Monday, May 24 2004
STILL BUSH'S RACE TO LOSE: Five or six weeks ago there was a flurry of stories describing how Democrats were terribly concerned about the state of the Kerry campaign.

Only three or four weeks before that we witnessed the crescendo of Kerry's primary run and there was a lot of talk about how the White House had to "get in the game" and "get serious" with the campaign.

The latest flurry of punditry, brought on by the string of bad news in Iraq over the last few weeks, is best summed up by the theme "President Bush is in big trouble."

Everyone needs to settle down. Republicans should take a deep breath and perhaps take an early Memorial Day vacation and Democrats who are rubbing their hands thinking they are headed for the White House might want to temper their enthusiasm. President Bush is not nearly in as bad of shape as you would think from reading the papers or listening to the punditry on TV.

Yes, I know all about the falling job approval numbers, the right/track wrong/track polls, and about how no modern day President has won reelection with approval ratings below 50%. Lost in all the focus on particular polling, however, is an underappreciation of the significance of September 11, 2001 and the fact that America is at war.

I have said for months now that the more the country is focused on terror, Iraq and war the more it will ultimately benefit President Bush in the fall. While the media continues its gleeful self-flagellation over the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, the rest of the country has moved on in understanding the seriousness of the war and the context of the prisoner abuse in the larger scheme of things.

In many ways this election will be about whether the war in Iraq is more like World War II or Vietnam. Can you imagine hearing endless rants of defeatism in 1942: Why are are we in North Africa? Doesn't Roosevelt know it was the Japanese who attacked us in 1941? Can you imagine story after story on how we were abusing and humiliating poor Japanese and German prisoners?

Yet today all we hear from the mainstream media outlets is negative story after negative story. In an excellent article last week Mort Kondracke suggests that Congress and the media could talk the U.S. into defeat in Iraq.

The American establishment, led by the media and politicians, is in danger of talking the United States into defeat in Iraq. And the results would be catastrophic.

The media - unperturbed by mistakenly likening both the Afghan war and last year's invasion of Iraq to Vietnam - focuses overwhelmingly on the bad news coming out of Iraq. There is plenty of bad news - but there is also much good, and it is being almost completely ignored.

Some Members of Congress - either out of a passion to defeat President Bush, pique at not being listened to by the Bush administration, or simply a need to hear their own voices - are declaring the war "unwinnable" or "a quagmire," or are demanding an "exit strategy."

Although everyone says they support American troops in Iraq, soldiers have to wonder whether the country is fully behind their mission. Iraqis, too, have to be wondering: Will America stay the course?

President Bush surely will. He strikes me as being as resolute as George Washington was at Valley Forge, Abraham Lincoln after the early defeats of the Civil War, and Franklin Roosevelt in the darkest days of World War II. They didn't have "exit strategies," either.

We are at war and right now the war is not going very well. That is why the President's poll numbers are down. It's that simple.

What is not that simple, however, is taking the next step and assuming because the President's job approval is down John Kerry is going to win.

Eighty percent of the press may feel Iraq is more like Vietnam than WWII, but I get the feeling the majority of the American people aren't willing to concede that Iraq is another Vietnam.

And as long as America sees Iraq more like WWII and less like Vietnam, they won't want a President who just wants to get us out, they'll want a President who is willing to do what is necessary to win. It's going to be the number one factor in determining who wins the election this fall: which candidate is the best man to win the War on Terror?

President Bush is not hostage to events in Iraq and around the world as much as people think. The country is a lot tougher than the talking heads on TV and the prophets of doom in the press. Contrary to popular wisdom, events can get worse in Iraq and the country will hang in there as long as they believe there is a plan and a commitment to win. All President Bush has to do is show the same leadership he has shown since September 11th.

The President's biggest problem isn't Abu Ghraib or Al Sadr or Fallujah. His biggest problem - and the thing that most concerns the American public - is that for the last few weeks the White House has acted like it doesn't have a plan and doesn't know what it is doing.

I'm sympathetic to the difficulties in Iraq and I realize there are no easy answers. But the American people want more than just "stay the course" from the President. Unfortunately not only is the White House fighting the enemy in Iraq they are also constantly having to battle the forces of defeatism here at home.

The reason this race is still President Bush's to lose is because he is in control of whether he will show that leadership. I suspect he will. Amazingly, his opponents are once again "misunderestimating" him.

You would think after beating an incumbent Vice-President during a time of peace and prosperity and then personally carrying his party to an unprecedented victory in 2002, the prophets of George W. Bush's demise would be a little more circumspect in their predictions.

This is going to be a long 5 1/2 months until Nov. 2 and there are going to be many pendulum swings in the polls. Given the relatively even partisan split in the country we are probably headed for another close election. But I have news for all those cheering the President's current problems; George W. Bush is no Jimmy Carter. If there is going be a blow out this year, it's going to be the Democrats holding the short end of that stick. J. McIntyre 8:03 am Link | Email | Send to a Friend