Advantage Bush
BARNES, FRED
Advantage Bush They would have preferred Dean, but the Bushies are still confident. BY FRED BARNES Manchester, New Hampshire EVEN BEFORE Howard Dean's campaign began to fall apart, i President...
...BY FRED BARNES Manchester, New Hampshire EVEN BEFORE Howard Dean's campaign began to fall apart, i President Bush's underlings were paying attention to Dean's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination...
...The shorter the period in which Bush goes head to head, the more likely these ads will produce shock and awe...
...With passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, Bush neutralized the education issue, long a Democratic talking point...
...One of the most politically potent passages in the State of the Union was Bush's take on gay marriage...
...Advantage Democrats...
...Instead, the campaign will go full-throttle when the Democratic nominee is clear...
...The fellow, whom Kerry hadn't seen in 35 years, phoned out of the blue...
...And it's partly true...
...This is the best Democratic issue...
...Economy and taxes...
...It was a three-fer, attacking judicial activism, gay marriage itself, and (by implication) Kerry's home state, Massachusetts, whose supreme court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage...
...To beat Bush, Kerry or Edwards will have to do a lot better...
...Dick Morris's idea that Bush must bring the troops home to win reelection is nonsense...
...And since they regard the Lieberman campaign as dead, too, Bush advisers count the two toughest opponents for Bush as eliminated...
...Kerry got the endorsement of an ex-Green Beret whose life he saved in Vietnam...
...Let's see...
...If Bush strategists ranked the Democratic candidates as threats to Bush, the list would look like this: (1) Senator Joe Lieberman, (2) Gephardt, (3) Edwards, (4) Kerry, (5) Dean, (6) Clark...
...Kerry and Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Edwards is more competitive than Kerry, if only because his record in Congress is shorter (five years...
...Let's assume Dean is the political equivalent of Bruce Willis in the movie The Sixth Sense—that is, dead but he doesn't know it...
...He was checking out the Democratic senator's campaign apparatus and stump spiel...
...Advantage Democrats...
...Kerry and Edwards benefit from wanting to keep the Bush tax cuts for the middle class...
...That means he has little experience in national policy-making, which is a handicap but hardly a disabling one...
...Bush will never be able to out-promise Kerry and Edwards...
...Sure, Bush got a prescription drug benefit for the elderly, but polls show the public isn't appreciative...
...He was more feared as a potential opponent by the Bush team than either Kerry or Edwards...
...Edwards played off the bitter squabbling in speeches and ads between Dean and Gephardt...
...And the Bush camp disputes Kerry's populist credentials since Kerry and his wife are worth roughly $500 million...
...Education...
...Edwards may be a greater threat to Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination than he would be to Bush in 2004...
...And Bush can make the case, as he did last week, that the war on terror is going well...
...The longer that takes, the better from Bush's viewpoint...
...Where does that leave Bush in the five major issue clusters against Kerry and Edwards...
...And assume Clark, who isn't taken seriously by the Bush operation, won't be the nominee...
...Bush aides can rattle off Senate votes on national security issues they would use to knock Kerry: votes against the B1 bomber, against the Abrams tank, against the Patriot missile, against the $87 billion to fund the military in postwar Iraq, against full funding for the CIA as the terrorist threat grew...
...The economy is roaring and the stock market is climbing, but the jobs picture could give Kerry or Edwards an opening...
...Kerry and Edwards scarcely mention Iraq anymore, except when asked...
...Kerry and Edwards don't, though Kerry could tap his wife's largesse...
...No doubt other Bush supporters were keeping tabs on Senator John Kerry and retired General Wesley Clark...
...He's beginning to fight back, but not as aggressively as Kerry and Edwards are attacking...
...They were reactive, and they got lucky...
...What Bush needs is real progress in Iraq on military and political fronts...
...Bush's State of the Union address did not mark the kickoff...
...Meanwhile there's strong support for more government aid on health care...
...That helps against Dean but less against Bush...
...In their first big political test in Iowa, neither Kerry nor Edwards showed the ability to create openings on his own...
...Edwards are far more electable...
...Health care...
...The issue here is the two wars, terror and Iraq...
...Advantage Bush (for now...
...Gephardt was viewed as a serious foe because of his Midwest roots, personal decency, and what one Bush aide calls his "authentic populism...
...Is he vulnerable...
...The campaign will spend in excess of $100 million, mostly on TV ads...
...Culture...
...For more than a year, Republicans have been vetting Kerry...
...He held a large Edwards sign in his hands...
...The Bush team interprets this as their having concluded the war issue helps Bush, not them...
...National security...
...He can command the nation's attention at any time, change policies, announce new initiatives, meet with foreign leaders at summits, and so on...
...But Dean at least has the money to combat Bush from the time the nomination is locked up, probably in February or early March, until the conventions in late summer when public financing begins...
...Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were elected with little experience on the national stage...
...But Democrats have pounded him for not spending more, and his hold on the issue has eroded...
...That's smart politics...
...Bush is still 2 million jobs short of where he started in 2001...
...Dean would probably be the easiest Democrat for Bush to beat...
...Also, Iowa drove Dick Gephardt from the race...
...Edwards is in the odd position of running for president explicitly on his supposed electability after deciding not to seek reelection in North Carolina, where his prospects for a second term were no better than 50-50...
...Oh, yes, because of his 19-year record in Congress...
...Gephardt would have challenged Bush in states like Ohio and Missouri that the president won in 2000 and possibly thwarted Bush in states he lost but hopes to pick up this year (Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania...
...Lieberman was feared because he's a centrist with a strong appeal on values issues, a point Lieberman himself made at the last New Hampshire debate here...
...What the Iowa caucuses didn't do was prompt the Bush campaign to accelerate its campaign plans...
...This is true...
...The emergence of Kerry and Edwards in Iowa and Dean's collapse have been widely treated as bad news for Bush...
...As the Iowa caucuses drew near, I chatted with a Bush operative at a rally for John Edwards...
...The president has another advantage, the ability to alter the political landscape, at least briefly...
Vol. 9 • February 2004 • No. 20
