Bush aides scramble to come up with 'Kennedy moment' for 2004

By Mike Allen and Kathy Sawyer
The Washington Post

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Agencies and task forces in several parts of the government have been assigned to determine the cost and feasibility of a variety of such major ideas, which could cost billions of dollars at a time the nation is running a substantial budget deficit.

An interagency group led by the White House, for instance, has been working since August on a blueprint for interplanetary human flight in the next 20 or 30 years to give NASA a new mission after the Feb. 1 disintegration of the space shuttle Columbia. Plans call for Bush to outline an ambitious national vision for space travel by early next year, and officials said the initiative is likely to involve cooperation between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the military.

The development of big ideas for Bush's 2004 agenda is being led by Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, the officials said. Administration officials said options have not been presented to the president, let alone decided, but the search is active for ambitious initiatives to flesh out a re-election agenda that also includes limiting lawsuits, making the tax cuts permanent and adding private investment accounts to the Social Security system.

One person who has been consulted by the White House said some aides appear to relish the idea of a "Kennedy moment" for Bush, referring to the 1962 call by President Kennedy for the nation to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade.

A senior administration official said that "a lot of simultaneous efforts have been launched" in quest of such an idea and that the efforts have been under way since late summer.

The official said the planning was born of an effort to follow up the president's emergency plan for AIDS relief in his last State of the Union address, which called for spending $15 billion over five years to help countries in Africa and the Caribbean fight the pandemic.

This official said Bush's closest aides are promoting big initiatives on the theory that they contribute to Bush's image as a decisive leader even if people disagree with some of the specifics.

"Iraq was big. AIDS is big," the official said. "Big works. Big grabs attention."

An ambitious space-travel plan is one possibility, although the president's aides said they are wary of repeating what they consider the mistakes of Bush's father.

On July 20, 1989, the 20th anniversary of the first human moon landing, the first President Bush issued a call for a sustained commitment to human exploration of the solar system, with a return to the moon as a steppingstone to the main destination: Mars.

NASA responded with a budget-shattering, $400 billion proposal that swiftly sank under its own weight.

Although much of the scientific and emotional focus has been on Mars in the past 10 years, the buzz inside NASA has seemed to shift toward a return of man to the moon, said officials at the space agency.

"The drumbeat is getting louder," Wendell Mendell, manager of the Office for Human Exploration Science at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said in a telephone interview.

Mendell long has advocated a return to the moon. "The tables and lists being created here are consistent" with a lunar initiative, he said.

NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe steadfastly has declined to discuss the space-policy review, except to acknowledge it is "moving forward."

Edward Weiler, NASA's chief of space sciences, said yesterday that he commissioned a major study to determine space-science priorities, which was completed by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences this year.

"I was surprised that the moon turned out to be one of their targets," he said. The panel listed the moon as one of five prime targets, he said, primarily because a crater at its South Pole contains some of the oldest, if not the oldest, exposed material in the solar system.

Advocates have argued the moon could be useful in many other ways, as a base for developing technologies, for astronomical observations and for human rehearsals for operating in space. One person consulted by the White House said officials believe a renewed push into space, besides giving the space program a new mission after the Challenger and Columbia space-shuttle disasters, would fuel the manufacturing and technology sectors of the economy.

Bush aides and advisers said that separately from his space plans, he is looking for ideas for next month's State of the Union address that would not rely solely on the government but would rally business, volunteers and other parts of society.

The Department of Heath and Human Services is developing a proposal that would funnel billions of dollars over at least 10 years into relatively noncontroversial research into cures for cancer and other diseases. A GOP official said this effort could be "the Republican equivalent of the war on poverty."

A senior administration official said policy experts also have done extensive research into the possibility of universal health insurance for children. The official said the administration also has been "going to considerable effort to see how much it would cost to attack child hunger and quote, unquote end child hunger."

Political calculations are involved, Republican sources said. One presidential adviser noted that a major anti-disease initiative would be popular with baby boomers. One quality the proposals have in common is that they are not obviously divisive.

On the other hand, the White House will be constrained by the growing budget deficit, which by some accounts will approach $500 billion in the current fiscal year.

Washington Post staff writer Rick Weiss contributed to this report.

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