There’s a joke that I like that goes like this. A pessimist says that the glass is half empty. An optimist says that the glass is half full. An engineer says that the glass is too big.
I’m not enough of an optimist to be a politician. I guess I’m just a “half empty” kind of guy. Politicians seem to me to be incurable optimists.
You have to be optimistic to believe that you can win whatever the odds. You have to be optimistic to believe that you and your ideas are better than the other guy and his ideas. And you’ve got to project this optimism to the voters. Haven’t the last five or so presidential elections been won by the most optimistic, upbeat candidate? Certainly Mr. Clinton was more optimistic and upbeat than either Bob Dole or George H. W. Bush. And who can forget “Morning in America”?
That’s why I think that Don Sensing is right on the money when he makes this point:
Many of Kerry’s criticisms end with him declaring, “I can do better!” without explaining what he would do that would be better. About Iraq, for example, Kerry has repeatedly said, “I know what it takes” to get the job done there. But he never says what it would take, and when he (rarely) has explained what “the job” is in Iraq, his description is practically indistiguishable from the president’s. So why should voters make a switch?
Take for example his criticism of Bush about North Korea’s potential for gaining atomic weapon. When asked,
… about how he would handle the threat of a North Korean nuclear test if he became president, Kerry replied that the issue would likely have to be taken to the United Nations Security Council.
“Hypothetical questions are not real,” he said …
. . . and then Kerry simply accused Bush of having an “ideologically driven” approach to the problem.
Sorry, but this answer does not peg my Kerry Confidence Meter. “Go to the UN” is no answer at all. And ducking answering further because the question is “hypothetical” really disqualifies Kerry as a candidate, to say nothing of as president. All questions asked of a candidate are hypothetical, are they not? And an enormous amount of the issues a president has to deal with in matters of security are contingencies, which are definitionally hypothetical. Struggling through ambuguity and hypotheses is any president’s lot. Kerry just admitted he doesn’t want to deal with it.
Like it or not we’re in a time of national crisis more serious than at any other time in more than fifty years. And Mr. Kerry is asking us to replace the Administration in the middle of this crisis. It’s not totally unprecedented. When Dwight Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson in 1952 the Democrats had held the White House for twenty years and we were in the middle of a war in Korea.
But there are some significant differences between Eisenhower’s campaign and John Kerry’s. Although Eisenhower also ran on his military record, he had only retired from the service in 1952 with the rank of General of the Army after having led the Allied forces as one of the most successful military commanders in history. Look at his list of decorations. It wasn’t his activities in the First World War that got him elected. How successful do you think his presidential campaign would have been if he’d retired from the Army as a lieutenant in 1918?
And Eisenhower’s campaign was enormously optimistic and upbeat. His campaign slogan wasn’t “Anybody But Adlai”. In fact, he scarcely mentioned his opponent at all. No his campaign slogan was the infectious “I Like Ike”. He ran as the non-politician politician. Can you imagine “I Care for Kerry”? Or “John Kerry, the Happy Warrior”? Can you imagine what the Kerry campaign would be like if he didn’t mention the Bush Administration? You’re right. It would be the Democratic National Convention (with the exception of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama): phlegmatic and uninteresting.
I can only conjecture that the Kerry campaign strategy is to hope that events not under either Mr. Kerry’s nor Mr. Bush’s control intervene and propel Mr. Kerry into the presidency. Hope that the economy tanks. And let’s be honest a 5.4% unemployment will not propel Mr. Kerry into the White House. Or hope for a complete uprising of the Iraqis rather than the incidental (though widespread) resistance we’ve been seeing.
But this is pessimism and the American electorate have not historically voted for pessimists.
The current strategy is not winning for Mr. Kerry. He should take Mr. Clinton’s advice and drop Viet Nam. Drop the subject entirely. And that goes for his surrogates and supporters as well. Stop running against Bush. Give us good reasons for voting for John Kerry.
