What Presidents Are For

Presidents do not decide how much you will pay for drug prescriptions at your local pharmacy. They don't determine whether your child's classroom will be overcrowded, or your streets safe. They can, with Congress, have an indirect effect on domestic life, but it's only on the world stage that the true power and importance of the American presidency crystallizes:

When a terrorist bomb kills 17 American sailors in a distant port. When a critical region of the world explodes in its greatest crisis in decades. When devilishly complex national-security decisions must be made on how to retaliate, negotiate, mediate. When the nation and the world must be consoled, cajoled and, at best, inspired by the only person everyone--friend or enemy--looks to for leadership.

It will likely be months before we know all the details of the suicide attack last week on the USS Cole in Yemen; months before we know the full effects of the paroxysm of violence on the Mideast peace process. But in only three weeks the United States will elect a new president whose skills at crisis management are sure to be tested in the next four years. As President Clinton and heads of state from across the region prepared for a crucial summit in Egypt, foreign policy was back. Big time.

So far, the impact of these events on the presidential election isn't clear. They may help or hurt Al Gore or George W. Bush or do neither. As authorities searched feverishly for the terrorists who struck the USS Cole, Clinton was no doubt making contingency plans for retaliation; his success or failure could affect the presidential campaign and his wife's Senate race in New York. If the strike is judged a success, it could help Gore. If it fails--or Gore is seen as claiming too much credit for it--Bush could gain the advantage. Talk about an "October surprise."

A new NEWSWEEK Poll shows the race deadlocked, with a slight edge to Bush among likely voters. In the game of inches that is Campaign 2000, a volatile international crisis could cause yet more political volatility at home. Only three times since World War II have major foreign events seized the headlines so close to Election Day. In 1956, the Soviet invasion of Hungary helped Eisenhower run up a bigger-than-expected re-election. In 1968, LBJ's inability to bring the South Vietnamese to the table (a failure secretly abetted by supporters of Richard Nixon) helped Nixon barely edge Hubert Humphrey. In 1980, Jimmy Carter made futile efforts to get the American hostages released from Iran.

And this year? "If this [unrest] keeps up, it will become a metaphor for leadership," U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, a possible secretary of State in a Gore administration, told NEWSWEEK. "Leadership is defined by intangibles of character as distilled through the crises of the day."