It's clearly a campaign for commander in chief Security issues return to top of voters' concerns
By Susan Page
USA TODAY
GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- In the first presidential election since the Sept. 11 attacks, Americans are paying attention again to a commander in chief's salute.
After a decade when the importance of national-security credentials ebbed in presidential campaigns, the issue of America's defense is challenging the economy as the most important concern on voters' minds. While President Bush's strategists once thought the debate over who would be a better commander in chief would guarantee his re-election, that no longer seems so certain.
''You weren't worried about war or terrorism so much before,'' says Debbie Larsen, 50, a first-grade teacher and Bush supporter from Fort Worth visiting this Civil War town with her husband and 19-year-old daughter. Now, she says, those issues are overshadowing such concerns as education and health care that were at the center of recent campaigns.
Matthew Dowd, Bush's chief campaign strategist, says the perception of Bush as a strong leader -- particularly in safeguarding the nation's security -- is his strongest selling point. History is also on his side: From the War of 1812 to Vietnam, no president who sought re-election in wartime lost.
But for the first time in a generation, Democrats are trying to turn the Republicans' advantage on national-security issues to their own. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry prevailed in the crowded primaries in large part because he offered a stronger résumé on the issue than his chief rivals. The party platform includes more muscular language on national security than any in decades.
At the Democratic National Convention next week, Kerry will be introduced by fellow Vietnam veteran Max Cleland, embraced by the crewmen with whom he served there and endorsed by retired generals. Tuesday, as the platform is debated, Kerry will be campaigning in Norfolk, Va., before a backdrop of battleships.
Republicans are attacking Kerry's credentials, however. They say Bush's leadership is critical at a dangerous time. ''If America shows weakness or uncertainty in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy,'' the president said last week at a rally in Green Bay, Wis.
Most of the $85 million in TV ads the Bush campaign has aired are devoted to warning that Kerry lacks the steadiness and toughness the presidency demands. They include footage of Kerry saying of a spending bill for Iraq: ''I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.'' Republicans cite Kerry's criticism of the war now, after voting to authorize it two years ago, as an example of waffling.
''The mantra in '92 was 'It's the economy, stupid,' '' says Peter Feaver, a political scientist and director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies at Duke University. But national security ''really matters now,'' he says. ''It's plainly central to both campaigns.''
Four years ago, when the Gallup Poll asked voters to name the 10 most important problems facing the nation, not a single national-security, foreign-policy or defense issue made the list. In first place: ethics and family decline. Next were concerns such as crime, education and poverty.
Now the No. 1 problem is the war in Iraq. Terrorism is third. National security is 10th. The Sept. 11 attacks, which changed so much in America, also reshaped its presidential politics.
A question of trust
Interviews in Pennsylvania and Ohio show voters struggling with the question of whom they trust more to command the armed forces and keep their families safe.
The issue reverberates in Gettysburg, site of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War. One wartime president, Abraham Lincoln, delivered a classic address here on the sacrifices and valor of soldiers. A century later, another wartime president, Dwight Eisenhower, retired here; his farm is now open to tourists. The bucolic Maryland retreat for sitting presidents, Camp David, is 20 miles down the road.
The Sept. 11 attacks are still fresh in voters' minds. ''President Bush did come through with flying colors after 9/11,'' says Cindy Gregg, 51, an elementary-school music teacher from Belle Vernon, Pa., walking with her husband among the arc of graves in Soldiers' National Cemetery. ''I do have confidence in him.''
But Rebecca Kowaloff, 20, of Northboro, Mass., says Bush's decision to invade Iraq has increased threats to the United States. At Lincoln Square in Gettysburg's small downtown, she is wearing shorts and a T-shirt, but she's packed a floor-length Civil War-style dress for a reenactment of the Battle of Gettysburg that has drawn thousands of Civil War enthusiasts to town. ''I don't like the way he's made us an enemy to the rest of the world,'' she says of Bush.
Five presidents have run for re-election during wartime. (Two others, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, chose not to run, in part because of controversy over the wars in Korea and Vietnam.) In 1864, Lincoln advised voters that ''it was not best to swap horses while crossing the river.'' Franklin Roosevelt revived the slogan in 1940 and 1944: ''Don't change horses in midstream.''
Bush hasn't voiced that argument, but the sentiment is working to his advantage among some.
