THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE consists of two campaigns. One concerns who would be the better commander in chief in the war on terrorism. President Bush, bolstered by speech after speech at the Republican convention (including his own), is handily winning that race. The other, the campaign John Kerry prefers, is about jobs and health care and education. With the stronger job numbers for August released the day after the convention, Bush is holding his own in that campaign too. So there’s no escaping the fact: The race really is Bush’s to win, perhaps comfortably.
Kerry won’t have an easy time making up ground he lost since the Democratic convention in late July. It’s clear now his theory of the campaign was wrong. A majority of Americans haven’t basically decided against giving Bush a second term. Thus it’s not enough for Kerry to demonstrate simply that he’s competent to be president. The bar isn’t that low. Kerry will have to be far more appealing than he’s ever been to scoot past Bush. Or the president will have to screw up badly. Both are possible, especially the latter.
Flailing and hiding aren’t the answers for Kerry. He responded to the Republican convention with wild and inaccurate charges. Vice President Cheney, he said, had called him unfit for office. Not true. His patriotism had been questioned. Again, not true. Bush, Kerry said, was “unfit to lead this nation” because, among other reasons, he lets 45 million Americans go without health care. Not even close. It’s health insurance the 45 million lack, and for a sizable majority of them it’s a temporary or voluntary experience. Health care is guaranteed by law. Hospitals can’t turn patients away. Hiding? Kerry refuses to answer questions about his Vietnam, antiwar, or Senate records, hoping those issues will fade. And they might, but Kerry is taking a big risk in assuming so. Addressing the issues in a press conference with sympathetic reporters, of which there are many, might work better.
A feared outcome for the Republican convention was that it would stop the pro-Bush momentum created by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. That didn’t happen. Instead, the speeches by Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Zell Miller, Cheney, and Bush built on that momentum. Whose speech got the more favorable reaction? Bush’s. Really. At 17 focus groups organized by Democratic consultant Bob Beckel in battleground states, voters were mesmerized by Bush, especially when he talked about the war on terror. At an MSNBC focus group in Cincinnati run by pollster Frank Luntz, 13 of 21 undecided voters jumped to Bush after hearing his speech.
The contrast between the Republican and Democratic conventions was striking, particularly on the matter of authenticity. At the 2000 Republican convention, the stage was filled with minorities, as if they constituted a huge bloc in the Republican party. That was fake. This year’s convention, with moderate-to-conservative speakers who focused on Bush as a wartime president, was more authentic. The Democratic convention, obsessed with the military, Vietnam, and the flag, didn’t ring true.
On domestic policy, Bush’s convention speech and the 50-page “Agenda for America” handed out afterwards (“A Plan For A Safer World And A More Hopeful America”) were important for three reasons. One, Bush emerged as a big government conservative in full flower. Two, he called for so many significant reforms (the tax code, Social Security, lawsuits, health care) that he is indeed the reform candidate in the presidential race. Three, Bush is also the change candidate. Kerry, by comparison, is a reactionary liberal.
As a big government conservative, Bush wants to use the federal government with activist zeal for conservative ends–and for a lot more. Libertarians will gag when they read the Bush agenda booklet. The words that appear most often in it are “increase” and “expand.” Bush proposes to spend a fresh $1 billion on kids’ health care and whatever it takes “to meet his new goal of creating 7 million new, affordable homes in 10 years.” And he will “support the farm bill.” There’s no hint of shrinking the size of government.
The reforms Bush advocates make up the unfinished conservative agenda. He’s endorsed many of them before, but this time Bush would have you believe he’s serious. Perhaps he is. The boldest part is individual investment accounts funded by payroll taxes. The newest and most sweeping is “a tax credit for low-income families and individuals to purchase health insurance,” that is, of a special kind: catastrophic health insurance coupled with health savings accounts to pay for doctor’s visits. If passed, it could be broadened to cover all individuals and families, ending the costly practice of third-party payers for health care.
Reform equals change. In politics, you’re better off as the champion of sensible change than as a standpatter. It leads to controversy, however. Bush is bound to be attacked for trying to reform Social Security. Though he insists benefits will stay the same for current or soon-to-be beneficiaries, he’ll be criticized for jeopardizing the entire Social Security system. And Kerry may make headway with this among the elderly. Gore did in 2000, when Bush also talked of reforming Social Security. But what’s the use of a second term if the candidate isn’t going to take some risks? No change, no gain.
There’s actually a third campaign, the barely mentioned values campaign. Bush made fun of Kerry for dubbing himself the candidate of “conservative values.” But Bush himself soft-pedals the biggest values issue of 2004: gay marriage. He speaks in code, saying he’d protect traditional marriage, never that he’s for banning gay marriage. Maybe this is clear enough for voters. When the president briefly touched on preserving old-fashioned heterosexual marriage, the convention delegates went wild–still another good sign for Bush.
Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard.
