Posted on 09/17/2004 8:39:56 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
IT looks like George W. Bush. But by god it's unpredictable. The US presidential election on November2 now involves so many independent variables that our Washington embassy won't yet predict the result, although picking election results is one of the key analytical tasks for Australian embassies.
The Howard Government dearly wants Bush to be re-elected. On the other hand, Mark Latham would love to start life as prime minister without all the scar tissue he has personally built up with the Bush administration, so he would prefer John Kerry.
Australian analysts are saying they don't expect radical changes in US foreign policy no matter who wins. On the great issue of the day, Kerry will not cut and run from Iraq, that's true.
But make no mistake. Kerry and Bush presidencies would be very different beasts. And they would have very different consequences for Australia.
Bush had a brilliant Republican convention in New York, which gave him a huge boost. This came after the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had punctured large holes in Kerry's grand narrative about his Vietnam War service.
Kerry was dumb to make his four months in Vietnam in the 1960s the central plank of his presidential bid, or at least the key to the persona he projects in the election.
The tactic has worked for him in the past, in Massachusetts elections. It helps Kerry, an aloof, stiff figure with a highly liberal Senate voting record, forge an emotional link with working-class voters. But in a presidential campaign, it invites intense scrutiny.
No one really claims that Kerry's brief Vietnam service was dishonourable, rather that he has lied about it since. The veterans pretty clearly proved, for example, that he was not in Cambodia when he said he was.
The deeper problem for Kerry is that he is running as both the anti-war candidate and the candidate of military service. Technically, that might be a paradox rather than a contradiction, but emotionally, it's confusing for voters.
Similarly on Iraq, which is Bush's greatest vulnerability, Kerry still says he would vote in favour of the war, as he did in the Senate, even knowing everything he knows today. Yet he's also running against the Iraq operation.
It makes him vulnerable to the devastating charge by Georgia Democrat senator Zell Miller, who gave the keynote speech at the Republican convention, that Kerry's approach to national security is a "yes, no, maybe bowl o' mush".
Bush is very much like Howard in that he can say "I'm a plain man and you may not like me, but you know just what I stand for".
Indeed, although the Texan evangelical, a reformed hard drinker, Ivy League-educated, former National Guard pilot, former oilman and son of a president, Bush is culturally a million miles from Howard but politically he is very similar.
A demonised hate figure for his country's Left, he is frequently underestimated by his opponents. Like Howard, Bush is a social conservative and tax-cutter who runs a big-spending government and has made his real mark, and staked his claim to history, on national security issues, specifically the war on terror and Iraq.
Bush, Britain's Tony Blair and Howard have become close as a result of the Iraq war. Each sees the others' electoral fate as a harbinger of his own.
Latham should take solace from the fact that it's not only him that no one in the Bush White House wanted to see. Britain's Conservative Opposition leader Michael Howard was told in no uncertain terms to keep away from the Republican convention and that Bush had no interest in seeing him. Instead, Bush lavished praise on Howard and Blair in New York.
But although Bush is ahead at the moment, two obvious points of derailment present themselves: Iraq and the presidential debates.
The voting patterns in this election are likely to be similar to those in 2000. Of the four most populous states two - New York and California - will go to Kerry, while two - Texas and Florida - will go to Bush. Bush will win all of the south and most of the Rocky Mountain states. Kerry will win most of the northeast and the Pacific coast. The midwest will be a fierce battleground but Bush will probably win enough to get over the line.
It was fascinating watching the Republican convention to see the speakers reaching out to the target demographics - John McCain and Rudy Giuliani for the swing voters and independents, Laura Bush for the soccer mums, Arnold Schwarzenegger for the immigrants, Miller for the south. It was brilliantly conceived and staged.
Iraq looms as Bush's biggest danger. There is no doubt that al-Qa'ida and the associated terrorist groups want Bush to lose. He is their fiercest enemy. They are probably smart enough to know that a terrorist strike in the US would likely ensure a Bush landslide, although if it could be sheeted home to government negligence, it could harm Bush.
But increased attacks in Iraq hurt Bush. Even though Kerry's endlessly shifting position on Iraq looks weak and confused, if the impression gains traction that Iraq is an absolute mess, a nightmare, unsalvageable, then the US public could well turn against Bush over that issue. This is the so-called Tet offensive effect. In 1968, the Vietcong launched an offensive all over South Vietnam. Militarily it was a disaster for the Vietcong, leading to their effective end as a military force. But the sheer extent and bloodiness of the offensive convinced US elite opinion that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. It did a lot to destroy the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.