Daniel Goddard, 43, an aerospace engineer from Miamisburg, Ohio, voted for Al Gore in 2000. But he's leaning toward Bush this time ''primarily because we're in a war right now -- not just the Iraqi war but the whole war against terrorism.'' Goddard participated in a focus group of independent-minded voters in Dayton, Ohio, last week sponsored by the Annenberg Center for Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. ''It may not be the best time to change leaders when you're in the middle of something like that,'' he says.
Even Kerry supporters praise Bush's firm stance after 9/11. ''He was connecting with each and every one of us, how we felt after being attacked so savagely,'' says Dana Bales, 54, a Bush voter in 2000 who is leaning to Kerry.
While Bush still has most voters' confidence when it comes to combating terrorism, the advantage he once held on handling Iraq has eroded amid questions about the war. The failure to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the rising death toll among U.S. troops have fueled criticism of his decision to invade.
In a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll last month, a majority of Americans for the first time called the war a mistake and said it had made the United States less safe against terrorism. In the survey, taken June 21-23, voters said they trusted Bush more than Kerry to handle the responsibilities of commander in chief. But the margin, 51% to 43%, was narrow for an incumbent president over a challenger.
Asked if each candidate could handle those responsibilities, the two got equal positive ratings of 61%. ''John Kerry has already passed that threshold test for most voters,'' Mark Mellman, Kerry's pollster, says.
A year ago, Bush strategists said the strength of the president's leadership on national security would protect his re-election even if the economy failed to rebound. Now that's been turned upside down: Some of those same advisers complain that the violence in Iraq is preventing good news about the economy from being recognized by voters. Bush's latest round of ads emphasize his ''values'' on issues such as abortion.
''The economy has been too moody and Iraq has been too dysfunctional to run your campaign about commander in chief or run your campaign about a nicely recovering economy,'' says Rich Bond, a former Republican national chairman. He says that's why the campaign is focusing on ''values'' now, though he expects national security to come to the fore again.
In interviews in these two battleground states, partisan Republicans say Kerry's election would be disastrous. Partisan Democrats say Bush has led the country dangerously astray. Voters in the middle use conflicting adjectives to describe the candidates.
''I feel George Bush is strong, brave and has guts, but I think he went the wrong way'' on Iraq, says Deborah Harris, 53, a homemaker from Dayton who voted for Bush in 2000 and is undecided now. ''John Kerry, I think he is really smart and more thoughtful and not as fast to act, but I'm not sure he's strong.''
No experience needed?
Four years ago, George W. Bush was a two-term governor from Texas with little experience on foreign-policy and defense issues. But Gore's more substantial résumé in the Senate and as vice president didn't seem to matter.
''This was one of the areas where voters felt a little bit of discomfort with George Bush,'' Donna Brazile, Gore's campaign manager, says. ''But we didn't have the backdrop of Sept. 11 to exploit that.''
That election was fought during what now looks like a brief interlude between global conflicts. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, marking the end of the Cold War. It wasn't until the World Trade Center towers fell a decade later that most Americans believed the United States was involved in a new life-and-death struggle around the world.
In the three presidential elections during that interlude, the candidate who arguably had better credentials as commander in chief never won:
* In 1992, the elder President Bush's broad experience in foreign affairs and his leadership during the 1991 Persian Gulf War weren't enough to defeat Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, despite questions about Clinton's efforts to avoid the draft .
* In 1996, Clinton's rocky relations with the Pentagon, including the debate over gays in the military and his handling of deployments in Somalia and Haiti, didn't prevent his easy victory over former Senate majority leader Bob Dole, a decorated World War II veteran.
* And in 2000, Gore's stronger credentials on national security weren't a significant issue against the younger Bush.
This election is different, analysts and strategists say.
Bush describes himself as a ''war president.'' He often speaks before military audiences with rows of soldiers in uniform on stage behind him. He invokes the memory of 9/11 -- ''a day I'll never forget,'' he says -- and defends the Iraq invasion as part of the war against terrorism. Last week, his campaign released a letter praising him signed by 21 recipients of the Medal of Honor.
For his part, Kerry talks regularly about his service in Vietnam. He campaigns with the graying Navy crewmen with whom he served. He touts his years as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the book he wrote before 9/11 on global threats to the United States. He criticizes Bush's handling of the conflict in Iraq, though he has yet to detail big differences in what he would do about the war now.
Both candidates have to make their case, says Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''I don't think there's any doubt that if the voters think that one of the candidates can't be commander in chief,'' Mead says, ''he's not going to get elected.'' |
