Rove's Platform
New York-based Russ Baker is an award-winning journalist who covers politics and media.
How do you take a vulnerable, borderline-unelectable person and make him unbeatable? Ask Karl Rove. Having succeeded in making George Bush look presidential last time around, he's tooling up for the Return of the Cowboy Statesman in 2004. Democrats eager to forge a winning counterstrategy would do well to look more closely at the evolving Rove playbook for November.
The basic outline of the Rove-Bush campaign is already clear: To minimize your guy's weak points, attack your opponent for waffling on those very issues. For example: If polls show the electorate is increasingly unhappy with the situation in Iraq, accuse your opponent of being, sort of, both for and against the Iraq invasion. By ignoring the fact that changing circumstances and fresh information can (and should) prompt changing views, you can label your opponent as indecisive, which, in many people's eyes, is worse for a president than being wrong.
But Karl Rove knows that negative campaigning, while effective when backed with a massive ad blitz, must be accompanied by a positive message—something your guy can promise that will appeal both to your own base and the undecided independent. Rove also knows that only two things get the mass of Americans going: their pocketbooks and their lifestyles. Or, put another way, their lifestyles and their lifestyles. A two-pronged attack is best: First, have your guy promise to keep cutting their taxes while warning that the other guy won't follow suit. When someone points out that federal tax cuts have to be paid for in other currency (increases in state and local taxes or cuts in services or both) change the subject to a "family values" issue that will force Democrats into taking a principled stand. Easy one: gay marriage. Although Bush is unlikely to demonstrate how the desire of gays to formalize extant, long-term, child-rearing relationships with state approval threatens the marriages of straights (much less the moral fabric of the nation), just repeating the phrase "sanctity of marriage" wins points with Bush's base—and leaves the poor Democrats with the tricky task of explaining, for the umpteenth time, why the Constitution goes to such lengths to separate church from state.
Meantime, in a speech last week, Bush tested out his basic one-two approach: (1) jab the opponent with all-purpose slurs, then (2) stand firm. He accused the Democratic nominee-apparent of waffling on Iraq, NAFTA, taxes and the USA PATRIOT Act. "It's a choice between keeping the tax relief that is moving this economy forward, or putting the burden of higher taxes on the American people," Bush said."...between an America that leads the world with strength and confidence, or an America that is uncertain in the face of danger... [Dems] are for tax cuts and against them. For NAFTA and against NAFTA. For the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. In favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it. And that's just one senator from Massachusetts."
Any senator who has cast thousands of votes over a two-decade career would register inconsistencies, as well as what might be considered devolution and evolution (and Kerry certainly fits that bill.) And who better to focus on inconsistency than Bush the Younger—a man who is such a stranger to second thoughts that he boasted he never lost sleep over the 152 executions he authorized while governor of Texas? Generally, he takes a stand—on Iraq, on taxes, on whatever—and sticks with it no matter what. He leaves all the backpedaling to his subordinates: find any excuse, any rationale, make whatever explanations or modifications you need to, but don't put me in the position of having to publicly renounce a previous stance. As he likes to tell people, he isn't about to "start an argument with myself."
If the Democrats are going to beat Bush, they'd better do two things: 1) agree on a focus for anti-Bush campaigning and stick with it, and 2) decide what they're for and pound that message home.
Since most Democrats are already united in their desire to defeat Bush, the focus should be on convincing independents of the clear and present danger to the economy and America's place in the world posed by a disinterested, unqualified, hypocritical president surrounded by out-of-touch ideologues who would engage in risky foreign adventures while enriching themselves and their corporate friends.
On the waffling issue, Democrats can point out that in the last four years Bush has taken stands for and against free trade, fiscal restraint and nation-building. As for leadership and vision, besides the Iraqi morass (note Bush's increasingly apparent efforts to hide out from his own investigative commission), the deficit-pumping tax cuts to the rich and the constant burying or twisting of pessimistic economic news, there's that horrifying new global warming report. Prepared by well-respected, conservative Pentagon insiders, it warns that warming is so advanced already, and so potentially damaging, that tangible disaster scenarios could be barely 6 to 12 years away—including massive flooding and starvation, plus the attendant frantic population shifts and resulting wars. If the next president doesn't deal with this issue ASAP (and Bush and his political allies keep pooh-poohing the global warming evidence as "alarmist"), we may as well all start partying like there's no tomorrow—because there may not be one.
But if proposing tough-minded policies to save the world doesn't qualify as a positive message, then what about a national retraining program for workers who lose their jobs to outsourcing? Affordable health care (including medications) for the 43-million-plus uninsured? A real education initiative that puts its money where its sloganeering is? And a fair and sensible tax policy to pay for the changes that America desperately needs to stay strong and healthy? Even Karl Rove might have trouble characterizing that as weak-willed, flaky, spendthrift or unpatriotic.
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