Terror War swallowing Kerry
A recent speech by former Clinton political consultant and now self-purported Bush loyalist Dick Morris has troubled me over the last couple of weeks. Now the scene where Bush is bouncing happily out of the RNC with the wind of his Terror War message behind his sails while Kerry is clearly on the run bears this out.
First know that I despise Dick Morris and found about half of these August 10 remarks before the Commonwealth Club of California to be a reactionary rant. However, part of what he said presents a simple, straightforward political theory of the 2004 US presidential election that is hard to dismiss. After hearing the speech twice, I have started to see a Morissian logic behind the RNC speakers’ messages and also recent Bush media comments concerning the winability of the Terror War.
The Morris Theory says that any sort of intellectual arguments or nuances about what will move the most important voters are basically irrelevant to whether Bush or Kerry will win. Even if the political conversation tries to move into territory where Bush is portrayed as weak, stupid, a flip-flopper, or depraved in his conduct of the Terror War, this makes no difference because ANY discussion about the Terror War helps Bush and hurts Kerry.
Kerry can’t win the Terror War argument in any terms. The metaphorical goose-stepping of the jingoist consensus Kerry simply cannot resist. Witness his pathetic cave-in when asked if, knowing what is known now about the cost in lives and treasure of the Iraq operation and failure of Bush’s much-hyped weapons to materialize, Kerry would vote for war, Kerry said, “Yes”.
It’s just impossible for the challenger to take on Bush when he talks his nonsense about the Iraq conquest being “the right thing to do” because when considering how to handle a “madman” like Saddam Hussein, he will “choose to defend America every time”. The Democrat just sees little space to make cogent the anti-war argument. And Kerry has very badly bungled the space he did have by throwing the peace movement out of his convention, ceding the peace field to Bush, and saluting like a play-acting boy.
Morris went on to say, “…the key question that will decide this election is, ‘Are we at war, or are we at peace?’ If there’s a clear perception we’re at war, I think Bush is going to win.”
Having John McCain bring up (without actually naming) the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 made sense for the RNC in this regard because, “Everything that is said about terror helps George Bush. Michael Moore’s movie helps George Bush, because of it’s subject — it’s about 911….”
Bush’s now-retracted notion that the Terror War cannot be won falls right into this context. A perception that Bush succeeded in the first term and that the Terror War is over or could be soon rolls votes to Kerry’s side. Was it a mistake for Bush to release the statement he did a week ago Monday morning? I don’t. It’s calculated. Kerry and Edwards took the bait. Meanwhile, the Democrats took quite a hit several key-state polls.
As long as Edwards and Kerry each day are forced to take the bait by reacting to whatever Bush says about the Terror War, the Morris theory posits advantage Bush. If what Bush presents is somewhat controversial, all the better — more Terror War coverage results. So far it’s working for Bush.
I hope to God I’m wrong and Steve Gilliard is right that Bush’s real problems and troubled history will rise to bite him, but the Kerry slippage in key-state polls is undeniable. The numbers don’t lie as much as we’d all like them to. Minnesota is trending Bush, for heavens sake. Dug-up allegations, like those in a new Kitty Kelley book, about cocaine and other character flaws have a way of bouncing off the Shrub, while the clear Terror War message he wanted from the RNC was the one that got out. Little else, including the protests, did. Those in the electorate who hate politics (most of ‘em) will process in the heart those God and country messages while voting for the guy who they see sincerely promising to “defend America every time.”
Kerry is the one whose base is at risk along the soft edges. I think the vile Pat Buchanan described the situation correctly on Bill Maher’s HBO show when he said that Kerry’s toast now unless he can come up with stunning victories in the debates.
September 7th, 2004 at 20:56
Wow, DB, you and I usually on the same page but I must disagree with you here. First of all, Kerry did not “cave” by saying he’d support the war even knowing what we know now. He said he would have voted for the resolution, the direct quote is “I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for the president to have.” If you read Wm. Saletan’s article in Slate (http://slate.msn.com/id/2105096/), which isn’t flattering to Kerry, you still see that his position on Iraq has stayed consistent over time.
