By David Green
The dynamics of the presidential race appear to have shifted last Thursday, with the first debate between the candidates. Democrats may still not get the satisfaction of winning the White House in November, but they can at least lick their chops envisioning how last week’s aggressive and cocky Bush team members today walk around with gnawing pits in their stomachs, angrily cursing the press, John Kerry and perhaps each other, as they think about what just happened, and worse, as they dread what lies ahead.
To the extent that any incomplete scripted public event can be, this discussion of foreign policy and security issues was supposed to be home turf for George Bush. His debate negotiators apparently worked hard to make sure it was the subject of the first encounter, the one which would presumably have both the most viewers and the most potential to swing votes.
John Kerry came into the debate carrying the heavier burden. It was probably fair to assume that had he stumbled in this forum, his bid for the presidency would have been over. Indeed, since he was both behind in the polls and a challenger seeking to unseat an incumbent during wartime, even fighting to a draw might have meant the end of Kerry’s chances. By all accounts, the majority of Americans are ready to depose Bush if given a credible alternative. Kerry, successfully painted over the last several months in unflattering terms by the Bush campaign, had to make the case that he was that candidate.
This was a rather narrow needle to thread. Kerry had to forcefully trash Bush’s policies, while conveying a sense of calm, controlled rationality and even congeniality. This is all the more difficult when the topic is security policy. There are troops in the field and the guy in question is the commander-in-chief. Criticizing the President’s decision to go to war means having to deal with the very sticky implication that the loss of over a thousand American lives has been a “waste.”
Moreover, the Bush/Rove team expertly wrapped themselves in the flag at every opportunity, asking what kind of message Kerry’s comments send to the troops, or to members of the coalition. Of course, what Bush was really trying to do was use the war as insulation from critiques of his policy decisions. This has a certain appeal to many voters, but ultimately means no one can ever criticize the decisions made by political leaders during wartime. Given that the rationale for this attitude is concern for the troops, this logic could ironically mean not being able to do the single best thing for the benefit of soldiers mired in a “mistaken” war, which would be to demand that they be brought home, out of harm’s way.
Bush’s much easier task in the debate was to show a reasonable command of the issues over which he is supposed to be presiding, and to avoid any major displays of the smirking petulance which always seems to lurk just below the surface (and sometimes just above) with him.
Who won? By any reasonable accounting it was Kerry’s night. Snap polls following the debate showed that viewers gave Kerry the nod by a large margin. Much more ominous for the White House without a doubt is the fact that undecided voters particularly saw the evening in those terms, by a spread of about 20 points. Conventional wisdom has it that late-deciding voters will break for the challenger in the voting booth anyhow, the logic being that if the incumbent can’t seal the deal in four years, he or she is unlikely to do so in the last weeks of a campaign. Bush needed to give them a reason to vote for him, and in this sense, didn’t do himself any favors Thursday night.
It wasn’t necessarily clear, halfway through the debate, which direction the contest was headed. I thought both candidates started out relatively strong in terms of their respective qualities. But as the evening wore on, it seemed that Kerry’s strengths were magnified, as were Bush’s weaknesses. Kerry landed repeated blows to the president’s policies and judgement, while Bush offered only repeated repetition of bumper sticker-sized sound bites. Bush’s sloganeering not only grew a bit wearisome, but absolutely played to his major weakness, the perception that his understanding of the issues is rather tenuous and dogmatically rigid. It was one thing, in 2000, for that to be true of a seemingly centrist candidate, but quite another today for a highly controversial commander-in-chief.
Meanwhile, Bush was frequently caught looking like an annoyed monarch stuck in some sort of bad hallucination where the subjects actually get to question and criticize the king’s war policies. That this famously disciplined campaign should have allowed that to happen, especially after the historical debacles of Bush Senior’s glance at his watch and Al Gore’s heavy sighs, represents a serious and highly unusual lapse. Alternatively, however, and potentially quite interestingly, it is possible that there was no way to prevent it. Bush may have a threshold beyond which he is unable to control himself. Given the kid-glove treatment he has always received from the media and heretofore from Democrats, we don’t really know if he is capable of melting down or going ballistic under the pressure of a sustained juxtaposition of his mantras against real facts about Iraq, deficits, healthcare and jobs, to name a few. I have long suspected that he is.
Were any votes swayed? It now appears so as Kerry has been shown to have pulled even in one major poll which is typically biased toward Republicans, and to be two points ahead in another. But again the future may look even more ominous for the Bush team if this pattern continues and Kerry begins to earn again his reputation as a closer. Most of the media still seem frightened and supportive of the President, but that is likely to diminish some if they begin to smell blood in the water. This is the main reason the Bush supporters never admit to fault. A hole in the dike could quickly turn into a flood.
Arguably this whole debate fiasco is Bush’s worst nightmare. It’s far more than simply ‘not his best forum’, but rather represents Toto’s proverbial pull on the curtain. His team has so far done an amazing marketing job at presenting his presidency as a success, despite massive factual evidence to the contrary. This has required a healthy dose of mythologizing, as well as factual distortion at proportions that would have made Richard Nixon blush red, then turn green with envy. Above all, it meant never being subjected to any sustained encounter with fact and contrary logical argument.
To this end, it helped considerably to have a compliant press, a fearful and weak Democratic Party in the throes of existential crisis, control of all three branches of government, and, best of all, the flag of 9/11 in which to tightly wrap the President. People grumbled that Bush has done less than half the number of press conferences of any modern President and that when he did them he often responded to handpicked questions by mouthing slogans, sometimes repeatedly, sometimes inanely. But he has nevertheless been able to brass it out so far, not least by intimidating critics. Those days may now be over, especially as facts on the ground render the White House’s rosy portrayal of Iraq, the economy, etc., as increasingly fantastical.
If what we saw was Bush unraveling in the debate, as opposed to his simply having an off night, things are likely to get even worse for him as the debates head into domestic turf. Bush’s already tedious sloganeering will become truly alienating to many voters if he keeps it up but if he is constitutionally incapable of anything deeper, he’ll have no choice but to keep it up. The factual record on most any of these issues is daunting for him and, cumulatively, devastating. Bush will have a far harder time playing the Big-daddy-protector-commander-in-chief-who-shouldn’t-be-questioned-during-wartime card when discussing jobs, healthcare and deficits. It’s hard to see how he could plausibly defend his job loss record by saying “it’s hard work,” or that Kerry is sending “mixed messages.” He will, of course, blame Clinton and 9/11, but if he tries to do that across four or five major issues, it will look seriously irresponsible.
Meanwhile, the vice-presidential debate is a real wild-card, though not necessarily hugely consequential. John Edwards sometimes appeared like the second coming of the Beatles during the primaries, but has been the Invisible Man since. Dick Cheney was sweetness and light during the 2000 debate, but has been Darth Vader’s meaner cousin since. That puts him in a very difficult spot, where he now has to thread the same needle Kerry just did. He definitely needs to bang up Edwards and Kerry, but he also has to avoid underscoring his enforcer reputation.
This column reports again in two weeks, which in this political context is about 16 lifetimes from now. Meanwhile, apart from any partisan preferences or even the question of the enormous stakes in this election for America and the world, the news of the last week is that we now have a race. Again.