“After 18 Months of Watching, It’s Time to Predict” - Craig Crawford
Posted : October 23, 2004 at 12:32 pm [America/Los_Angeles]
It’s John Kerry’s to lose.
No flip-flopping here. I think the Democratic nominee will win the presidential election on Nov. 2. I don’t even think it will take weeks of recounting to confirm this.
…For all of President Bush’s valiant efforts to make this campaign a referendum on his challenger’s character, it is turning into what the nature of politics demands: a referendum on the incumbent’s performance.
…A Fresh Start?
I could see this mood in the nods of agreement in an airport lounge recently as a television news clip showed Kerry saying the country needs “a fresh start.” This could be the most powerful phrase in Kerry’s arsenal during the closing days.
Calling for “a fresh start” sounds like a phrase that was poll tested with a battery of focus groups, which is why it works. It is a simple notion conveyed by simple words.
The need for a fresh start is the least provocative argument that Kerry offers for replacing Bush after one term, and yet it might be the most persuasive.
…Bush could have blunted this message. He could have signaled his own plans for a new beginning in his second term. And there is still time for him to do so.
The president did not need to admit mistakes to show a willingness to try something new in Iraq, for instance. Hints about changing faces in a second Bush administration would help. The White House could have floated a few popular names, maybe even a Democrat or two, as candidates to replace Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, in particular.
Instead, Bush has stubbornly entrenched himself, refusing to acknowledge any need for change in his policies on any front, domestic or international.
…The president is so determined to contrast his certitude against Kerry’s vacillation that he has left himself no room to appeal to voters who would like to see him make adjustments. Bush would risk looking like a flip-flopper himself if he hinted at planning to try something different in Iraq, to cite the most politically important example, or if he eased off tax cuts so that he could slow the rise of federal budget deficits.
Many of Bush’s most ardent supporters would have welcomed a bit of flexibility. Fiscal conservatives are outraged at the overspending in Bush’s first term. Yet he barely acknowledges the problem.
Or, More of the Same?
Bush is stuck in a world of “more of the same,” the other obviously poll-tested phrase that Kerry uses to great effect.
There was a moment at the Republican National Convention when it seemed his campaign would finally center itself on a new second-term agenda. On the day of the president’s acceptance speech his aides released a massive document filled with proposals for the next four years. There were no far-reaching promises. Mostly, it was a litany of small programmatic changes, but it seemed to be the basis for a forward-looking message. But we never heard much more about it.
It turned out that conservatives gave the Bush camp such a beating for spending increases in the lengthy document that his advisers backed away from it.
Forgoing a definitive message of new ideas for a second term makes it difficult for the president to end this campaign by promising a bright future. Instead, his re-election is staked on fear of the future, arguing that a Kerry presidency would put our lives in jeopardy.
Without a forward promise of modest change, Bush allows voters to conclude that keeping him in the White House only brings more of the same.
If Craig is right, and I sure hope he is, I think it was the following moment in the first debate that really started the “comeback” for the Senator and may in the end take him all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
With well over 60 million people watching Senator Kerry for the first time, the Senator thoughtfully said,
But we do have differences. I’m not going to talk about a difference of character. I don’t think that’s my job or my business.
But let me talk about something that the president just sort of finished up with. Maybe someone would call it a character trait, maybe somebody wouldn’t.
But this issue of certainty. It’s one thing to be certain, but you can be certain and be wrong.
It’s another to be certain and be right, or to be certain and be moving in the right direction, or be certain about a principle and then learn new facts and take those new facts and put them to use in order to change and get your policy right.
What I worry about with the president is that he’s not acknowledging what’s on the ground, he’s not acknowledging the realities of North Korea, he’s not acknowledging the truth of the science of stem-cell research or of global warming and other issues.
And certainty sometimes can get you in trouble.
Suddenly, the President was vulnerable. He was vulnerable on the very thing that he was the strongest in at the start of the debate, that of being a “steady and strong leader”. Maybe that was the moment when, in a hurry, the voters of this country found themselves more worried about the President’s “blind” certitude than the challenger’s “flip-flops”.
Was that indeed a lethal blow to the President? I guess we will find out in 9 days!
- Anand
Category: United (or not) State of American Politics 2004