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Approval Rating Hinges on Bush's Reaction

Aired September 12, 2001 - 16:46   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
AARON BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As we look behind us, a day and a half now since those planes crashed into the World Trade Center. You can still see the thick smoke as water continues to be poured on what was building number seven. You cannot see it, at various times we have been able to see the building. You can't see it now. This is smoke and it is debris, it is ash, it is asbestos. It is most unpleasant and unsafe. The truth of it is every time we are off camera we put these little masks on our face to protect ourselves.

You have seen this sort of thing before. And we have been up here for several hours, and we are constantly being urged to put them on. And we do a little bit.

(AUDIO GAP)

Richard, come on in. Richard Roth has been on the streets most of the day. We are about 20-stories up. Give me a sense of what it is like down there. You can see, if you look down, as we can, that the streets are still just coated with ash.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You see some people with it on them but mostly on cars and vehicles but it's like you are walking around in a hospital emergency room. I'm surprised how many people are wearing the masks. You see people sitting, tired, exhausted.

Very few stores are open. Very few supplies really available and this smoke really has been of three colors. We had white overnight and in the early morning hours. Then it was tinged with yellow and then dark and you really start, as the smoke moved over our head and headed over New York's fashionable east side, you can hear the rumble. The only noise you hear other than that lonely siren of a whaling is the equipment, the excavation gear going through the building from this distance.

BROWN: Thank you. The wind again has appeared to shift a little bit and I will selfishly say, thankfully, (AUDIO GAP) . It had been coming from the south towards us. It now seems to be drifting a bit more toward the east and it is a little less strong than it was.

An important piece of information here, to pass along, even perhaps 90 minutes ago we were hearing both from the mayor and from MONEYLINE anchor Lou Dobbs, that it was the hope that the New York Stock Exchange would open tomorrow. A lot of problems in getting the stock exchange open, but they hoped they could do that. We now have heard from officials from the New York Stock Exchange, and let me ask that guys back in the bureau in New York check to see if this includes the Amex and the Nasdaq as well, will not open until Friday at the earliest, not until Friday at the earliest, for the New York Stock Exchange and then they added Monday at the latest. So it's very possible that the entire -- virtually the entire week of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the Amex, I am now told, will all stay closed tomorrow. They will not open at earliest until Friday, and may not open again until Monday and how they react when they do reopen is one of those stories for another day.

This is all complicated stuff. It is very complicated in Washington because this is the not simply a criminal investigation, not simply an international and diplomatic situation, it is also for the president and early in his term, a political situation, a political problem that has to be addressed. We use the word political in the best sense of the term.

Our senior analyst Jeff Greenfield joins us. Jeff, anything in particular about this situation, this president this early in the term that makes it particularly difficult?

JEFF GREENFIELD, HOST, "GREENFIELD AT LARGE": Yes, it is unlike anything any president has ever gone through. We have had presidents take us to war in the past. George Bush, the latest one, Franklin Roosevelt -- but they took us to war against a specific identifiable enemy. We knew where the terrain was, we knew it had to be done.

We have had presidents console us in a loss before. President Clinton, President Reagan with the Challenger. But those losses were nothing like the loss we are suffering now. And they were no kind of losses that subjected us to a sense of vulnerability.

And moreover you have a president who remembers that his father successfully prosecuted the Gulf War, got 90 percent approval rating, but the recession that the Gulf War helped cause because of fuel prices and consumer confidence helped undermine him.

You put those things together and here you have a president in the first year of his term facing an unprecedented challenge.

BROWN: Stay with me on this for a second because at first blush, what I would see is a president who will have, by and large, an enormous percentage of the country behind him whatever he and the government decides to do, why is that problematic?

GREENFIELD: That's not problematic. Presidents always get support in the first phase of responding to a crisis. Part of the problem is when a crisis isn't resolved relatively quickly, this is not the most patient country in the word, that support gets undermined.

Look what happened to Jimmy Carter with the Iran hostages. Look what happened with President Truman and the Democrats when the Koran War dragged on two and a half years. This country does not deal with sustained long-term problems all that well.

BROWN: If you look at the Carter example, the problem there, it would seem to me there is, that he seemed, to a great many Americans at least, to be impotent to do anything. If this president responds in some way, and whether it is totally effective or not, but responds, appears to be doing something, doesn't that mitigate any downside there?

GREENFIELD: That is entirely possible. All I am pointing out here is that we all tend to recognize the fact that the country rallies behind a president in a crisis. And lord knows, this is a crisis as big as anything we have ever faced. That is not an overstatement. My point is only, if you look at history (AUDIO GAP) challenge as president will face if that initial response is not followed by a pretty clear success, that support can be problematic.

And we have all been pointing out, you and your colleagues, have all been pointing out how difficult it is, unlike you know, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait or the North Korean invasion of the south to identify exactly where to strike and how to do it. My only point is to keep in mind, even the at this early phase, simply to point out the difficulty that George W. Bush faces in dealing with a crisis this significant, this horrendous, and look at history and it teaches you that a president cannot rely long term on the unified support of Americans if he does not produce success.

BROWN: And just to button it up, Jeff, even in this sort of situation it's hard to know what success is.

GREENFIELD: Very good point.

BROWN: It's just difficult to know. Senior analyst Jeff Greenfield with us. now back to Atlanta -- Bill Hemmer.

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