the durations of many of America’s other conflicts. Some worry, though, that contemporary Americans, with their Internet and television attention spans, lack the patience for a long war. We are in the optimistic camp on that count, too. Mr. Bush’s opponent, Senator Kerry, can hardly be expected to bring the war to a more rapid victory. As president, the erstwhile leader of the anti-war movement during Vietnam might try to end the war unilaterally, but he would soon find that the enemy in this war will accept no cease-fire terms short of total American capitulation to an extreme version of Islamic law.
Any president hoping to be re-elected needs a second-term agenda. Mr. Bush has his set out for him in the unfinished business of his first term – both the points mentioned four years ago in Philadelphia and the two remaining Axis powers. If Mr. Bush loses, it will be because he left too much business unfinished before the election. If he wins, it will be because he is able to assure Americans, including many of his own supporters, that he is aware of the urgency of this unfinished business, and that he intends to finish it as rapidly as possible in the coming months and years. That work begins this week here in New York.