Now, about Bush’s advantage in the “war on terror”. I think the Kerry campaign needs to hit hard the fact that 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch, that he did not “defend America every time” — a statement that in the history of Big Lies must surely win a prize for biggest one of all.
Personally, I grow more convinced each day that people in this administration allowed the events of 9/11 to occur. But as my daughters say, that’s just me.
The evidence of gross negligence and incompetence is enough with out adding deliberate treason to the mix: ignoring insights about terrorism inherited from the previous administration; cut-backs in counter-terrorism funding in the DoJ budget; disregard for intelligence summaries and warnings; massive FAA failures the day of the attacks.
If, for the sake of argument we allow that this administration was merely negligent and incompetent before 9/11, the same cannot be said for how it has behaved in the aftermath: promoting faulty intelligence; blocking and censoring investigations; gagging witnesses; outing Ambassador Wilson’s wife; misappropriating vast amounts of money; permitting torture and abuse of detainees; pillaging Iraq’s resources and infrastructure. Well, the list is endless, including now investigations into whether central figures in formulating DoD policy may be working hand-in-hand with Israel.
Kerry and Edwards may be forced to rely on tabloid stories about BushCo. to help win the election. But simultaneously they must lay the groundwork for helping Americans come to terms with what has been done in their name, not just under GW, but stretching back in time to the early days of the Birchers and Minutemen.
September 7th, 2004 at 22:32
I wholly concur. Any party that shamelessly milks and exploits 9/11 for one las hurrah in NYC, in effect wearing the worst mass-murder on U.S. soil that they did nothing to prevent as a badge of honor is just mildly perverse - or put another way, you’d have to be pretty sick in the fuckin’ head, not to mention so insolent and power-mad to even contemplate such egregious effrontry to the peoples of NYC. This is a twisted sadism on par with the S & M homoerotic “love-ins” at Abu Ghraib. Some might call it necrophilia, but I believe it’s more akin to pissing on the grave of an unknown compatriot and charging admission for spectators. If 9/11 is 90% of the GOPs platform, does logic not inform us that we have nothing but more of these national traumas to look forward to in a second Bush term? No, these people are not Republicans (name me one thing that’s conservative about them? surely not a $7 trillion debt, a half trillion dollar deficit, bloated government spending and increased personnel, the “Preemption Doctrine,” the trampling of fundamental civl, Constitutional rights) they’re theocratic fascists. Fuck the deserter-in-chief and the chickenhawks - Kerry’s the man! Keep fightin’ the Good Fight and remember to vote by absantee ballot!
-DO
September 8th, 2004 at 03:47
Well, cs, if Kerry based his Iraq war vote in 2002 on what he said at the time, it was because Saddam was “developing unmanned aerial vehicles UAVs, capable of delivering chemical and biological warfare agents, which could threaten Iraq’s neighbors as well as American forces in the Persian Gulf…” (etc, etc, discredited claim after discredited claim).
Kerry went on, “As bad as he is, Saddam Hussein, the dictator, is not the cause of war. Saddam Hussein sitting in Baghdad with an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction is a different matter.”
I didn’t plow through this whole thing, I almost fell asleep trying. So I might have missed some “nuance” that probably does make Kerry disinguishable from Bush or, say, Olympia Snowe. Oh yeah, sure, then as now he hoped to drag more other countries into the mess. But bottom line Kerry’s vote was stated by Kerry to be based on the notion that Saddam was a “threat” and we needed to “take away [his] arsenal.”
So now if the non-exsistence of this arsenal is no reason for him to reconsider the war vote, he should just apply for a job at the Lie Factory.
Look, hardly anyone in the electorate now cares about the finer points here. It’s pure, raw emotion now. Kerry had a chance to stare down Karl Rove and plant a visceral blow against Bush’s pre-war lying. Does that constitute “caving” ?? Oh, hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just holding a consistent waffled position.