“It’s good to be king,” said Mel Brooks, the well-known pundit. But if you’re president and you’re running for re-election, it’s better to be commander in chief: it’s tough for your enemies to wage a frontal attack. Though Bush aides would never admit it, they informally launched their end of the 2004 campaign last week by sending the boss to ground zero–Ohio–to test-drive themes he is likely to use from now until Election Day. He will continue to push for tax cuts–rebranded as a “jobs and growth package”–while his allies and underlings narrowcast to the GOP base on issues such as judgeships, abortion and traditional family values.
Admirers of subtlety should look elsewhere. The Bush playbook, written by political aide Karl Rove, could be titled “In –Your Face and Turn Out the Base.” An operative who made his money in direct-mail solicitation, Rove was reared in a world of discrete appeals to carefully identified true believers. But it’s essential to keep the discrete discreet; you don’t want to give the other side political ammunition. GOP Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania–a hard-edged conservative whom Rove has been grooming to succeed Sen. Bill Frist as majority leader–broke the rule last week. In an all-too-freewheeling interview with the AP, Santorum said he considered gay sex immoral–though not as heinous as “man on child” or “man on dog” sex. If the Supreme Court creates a zone of privacy to protect gay sex, he said, the legal precedent is tantamount to protecting “bigamy, polygamy and incest.”
Bush and Rove yearn to win Penn-sylvania–their political El Dorado–but Santorum’s unadulterated traditionalism is poison in the Philadelphia suburbs. As a result, entertainment-starved reporters in the White House were able to enjoy three days of tap dancing by Ari Fleischer, the deadpanning press secretary. On day one he said that he hadn’t discussed the issue with the boss. On day two he said that Bush doesn’t like to comment on Supreme Court cases–except that he’d just done so on affirmative action. On day three, after controversy had quieted, Fleischer said that Bush had expressed confidence in Santorum and that the president believes the senator “has a record of being inclusive.” As for Bush, he remains a supporter of the Texas anti-sodomy law that is under review by the high court.
Real war works better politically than the culture wars, so Rove & Co. will be stressing the president’s campaign against terror and hoping that swing voters give Bush a pass on intolerant lieutenants. The entire 2004 GOP game is geared toward national security. The Republicans will hold their New York convention only days before the anniversary of 9-11. The timing plays to the president’s advantage, at least if the war news remains good. “Under those circumstances he could be very hard to beat,” says Rep. Dick Gephardt. “I think I can do it, but none of us should assume it’ll be easy.”
When not tending to the base–and the risks of tending to the base–Rove is sending laser-guided munitions in the direction of Democratic contenders. The targets are easily identified and, perhaps, all too inviting. When Gephardt stole a march on the rest of the field by proposing a sweeping new tax credit for health insurance (and abolition of the 2001 Bush tax cuts to pay for it), the White House’s allies unloaded JDAMs, but so did Democratic rivals, who said the plan unfortunately was reminiscent of the massive “Hillary Health Care” fiasco of 1994.
As for Kerry, he was dealing with nothing more or less than the anonymous accusation by a GOP strategist, whispered conspiratorially to The New York Times, that the senator (whose lineage is Jewish, Austrian, English and Scottish) “looks French.” A rather somber sort, Kerry at first said that the line was the starting gun in “a campaign of personal destruction” aimed at him. By the time he arrived in New Hampshire, he had calmed down. “That beret doesn’t fit!” he declared with a laugh. But he said he retained the right to use his family’s wealth–he’s married to ketchup heiress Teresa Heinz Kerry–to fight what is expected to be a $200 million Bush barrage before Labor Day 2004. “I know the kind of campaign they are going to run,” he said, “and I am prepared to fight back.” War records may even be part of it. Author Douglas Brinkley is writing an authorized biography of Kerry’s war years, which included commanding a patrol boat in the Mekong Delta. Bush’s own Vietnam-era record consists of flying planes in the National Guard in Houston. But that was then. Now he runs the whole show, and the commander in chief is only too happy to say so.
