A Kerry vs. Bush match will be a no-holds-barred fight
Dick Polman / Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
ATLANTA - John Kerry versus George W. Bush: It won't be
pretty.
The first guy, a Yale graduate from a rich family, already
says the second guy is a captive of his conservative base and
the credibility-challenged steward of an "arrogant,
reckless" foreign policy.
The second guy, a Yale graduate from a rich family, will say
the first guy is a captive of his liberal base and a career
waffler who always puts a moist finger in the wind before
making up his mind.
It'll be a contest that mirrors the clashing priorities
of a polarized nation, it'll surely cost more than any
previous presidential election and it could inflame political
passions like no other race in a generation.
Bush has sparked more hostility among Democrats than any
president since Richard Nixon - they're incensed that
he's governing from the right despite his thin win in
2000 - but in a recent speech he did say one thing that
almost everyone can agree on: "Great events will turn on
this election. The man who sits in the Oval Office will set
the course of the war on terror and the direction of our
economy. The security and prosperity of America are at
stake."
Now that the battle is truly joined, Bush is trying - with
his first multimillion-dollar TV advertising salvo - to start
rehabilitating his own image, which took a beating during the
Democratic primaries. He's on the air, being ballyhooed
as a strong and steady leader, in 17 key states.
The ads aren't expected to target Kerry. That'll be
left to the Bush surrogates on talk radio, in conservative
think tanks, in Congress and in the conservative press.
They've been dishing it out to Kerry already, trying to
chip away at his war-hero image before voters start to think
that maybe a Democrat can have national-security credentials
after all.
That's the surrogates' task for the next five
months. They have to soil Kerry before he goes to the
Democratic convention in late July and gets four days of free
national coverage, along with the inevitable post-convention
bounce in the polls. They have to persuade voters that, no
matter how well he fought in Vietnam, he hasn't shown
much courage under fire in all the years since.
Bush set the tone for the campaign at a fund raiser in Los
Angeles Wednesday evening by casting Kerry as a waffler.
"He's got two decades in Congress, built up quite a
record," Bush said. "In fact, Senator Kerry's
been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just
about every issue."
In what could be potential grist for the Bush team in every
state South of the Mason-Dixon line, the National Journal, a
nonpartisan magazine for policy wonks, has named Kerry as one
of the most steadfast liberals in the Senate, based on his
voting record. In particular, the Bush team may point out all
the times that Kerry voted to raise taxes.
And it's a cinch that the White House will highlight
Kerry's opposition, during the 1980s, to various weapons
systems, as well as his opposition, in 1991, to the first
Persian Gulf War. This is one of the reasons that senators
rarely get elected president: They're saddled with
lengthy voting records that are easy to shoot at.
The Bush team also will try to tie Kerry in knots on the
question of why he opposed the 1991 Gulf War but supported
last year's war against Iraq. That will tie into the
larger accusation that he's been a model of inconsistency
throughout his career, voting, for example, for the North
American Free Trade Agreement in 1993 then assailing the pact
during the 2004 primaries.
Of course, circumstances differed between the 1991 and 2003
wars, and between the 1993 drafting of NAFTA and how it looks
after 10 years of results, but Kerry will be on the defensive
trying to explain such subtleties.
Privately, a fair number of Democrats have qualms about
Kerry. Some complain that his patrician demeanor and
occasional senatorial verbiage don't connect well with
common folk. But they like the fact that he travels the land
with his "band of brothers," the Vietnam vets who
validate his manly credentials, and they like that he hunts
pheasant, rides a Harley and pilots airplanes.
Democrats think that all stacks up pretty well against a
president who still can't fully account for his
whereabouts during his Vietnam-era stint in the Air National
Guard. That issue went nowhere in 2000, but then it was
peacetime, and now Bush is, by his own definition, "a
war president."
For Democrats, that links nicely to the larger issue of
Bush's credibility: the absence of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq, despite all the claims that he and Vice
President Dick Cheney uttered in the buildup to war. The
recent report by chief weapons inspector David Kay - who told
Congress that virtually everything U.S. intelligence thought
it knew about Iraq's weapons turned out to be wrong -
damaged Bush on the trust issue; the latest polls show his
credibility is now at the low ebb of his presidency, and
Kerry will try to keep it there.
Enter gay marriage. Bush's push for a constitutional
amendment barring the practice shouldn't be viewed only
as an attempt to please his conservative base. Potentially,
there's also a larger message: The president is a man
whom you can trust on matters of principle; here's what
he firmly believes, whether you agree with him or not. On the
other hand, some might ask what happened to Mr. Compassionate
Conservative, who preached tolerance and claimed to be a
uniter, not a divider.
Other factors aren't knowable at this juncture. There
are whispers that, if Bush appears to be vulnerable during
the summer, he might even jettison Cheney (allegedly for
health reasons) and pick a daring replacement. For now both
men deny it, but circumstances change.
That decision may depend on how Kerry fills his own ticket:
perhaps with Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who stung
Kerry a few times in recent weeks but managed a graceful
exit; former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson, the Hispanic
governor of New Mexico, who could help pull in the
fastest-growing electorate; Sen. Bob Graham, the most popular
Democrat in pivotal Florida for a quarter-century; or Rep.
Dick Gephardt, the labor-backed Missouri congressman, who
might play well in pivotal Rust Belt states such as Ohio and
Pennsylvania.
At this point, there's only one certainty: Half the
population will be disappointed in the November results, and
that may not bode well for prospects of renewed civility in
the public square.
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(Polman reports for The Philadelphia Inquirer.)
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(c) 2004, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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