As the presidential campaign drifts through the
August doldrums, President Bush
appears to be playing not to lose. In sports,
the phrase is used to criticize teams
that play too timidly. In politics, it means
waiting for your opponent to make a blunder.
As the incumbent, Bush is conducting one of the
oddest campaigns in American history.
Because he can’t easily run on vanishing jobs,
humongous budget deficits and the mess
in Iraq, or say much about the future, what’s
he going to promise, bigger tax cuts?
Bush preaches to the converted at invitation-only
events limited to campaign volunteers,
congregations from conservative churches and
people willing to sign party loyalty oaths.
Anybody wearing a John Kerry T-shirt is hustled
off the premises. Avoiding the national
press, he holds so-called "Ask President Bush"
sessions at which preselected voters toss
him verbal bouquets. Miss America contestants
face tougher cross-examination. In the
aptly named Niceville, Fla., one fellow announced,
"I’m 60 years old and I’ve voted
Republican from the very first time I could vote.
And I also want to say this is the very
first time that I have felt that God was in the
White House."
Blessedly, Bush did appear uneasy with the notion
he might actually be God, cleverly
diverting attention to his brother, Jeb, the
Florida governor. When a woman in
Beaverton, Ore., asked him to pray for the state
because of its high proportion of
"unchurched" citizens, Bush awkwardly reminded
her that "people can choose church
or not church, and they’re equally American."
Thank God for that.
Besides avoiding skeptics and collecting warm
fuzzies, such rallies hold another
advantage for Bush: Slimy insinuations by GOP
dirty-tricks ops like the Swift Boat
Veterans for Truth come from other people’s mouths.
Also at Beaverton, Bush took
a question from a guy, who claimed to have served
six tours in Vietnam, who
questioned Kerry’s Purple Hearts. "We’ve got
a candidate for president out here
with two self-inflicted scratches," he said,
"and I take that as an insult."
Actually, Kerry earned three Purple Hearts during
his second tour in Vietnam and
carries shrapnel in his leg. Bush, whose own
Pentagon records show no evidence
he drilled with his National Guard unit in 1972,
had a swell chance to repudiate the
Swift Boat calumnies paid for by Texas Republicans,
contradicted by voluminous
military records and publicized by Merrie Spaeth,
the widow of his 1994 gubernatorial
running mate, the late Tex Lezar. "Thank you
for your service," he said. "Six tours?
Whew. That’s a lot of tours."
If Bush had a rock band, he could dub his campaign
the "No Class" tour and sell
T-shirts. Which, come to think of it, illuminates
his dilemma. The purpose of Bush’s
restricted-access events is to generate feel-good
images on local TV. But ask anybody
who’s seen the Rolling Stones live if it was
more stimulating than an HBO concert.
There’s a visceral excitement at live campaign
rallies that can’t be matched by TV.
To prevail, Bush needs to win over voters who
didn’t support him in 2000 or didn’t
vote at all. Campaigning in his own traveling
White House Rose Garden won’t get it done.
Meanwhile, the Kerry-Edwards duo are drawing large,
volatile crowds. It’s not news
that Democrats are energized, but the big turnout
may tell more about the race’s
momentum than Kerry’s steady climb in "swing
state" polls.
Even Kerry’s convoluted speaking style may be
turning to his advantage. Two recent
attempts by Bush and Dick Cheney to portray him
as a "flip-flopper" may have
awakened a slumbering press corps. From inside
the bubble, Bush claimed that
Kerry had voted for the Iraq war, morphed into
an "anti-war" candidate, then flipped back.
But a careful analysis by Slate’s Will Saletan
showed that Kerry’s stance hasn’t changed:
It was right to give the president authority
to threaten force to make Iraq admit United
Nations arms inspectors, wrong of Bush to alienate
U.S. allies and stampede to war.
On MSNBC’s "Hardball," Chris Matthews confronted
a Bush spokesman with repeated
showings of a video clip GOP imagineers had twisted
to distort Kerry’s meaning. If that
kind of journalism becomes trendy, Bush may have
to appear at country clubs only.
Meanwhile, Cheney went on rightwing talk radio
to mock Kerry for backing a more
"sensitive" war on terror. Laughing, he said,
"It strikes me the two words don’t really go
together, sensitive and war. If you look at our
history, I don’t think any of the wars
we’ve won were won by us being, quote, ‘ sensitive.
’" Same show, minutes later:
Why weren’t U.S. troops storming the Imam Ali
shrine in Najaf where Shiite militiamen
are holed up? "Well, from the standpoint of the
shrine," Cheney said, "obviously it is
a sensitive area, and we are very much aware
of its sensitivity."
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little
Rock author and recipient
of the National Magazine Award.
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