Move over, Newt, now "Neocon Par Excellence" Bill Kristol is scripting Bush's demise at the hands of a Yankee liberal.
Who woulda thunk it - may be some entertainment value in the campaign next year after all.
How Dean Could Win . . .
By William Kristol
Tuesday, December 9, 2003; Page A27
washingtonpost.com
Going into the final day of the college football regular season,
Oklahoma was undefeated and ranked No. 1. The Sooners had
the best defense in the nation, had outscored their opponents by
an average of 35 points and had a nine-game winning streak
against ranked teams. "OU: Among best ever?" USA Today asked
(rhetorically) on Friday. Kansas State, by contrast, had three
losses, and had never won a Big 12 championship. Oklahoma
was favored by two touchdowns. Kansas State, of course, won,
35-7.
For the next 11 months, Republicans,
conservatives and Bush campaign
operatives should, on arising, immediately
following their morning prayers, repeat
that score aloud 10 times. Underdogs do
sometimes win. Howard Dean could beat
President Bush. Saying you're not
overconfident (as the OU players
repeatedly did) is no substitute for really
not being overconfident. And if Bush loses
next November, it's over. There's no BCS
computer to give him another shot at the
national championship in the Sugar Bowl.
Could Dean really win? Unfortunately, yes.
The Democratic presidential candidate has,
alas, won the popular presidential vote
three times in a row -- twice, admittedly,
under the guidance of the skilled Bill
Clinton, but most recently with the
hapless Al Gore at the helm. And
demographic trends (particularly the
growth in Hispanic voters) tend to favor the
Democrats going into 2004.
But surely the fact that Bush is now a
proven president running for reelection
changes everything? Sort of. Bush is also
likely to be the first president since
Herbert Hoover under whom there will
have been no net job creation, and the first
since Lyndon Johnson whose core justification for sending U.S.
soldiers to war could be widely (if unfairly) judged to have been
misleading.
And President Bush will be running for reelection after a
two-year period in which his party has controlled both houses of
Congress. The last two times the American people confronted a
president and a Congress controlled by the same party were in
1980 and 1994. The voters decided in both cases to restore what
they have consistently preferred for the last two generations:
divided government. Since continued GOP control of at least the
House of Representatives seems ensured, the easiest way for
voters to re-divide government would be to replace President
Bush in 2004. And with a plurality of voters believing the
country is on the wrong track, why shouldn't they boot out the
incumbent president?
But is Dean a credible alternative? Was Kansas State? Dean has
run a terrific primary campaign, the most impressive since
Carter in 1976. It's true that, unlike Carter (and Clinton), Dean
is a Northeastern liberal. But he's no Dukakis. Does anyone
expect Dean to be a patsy for a Bush assault, as the
Massachusetts governor was?
And how liberal is Dean anyway? He governed as a centrist in
Vermont, and will certainly pivot to the center the moment he
has the nomination. And one underestimates, at this point when
we are all caught up in the primary season, how much of an
opportunity the party's nominee has to define or redefine
himself once he gets the nomination.
Thus, on domestic policy, Dean will characterize Bush as the
deficit-expanding, Social Security-threatening,
Constitution-amending (on marriage) radical, while positioning
himself as a hard-headed, budget-balancing,
federalism-respecting compassionate moderate. And on foreign
and defense policy, look for Dean to say that he was and remains
anti-Iraq war (as, he will point out, were lots of traditional
centrist foreign policy types). But Dean will emphasize that he
has never ruled out the use of force (including unilaterally).
Indeed, he will say, he believes in military strength so strongly
that he thinks we should increase the size of the Army by a
division or two. It's Bush, Dean will point out, who's trying to
deal with the new, post-Sept. 11 world with a pre-Sept. 11
military.
But what about Sept. 11? Surely Bush's response to the attacks,
and his overall leadership in the war on terrorism, remain
compelling reasons to keep him in office. They do for me. But
while Bush is committed to victory in that war, his secretary of
state seems committed to diplomatic compromise, and his
secretary of defense to an odd kind of
muscle-flexing-disengagement. And when Bush's chief of staff,
Andrew H. Card Jr., said on Sunday with regard to Iraq, "We're
going to get out of there as quickly as we can, but not before we
finish the mission at hand," one wonders: Wouldn't Howard
Dean agree with that formulation? Indeed, doesn't the first half
of that sentence suggest that even the most senior of Bush's
subordinates haven't really internalized the president's view of
the fundamental character of this war? If they haven't, will the
American people grasp the need for Bush's continued leadership
on Nov. 2? If not, prepare for President Dean.
The writer is editor of the Weekly Standard. |