UPDATE: Linked to Beltway Traffic Jam.
Dave,
I wish the Kerry campaign would take your advice. It would be great to have a credible alternative. “I can do the same thing better in foreign policy,” accompanied by traditional Democratic calls to expand entitlements, is not a compelling program for America’s future.
Here’s a thought: Try running from the right in foreign policy as a militant Jacksonian Democrat. Declare that militant Islam and its state supporters cannot be reformed, only destroyed. Ask for declarations of war against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. State that N. Korea will be next if it does not give up its nuclear weapons program and reform its totalitarian system. Demand a quadrupling of the active-duty military to six million troops. Demand the destruction of Saudi Arabia and the annexation of its oil and gas producing regions to the United States. Condemn the Bush Administration as a bunch of naive, girly-men who don’t understand the need for ruthlessness in war and are not committed to total victory. Cite the failure to crush the Islamic militants in Fallujah, Najaf, Tikrit, Ramadi, and Sadr City (Baghdad) as evidence of this. Declare that we are fighting dishonorable enemies who habitually violate the Western warfighting code and that we must not handicap our military with out-dated rules of engagement or conduct. Or, restated for the campaign trail, “These savages want a dirty war, and we’re going to give them a belly-ful of dirty war.”
Of course, we won’t hear policies or statements like this from the Democratic Party’s leadership. Most of the Democratic Party’s leadership are simply incapable of thinking these thoughts, let alone campaigning with them. Sen. Lieberman might support this. Sen. Graham of Florida could run on this platform. Sen. Zell Miller could definitely run on this platform. Of course, Zell is retiring and Graham failed to win any primaries.
But that doesn’t mean there is not a large potential constituency in the Democratic Party, and the country as a whole, for this message. I had lunch last week with my office manager and her boyfriend. Both of them are from blue collar backgrounds and are strongly pro-union and pro-Democrat. He is a union plumber. Here is what they said about Iraq:
She — I’m so glad none of my relatives are over there. It was good that we got rid of Saddam, but now our guys just ride around and get shot.
He — Yeah, they always get hit with these roadside bombs. When they do fight, they always have to stop fighting before they win, like in that Najaf city with that Sadr guy.
She — Yeah, if they won’t let our guys win, we ought to leave.
“If they won’t let our guys win, we ought to leave.” The American middle and working classes will support almost any war as long as they believe it is in the nation’s interest AND it is waged at high intensity with the goal of victory. What they will not support for long is a half-hearted effort that generates casualties for no apparent gain and is not clearly attempting to win. The Bush Administration has given John Kerry a huge opportunity to attack its foreign and military policies from the right. If only Kerry and his advisors had the wit to grasp it…………
Regards,
Jim
She — Yeah, if they won’t let our guys win, we ought to leave.
That’s a very Jacksonian reaction.
I’ve been saying for some time that the Kerry campaign should be out in front of Bush on the war. It wouldn’t be difficult to do. How many votes would he lose for it? Would they flee to Nader?
My conjecture is that Kerry’s advisers are more dove-ish than he is. And that’s what worries me about a future Kerry Administration.
Dave,
It was a light bulb moment for me when she said that. And then her boyfriend enthusiastically agreed with her. It was anecdotal evidence that Jacksonians are part of the base of the Democratic Party today, not just in the pre-Vietnam past.
Walter Russell Meade wasn’t just theorizing or describing ancient history when he wrote Special Providence.
Of course, this begs the question:
Why has the Bush Administration been so tentative in its approach to combat and so unwilling to mobilize overwhelming force against our enemies?
What do you think?
Regards,
Jim
My greatest disappointment with the Bush Administration has been in its inability or unwillingness to mobilize the country to support even the activities that are obviously necessary to defend the country. My greatest fear about that inability or unwillingness if the Mr. Bush has exactly the same problems as Lyndon Johnson had: he’s too worried about winning the next election and not worried enough about doing the right thing.