Bush article?

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

War And Peace

Interesting piece from Dick Morris comparing Bush-as-Churchill to Kerry-as-Atlee:

When an insurgent challenges an incumbent, he can always choose the field of battle by articulating precisely and narrowly the differences between them. Too often, challengers fall into the trap of criticizing everything their opponent does. By doing so, they take on their adversary’s strong points as well as his weak ones. A shrewd challenger bypasses the strong points, professing agreement, and concentrates on the weak ones instead. Unless the challenger attacks the incumbent over the strong elements in his record, the incumbent has difficulty putting his strengths into play. There is no more potent way to dismiss the achievements of one’s adversary than to praise them, and thereby banish them, from the campaign.

Kerry’s strategy is to stress his differences over Bush’s weaknesses like healthcare, Medicare, the environment, Social Security, stem-cell research and the like while narrowing the gap between them over terrorism and the president’s strength.

For Bush, the challenge is not only to prove his supremacy in the areas of terrorism, war, security and the like, but to keep these issues on the front page. In these dual challenges, he must walk a tightrope between success and failure. If Iraq blows up or there are serious breaches in our homeland security, he could lose his lead on these key issues, as he did briefly in April. But if all goes well and Baghdad is quiescent, the terror issue could lose its saliency and the Kerry domestic-policy advantages could move to the fore. Too much success drives his best issue off center stage. Too much failure makes it no longer his issue.

For Kerry, the frustration is an inability to control events. He cannot determine the saliency of issues. Only events far beyond his control can accomplish that. The Democrat is forced to wage an essentially passive campaign, capitalizing on Bush’s failures by narrowing the gap on the terror issue and on the incumbent’s successes by driving home the differences on domestic policies.

Each candidate has his own limitations and frustrations, which makes 2004 a true strategic nightmare for both sides.

If voters are looking for a peacetime president, it's bad news for this country because the average voter is without a clue.

I overcame my customary nausea and watched a bit of TV news last night and (just before I started throwing things) I was once again struck by how unbelievably ignorant the average American voter is regarding the role of the President in the economy, job-creation, and the passing of legislation.

The news broadcast featured a particularly vapid woman who was exercising her God-given right to make an ass of herself on national TV by expressing an opinion she clearly had not thought out in advance. A Kerry supporter, she was enthusiastically touting the advantages of Kerry's health plan. And why is it better? Because he's going to spend more on it.

I temporarily stopped breathing: struck by the monumental stupidity of this statement. The woman plainly had no idea of the relative benefits offered under the Bush v. Kerry plans, but darnitall, if it costs the taxpayer more it must be a good deal.

Combine voters like this one with the fact that most people still think we're in a recession (all economic indicators to the contrary) and things start looking very rosy for Jean Francoise Kerrie.

Fortunately I am an optimist. I keep hoping that most Americans have an innate sense of what is really important. I hope I'm not wrong.