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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
The Democratic front-runner has ignited a blaze of Bush hatred. But will it burn up the party's chances in 2004?
Nov 14, 2003 | Buoyed by the endorsements of the two largest unions in the AFL-CIO, Howard Dean seems likely to ride the wave of rank-and-file Democrats' anger at George W. Bush all the way to the party's presidential nomination.
Meanwhile Bush's handlers have devised a strategy designed to defeat Dean or any other hard-hitting opponent: benefit from a backlash against what they claim are extreme attacks against a sitting president.
Like a prizefighter hitching his trunks high above his waistline so that he can claim his opponent keeps hitting him below the belt, Bush's cornermen are already trying to get the Democrats disqualified as hateful partisans, even before he and his as-yet-unchosen challenger start squaring off.
The message that the Democrats are crazed with anger at Bush is reverberating through the Republican echo chamber. In a recent memo to party leaders, Republican national chairman Ed Gillespie attacked the Democrats as the party of "protests, pessimism and political hate speech."
Sounding a similar note in a fundraising appeal this month, Vice President Dick Cheney warned Republican donors to expect "fiery rhetoric" from the Democratic presidential contenders, including attacks on Bush's "character, his veracity, even the president's leadership of the war on terrorism."
Last month, in response to a razzing by a heckler, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush called Dean the candidate for "hot, angry people that aren't rational and are screaming and hollering." Over the summer, the Weekly Standard did a cover story about Bush hatred, titled "The Democrats Go Off the Cliff," while conservative columnists from the New York Times' David Brooks to the Washington Times' David Limbaugh warned that the Democrats are too nasty when it comes to Bush.
All this suggests that Bush's backers are reading the same talking points: The president is a man of moderation beset by hateful partisans.
This strategy serves four goals: portraying Bush as the unifying leader that he could have become after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Diverting attention from his own high-risk policies. Painting his eventual opponent -- especially if it's Dean -- as the real extremist and a hothead as well. And blaming Bush's lack of legislative accomplishments on the Democrats' refusal to work with a president they despise.
It's a shrewd strategy, worthy of White House political mastermind Karl Rove. And don't say Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush and Ed Gillespie haven't warned you.
But if the Republicans are tipping their hands, are the Democrats playing into their hands? Is Bush counting on driving the Democrats crazy, making them so angry that they're following his game plan?
Dean won Democrats' hearts, their dollars and, most likely, their votes, by becoming the first contender to take the gloves off against Bush. He kept saying: "The only way to beat this president is to go right after him." Impressed by the former Vermont governor's progress from footnote to favorite, the other contenders have been upping the rhetorical ante with red-hot rhetoric of their own.
The usually mild-mannered Midwesterner Dick Gephardt keeps calling Bush "a miserable failure." The sweet-talking Southerner John Edwards brands Bush "a phony." Combat veteran John Kerry calls for "regime change" here in the United States. Nice guy Joe Lieberman maintains a Web site about Bush's lack of integrity. The Rev. Al Sharpton compares Bush to a "gang leader," and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun have offered epithets of their own. Only retired Gen. Wesley Clark has held his rhetorical fire against the commander in chief.
If any of the contenders worries about a backlash from all this Bush bashing, only one has said so publicly. In an interview this week with editors and reporters of the Washington Post, Edwards said: "It's true that you can get Democratic activists on their feet cheering much more quickly bashing Bush than any other way. But, remember, we're going through a process here that people are looking for a president. They're not looking for someone who can just beat up George Bush."
As long as the nomination remains undecided, all the contenders, including Edwards, will keep trying to "get Democrats on their feet cheering." Party activists have been applauding attacks on Bush and screaming for more. "Bush gets Democratic base voters very angry -- more even than Reagan," declares Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. That's because Bush ran as a moderate "compassionate conservative," won a disputed election, and proceeded to govern as a confrontational conservative, with three consecutive top-bracket tax cuts and a new doctrine of preemptive war. Also, if the Democrats are an uneasy coalition of the underpaid working class and the overpaid meritocracy, Bush seems genetically engineered to offend them all: a president's son who, by his own admission, stumbled through life until age 40, after which he acquired a baseball team, a governorship, the presidency, and an aura of unearned entitlement.
With nine contenders competing for the favor of any angry party membership in a primary season that's starting sooner and probably ending earlier than ever before, Bush bashing is smart politics. But is it the ticket to beating a sitting president who is most comfortable casting himself as an ordinary guy beset by overly aggressive adversaries, from Texas Gov. Ann Richards, who called him "Shrub" in 1994, to Vice President Al Gore, who hovered over him during their debates in 2000?
