Competition Becomes Democrats' Elixir
By John F. Harris and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 6, 2004; Page A01
As the Democratic presidential race enters its closing phase, the party finds itself facing prospects for the fall election that are vastly improved from just two months ago. At the same time, for reasons that are partly related and partly coincidence, President Bush is weaker than his strategists expected, spreading alarm in the White House and Republican circles, GOP sources said.
The dramatic turn of fortunes prompted an equally dramatic response. In South Carolina yesterday, Bush offered a comprehensive defense of the invasion of Iraq and vowed he would make the same decision today. And the president, who grants far fewer interviews than most of his predecessors, suddenly agreed to an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
The new balance in the race, even as Democratic front-runner Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) still faces spirited challenges, is a striking circumstance in historical terms. Usually, nominating battles weaken candidates, at least temporarily, as a party's ideological rifts and personal resentments take time to heal and sometimes prove fatal in the general election. This year, the Democratic contest is likely to produce a nominee who will be stronger coming out of the process than going in, according to strategists with both parties.
Democratic activists, downbeat and disillusioned a year ago, have turned out in record numbers in the primaries and caucuses, with polls indicating they are far more unified by the desire to defeat Bush than divided by issues or candidate preferences. Kerry and Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), considered by analysts to be Kerry's strongest competitor, have sharpened their skills under the pressure of competition. And Democrats generally have enjoyed two solid months with all their candidates generating publicity for increasingly honed anti-Bush messages, especially in two states -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- that were important swing states in 2000 and will be again if this year's election is close.
Bush, meanwhile, has suffered a simultaneous slide, leaving his team nervously assessing whether his recent problems are a patch of bad luck and bad publicity or represent more structural weaknesses for his reelection candidacy, senior GOP political operatives say. Some recent polls have shown him behind Kerry in a matchup, if the election were held now. The State of the Union address is usually a president's best opportunity to showcase himself as leader of all the people. Two weeks after Bush gave his, he is suffering the lowest approval ratings of his presidency -- numbers that helped spur yesterday's aggressive moves to recover.
"People are concerned. The people that run the president's campaign are concerned," said a top outside adviser to the president in close contact with the campaign.
"For three or four weeks, the Democrats have been beating up not only on each other but also on the president," this GOP adviser said. "A lot of the normal punching, which we thought they would be giving each other, destroyed Howard Dean. So it turned more quickly than anticipated to the president. There was no way you could anticipate it."
Dean is also credited by many Democrats with playing a pivotal role in the party's revival, even as his once front-running candidacy clings to life with no victories so far. With his blunt-spoken style and early surge of grass-roots support, Dean enlivened interest in the contest and emboldened rivals to join his assault on Bush on issues including the Iraq war and health care.
"He brought a sharper focus and a harder edge, probably too hard," said Harold Ickes, a leading Democratic operative who is neutral. "Dean really played an instrumental role in forcing other candidates to be harder and have a sharper critique."
Recent events have had an impact as great as any Democratic arrows. The public announcement last month by David Kay, the outgoing head of the U.S.-led arsenal hunt in Iraq, that no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction exist there lent new force to claims that Bush exaggerated the case for the war. This news arrived almost simultaneously with the announcement that next year's budget will produce by far the largest deficit in U.S. history, causing dissension in GOP ranks and prompting allegations that the administration purposely understated the cost of an expensive new Medicare drug benefit. Bush's personal credibility, which Republicans once touted as his strongest leadership asset, is under challenge.
"He's got serious problems," said Ickes, noting this week's Gallup poll showing Bush with a 49 percent approval rating and losing to Kerry by 7 percentage points. "On the other hand, he's the president. He's got the bully pulpit, and he's got a huge amount of money to spend."
The Bush-Cheney reelection team is on track toward its goal of raising $170 million by early spring. What the impact of that money will be, and when it will start to be felt, looms as one of the largest unknowns of this election cycle. Current plans call for the campaign's heavy advertising to start in March or April, a GOP source said, adding that the Republican National Committee may sponsor some ads before then. There is some second-guessing about this in Republican circles, where some wonder whether the White House-run reelection team is being complacent in the face of serious peril.
"This is a disciplined team," countered a well-placed Republican operative, "that's not going to change their timing based on a dip in the poll numbers." The theory is that early spending would be a waste of money: "You don't want to define a debate that no one's focused on."
RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie, who has forecast a close race, cautioned against being buffeted by each gust of political wind. "We're going to go through these waves," he said. "I accept it. It's the nature of the process."
Yet the process has moved to some surprising rhythms this year, independent analysts maintain. Karlyn H. Bowman, who studies public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute, said she has been surprised how transient the bump up in Bush's standing after the capture of Saddam Hussein in December proved to be, as well the velocity with which Democrats have improved their standing. "It's an amazing turnaround from a few months ago," she said.
Douglas Sosnik, a strategist for President Bill Clinton's reelection bid in 1996, said he has been surprised by what seemed like the sluggish reflexes of the Bush White House. He believes that retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, because of his military background, has had particular impact with his caustic criticism of White House Iraq policy, and that most of the Democratic barrage has not been answered in any well-organized way. From outside, he said, it appears Bush's team decided a year ago on what then seemed like a sensible strategy -- let Democrats tear one another up in an intraparty battle, then swamp the winner with an ocean of advertising -- but "they have not adjusted to circumstances."
Most striking, Sosnik said, were a State of the Union speech and a budget that had many items evidently calculated to please the GOP's conservative base but not projected out to the nation. In 1996, Clinton went ahead of Republicans for the first time with his State of the Union, treating the address as his announcement speech and aiming it expressly at independent swing voters. He never fell behind in the polls from that speech through Election Day.
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