Deserves it's own page,Westi: IT'S 2002 AGAIN
September 7, 2004
By James Taranto
You know, if John Kerry weren't so darn electable, the Democrats would be panicking right now. Oh wait, he isn't and they are. Ever since the Iowa caucuses in January, two assumptions had guided the party: that its loathing of President Bush is shared by the country, and that John Kerry's Vietnam service is a huge political asset. It now seems clear that the headlines on Nov. 3 will not read "War Hero Wins by Default." Had the Dems ventured outside the liberal media echo chamber to read this column, they'd have seen this coming months ago. But hey, you can lead a donkey to water . . .
Anyway, Democrats appear to be divided over what to do now. Let's start by looking at the most sober advice, some of which the New York Times outlines in a Sunday piece:
Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana said Mr. Kerry had spent too much time talking about national security, including his own views on the Iraq war, and overplayed Mr. Kerry's Vietnam war experience, inviting the attacks that have dominated debate in recent weeks.
The focus on security was calculated to erase Mr. Bush's advantage on the issue. But Democratic leaders said the Kerry campaign had become ensnared in a debate that played to Mr. Bush's strength, and diverted him from challenging Mr. Bush on his domestic record.
"He needs to define this election," Mr. Bayh said of Mr. Kerry. "So much of the convention was focused on national security--if that's where the election is, I don't think he can win."
The last Democrat to win the White House seems to agree, according to a Monday Times report:
Former President Bill Clinton, in a 90-minute telephone conversation from his hospital room, offered John Kerry detailed advice on Saturday night on how to reinvigorate his candidacy, as Mr. Kerry enlisted more Clinton advisers to help shape his strategy and message for the remainder of the campaign.
In an expansive conversation, Mr. Clinton . . . told Mr. Kerry that he should move away from talking about Vietnam, which had been the central theme of his candidacy, and focus instead on drawing contrasts with President Bush on job creation and health care policies, officials with knowledge of the conversation said.
Ignore national security, avoid Vietnam, concentrate on domestic issues--well, it did work for Clinton. But a 1992 strategy makes no sense in 2004. There are many differences between the two elections, but the most salient is that today we are at war. A candidate who has nothing to say about national security cannot expect to win the White House during wartime.
Bayh and Clinton are savvy enough to know that the strategy they are recommending for Kerry is a losing one. But it may be the least losing strategy possible for the Democratic Party. To see why, forget 1992 and look back just two years, to the election of 2002.
As we've observed before, between Sept. 11, 2001, and Election Day 2002, the Democrats mostly kept their foreign-policy differences with the Bush administration within the bounds of reason. Since the party out of power in the White House usually gains congressional seats in off-year elections, they figured they would maintain and extend their slender majority in the Senate.
Instead the GOP picked up enough seats to give it a bare majority. The Dems' failure to hold their Senate redoubt, more than anything else, was what unleashed the Angry Left. One could argue, however, that the 2002 strategy was a failure only when measured against the Dems' unrealistically high expectations, and even then largely because they departed from it in two key races.
The Democrats' net Senate loss was only two seats; this was nothing like the drubbing they took in 1994 or even the one the GOP endured in 2000. If those two seats had not swung the majority, the results would have been wholly unremarkable. The Dems managed to knock off a Republican incumbent, in Arkansas, and to hold off tough challenges to their own incumbents in Louisiana and South Dakota. One Democratic incumbent who lost, Jean Carnahan of Missouri, was a weak candidate, an appointee who had never even run for office before.
The other two Republican pickups were in states where the Democrats deviated from their strategy of accommodation. In Georgia, the great patriot Max Cleland went down to defeat because his pro-union vote against the Homeland Security Department favored a Democratic interest group over the defense of America. In Minnesota, last-minute substitute candidate Walter Mondale suffered when a memorial service for Sen. Paul Wellstone degenerated into a freakish Angry Left pep rally. As we noted at the time, in both Georgia and Minnesota the GOP also picked up the governorship, won contested House races and made gains in the state legislature, which suggests that liberal anger and softness on defense are dangerous to every Democrat on the ballot.
There are eight key Senate races this November, all in states President Bush carried in 2000: Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota. To take a Senate majority, Democrats would have to win seven of these races. Republicans need only four to increase their majority, and a GOP sweep would give the party a 56-44 edge in the Senate.
On Nov. 2, John Kerry will be atop the Democratic ticket in all 50 states. In his Rocky Horror speech last Thursday night, Kerry presented himself to the nation as a bitter weakling who can't abide criticism and who takes his foreign-policy cues from Michael Moore. That is political poison. Could it be that Bayh and Clinton have written off Kerry's chances of winning the presidency and are urging him instead to follow a path that will allow him to lose with dignity, so as to minimize their party's down-ballot losses?
Dems Against Dignity
One Democrat who hopes John Kerry doesn't lose with dignity is Susan Estrich, the commentator who served as a consultant for Michael Dukakis's 1988 campaign. Estrich is furious about the success the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have had in raising questions about Kerry's character, and she urges Democrats to retaliate:
The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough. . . . That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on. . . .
Will it be the three, or is it four or five, drunken driving arrests that Bush and Cheney, the two most powerful men in the world, managed to rack up? (Bush's Texas record has been sealed. Now why would that be? Who seals a perfect driving record?)
After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history, and Cheney is still drinking. What their records suggest is not only a serious problem with alcoholism, which Bush but not Cheney has acknowledged, but also an even more serious problem of judgment. Could Dick Cheney get a license to drive a school bus with his record of drunken driving? (I can see the ad now.) A job at a nuclear power plant? Is any alcoholic ever really cured? So why put him in the most stressful job in the world, with a war going south, a thousand Americans already dead and control of weapons capable of destroying the world at his fingertips.
She goes on in this vein, suggesting that Democrats campaign on Bush's National Guard service (which she bizarrely equates to dodging the draft) and on "questions about whether the president has practiced what he preaches on the issue of abortion," whatever that means.
Well now! Far be it from us to get all high-mindedly horrified about the prospect of a campaign not based on "the issues." And there's something to be said for the drama of a truly vicious campaign, as against the strongerathomerespectedintheworld pap of the Democratic Convention or the petulant whining of the postconvention Kerry.
But dwelling on minor allegations of wrongdoing in the far-off past seems unlikely to bring down an incumbent president. Suppose you're an employer and you hear that one of your employees, who's been working for you for about four years, once had a drinking problem and in fact pleaded guilty nearly 30 years ago to a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence. You actually heard about all this when you initially hired him, and it did give you second thoughts, but in the end you decided to give him a chance. In the four years he's been working for you, you've seen no sign that he's fallen off the wagon. Is there any cause here to fire him? Even if the revelation about his past were new, wouldn't it have to be pretty severe to constitute grounds for termination?
Now say someone comes to you looking for a job. Right off the bat, you notice something strange about his résumé: It goes on for page after page about a job he held for four months, more than 35 years ago, but makes only the barest mention of anything he's done since. You have him in for an interview, and he can't give you a straight answer to any question about what he plans to do in the job if you hire him. Instead (to borrow a description from Joe Conason), he sounds like a bar-stool bore, with a bad habit of repeating the same lame boasts about that long-ago four-month stint again and again.
Still, you decide to check out his references. (John Edwards: "If you have any question about what John Kerry is made of, just spend three minutes with the men who served with him.") Some sing his praises quite extravagantly, but a greater number describe him harshly as a man of dubious character, and some accuse him of lying on his résumé. He acknowledges a few embellishments but refuses to provide you with documents that would shed light on the other accusations.
Would you hire this man? And would you fire an employee of four years' standing in order to create an opening for him? |