The North Vietnamese became extremely sophisticated in their manipulation of military symbols to influence the US electoral cycle. The evidence is that al-Qa'ida is similarly sophisticated.
As this week's leaked US National Intelligence Estimate makes clear, the situation in Iraq is going to be tenuous at best for months to come, with the elections in January the next pivotal moment. For all the travails of Iraq, Bush would be a much better president, for Australia, for the US and the globe, than Kerry. Australia today has a closeness to, and influence with, the Bush administration that is unique in the past 60 years.
But more than that, for all his faults, Bush has shown he's willing to fight the war on terror. That remains the task that history has allotted him.
Surprisingly pro-Bush article from the Aussies.
I find this conclusion highly suspect.
I wouldn't count on that.
Kerry will just turn it over to the U.N. and they'll cut and run.
Now that's a sensible conclusion. The UN will also skim off some nice profit from Iraq's oil.
Being of no spine and courage, it is almost a certainty that KERRY would withdraw from Iraq.
Politcally he can claim that he got us out of Iraq.
When Civil War breaks there or general anarchy, he can claim that he saw it coming and saved American lives and that we should have never been there in the first place. Its win/win for him, politically, plus he has no worries that the continued presence in Iraq would hurt him.
Scary to imagine him as President. You can bank on it. IMHO
Depending on what Day Kerry is speaking, it is hard to say if that is true.
Even if Kerry were firmly committed to seeing the Iraq situation through to victory, his position would be like George McClellan's as the Democratic candidate in 1864. McClellan was personally in favor of winning the war, but large elements in his party were for peace (on terms allowing the South to remain independent). Lincoln was convinced that if McClellan won, the war would be lost.
The other resemblance between the two is that McClellan was intensely contemptuous of his commander-in-chief and let everyone know it.
Even if Kerry were firmly committed to seeing the Iraq situation through to victory, his position would be like George McClellan's as the Democratic candidate in 1864. McClellan was personally in favor of winning the war, but large elements in his party were for peace (on terms allowing the South to remain independent). Lincoln was convinced that if McClellan won, the war would be lost.
The other resemblance between the two is that McClellan was intensely contemptuous of his commander-in-chief and let everyone know it.
[sarcasm]All this discussion of which states would go for which candidate gave me an idea.
Let's tell each Democratic Senate candidate that they have to show they have 60 % of their state's votes before the votes they receive even begin to count toward Senate seats.[/sarcasm]
After all, the 60% rule has been embraced by the Democrats in the Senate.
Perhaps not.
More Americans might see the value of the Iraq War when they learn that funds from the UN Oil for Food program went to
Check the source. This ain't from the Sydney Morning Herald, the "down under" version of the NYSlimes.
No, Kerry would not cut and run from Iraq, he would never do anything that overt or decisive. What he and his Secretary of State (Ramsey Clark?) would do is find some way to slink out of the problem in the middle of the night, deserting and sabotaging our allies in the process. He would also arrange it so that he could blame his designated blamees for it - anybody but himself.
Does a country like Australia do its own polling in the United States? If not, how would an embassy in the U.S. be any better placed to predict the outcome of the election than would Howard's staff using the internet from Canberra?
Good comparisons, they fit. Like Bush, Lincoln never let himself get sucked into a war of words with McLellan.
I agree. The smart voters will vote for Bush, and the dumb voters will vote for his Democratic opponent.
<< .... Kerry will not cut and run from Iraq .... >>
That has to be taken as what it is: Good ol' Socialist-Internationalist-inspired Aussie media bull$h*t!
The one absolute consistency in the detritus that is the record of John "Effin'" Kerry's life to date is that when given a choice he has always taken the un-and-anti-American path.
And his record of cutting and running [Just as does his flipping and flopping and flimming and flamming] defines him.
<< [United States of America's President and Armed-Forces Commander-In-Chief, George Walker] Bush would be a much better president, for Australia, for the US and the globe .... Australia today has a closeness to, and influence with, the Bush Administration that is unique in the past 60 years. >>
Australia always was and is America's First and Best Ally.
President Bush is just the first President for a while with both the intelligence and the education to know it -- and to love it.
God bless him.
And Prime Minister Howard.
BUMPping
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