Posted on 12/30/2004 11:25:45 AM PST by PDR
The year in politics 2004
By Peter Roff
UPI Senior Political Analyst
Published 12/30/2004 12:04 PM
WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Most of the major political events for 2004 were connected to the presidential campaign. In that sense, therefore, the single biggest story is the re-election of U.S. President George W. Bush.
That story, however, has many component parts worthy of specific mention -- beginning with the Democrats' presidential primaries.
The first big story was the unexpected rise of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean -- and his just as spectacular downfall.
Running as the candidate of the "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," Dean harnessed the Internet to recruit thousands of volunteers and raise millions of dollars and, in the process, establish himself as a force to be reckoned with. With a platform based primarily on an unambiguous opposition to the war in Iraq, Dean quickly embarked on what appeared to be an unstoppable march to the party's nomination.
Then the roof fell in.
Dean was not prepared for the Iowa caucuses. His campaign flooded the state with volunteers who knew how to wave signs but who were not well-versed in the traditions of "the first in the nation" nominating event. Dean finished third and, ending a speech at a post-caucus rally with a sound that shall forever after be known as "The Scream," finished his campaign as well.
The second big story, one that also touched the Dean campaign, was the rise of the Internet itself as a useful political tool.
The 'Net propelled Dean to prominence. It, really for the first time, acted as a gateway for the financial contributions of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens. It was the primary organizing tool for what turned out to be the almost phantom campaign of retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who never seemed quite able to match the expectations set by the considerable amount of Internet chatter that surrounded his campaign. Even the Bush re-election campaign found a way to harness the Internet, using it to recruit and communicate with 1.4 million volunteers and 7.5 million e-activists, many of whom the campaign believes forwarded the messages to friends and family.
The Internet also played a significant role in advancing what was the campaign's major media story: in a word, "Vietnam."
Anyone who believed the social divisions of the 1960s were over was in for a rude awakening after if became clear that Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., a decorated war hero and anti-war leader, would actually win his party's nomination.
The Kerry campaign was based largely on the senator's record of service established during his little more than four months' service in Southeast Asia, enshrined in a hagiographic biography, "Tour of Duty," by historian Douglas Brinkley.
The Vietnam-centered Kerry campaign stood in stark contrast to Bush's Texas Air National Guard service, which was widely presented as a draft-dodge -- though most never used the explicit phrase.
Searching for weakness, the establishment media revisited the issues of Bush's Guard service again and again, seeking to confirm the long-held belief that strings were pulled to win a slot in the elite unit for Bush and that he had failed to complete the terms of his service.
Though no conclusive evidence was developed to show Bush shirked his responsibilities to the Guard, the issue gave activists using the Internet an opening to discuss Kerry's activities as an anti-war activist at length -- particularly his speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in which he accused his former comrades in arms of being, in essence, war criminals and his relationship to an effort to document those so-called atrocities known as "The Winter Solider Project," later exposed as a fraud.
The debate gave rise to what may have been the single biggest event of the campaign: the advent of the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group of Kerry contemporaries from Vietnam that organized to carry a message that the Democratic presidential nominee's war record did not match up to their recollection of events.
The story began, as was the case with many of the events that captivated the U.S. electorate during the campaign, on the Internet. The establishment media showed considerable reluctance to even address the charges being lobbed by the Swift boat vets -- until they started to do political damage to Kerry's efforts to win the White House.
The "Swifties," as they came to be known, utilized the Internet and talk radio to get their message out -- as well as a book written by longtime Kerry foe John O'Neill -- until they reached enough critical mass to put a television ad on the air. That ad, which initially aired in just a few small markets, ended up being rebroadcast for free on the major television networks as The New York Times and other organs of the establishment tried to knock the story down. Their efforts only served to raise the Swifties' profile and carried their message -- whether it was entirely accurate or not -- forward.
As bizarre as the evolution of the Swift boat veterans' campaign was the unwillingness of the Kerry campaign to address the issues it raised -- other than to accuse the group of being a front for the Bush campaign -- until it effectively took the bloom off the rose of Kerry's military service. This, coupled with the Democrats' decision to focus the lion's share of their attacks on Bush on his strengths -- national security and the war on terror -- instead of on the general state of the economy and the loss of jobs during the Bush presidency, effectively doomed the Kerry campaign to fighting on Bush's terms on a field the Republicans had laid out.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were part of a larger phenomenon standing as another of the major events in U.S. politics for 2004: the rise of the so-called 527s.
Named for the section of the U.S. Internal Revenue code under which they are established, the 527 non-party political committees arose in reaction to the new regime for campaign finance established in the McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan bipartisan campaign-reform act signed into law by Bush.
These groups acted as a dumping ground for millions in campaign cash that could no longer be given to the party committees or to individual campaigns. The money was used to run ads, to identify, register and organize voters and to turn them out on Election Day.
Originally considered the province of the left, the net effect of the groups appears to have been a wash. Americans Coming Together, the MoveOn.org voter fund and the other left-leaning groups that were constructed to bring about the defeat of an incumbent president were eventually matched -- in impact if not in dollars raised or ads run -- by right-leaning groups like the Swifties and Let Freedom Ring.
Outside the presidential campaign, the biggest story of the year is likely the defeat of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., in his bid for a fourth term. Daschle, who used the Senate filibuster to block several Bush initiatives like the national energy policy as well as a handful of Bush judicial nominees, is the first party leader in the Senate to be defeated in a bid for re-election since Illinois' Scott Lukas in the 1950s.
Alongside Daschle's defeat was the GOP victory in five of the six open U.S. Senate seat contests in November. The GOP picked up seats in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and, for the first time, Louisiana while losing the seat it held in Colorado, where the collapse of the Republicans and the takeover of the Colorado Legislature by the Democrats for the first time since the 1970s is yet another of the year's major political developments.
Overall, the election gave further evidence of a pro-GOP realignment across the United States. The GOP, thanks to the redrawing of the Texas congressional district map, picked up seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, picked up two additional governorships and remained slightly ahead of the Democrats in the number of state legislative seats held.
In terms of issues, the big story for the year was the passage on Election Day of 11 ballot measures prohibiting the establishment of same-sex marriage. Spawned by a decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, the idea that homosexuals should be allowed to marry in the same manner as heterosexual couples galvanized what in Richard Nixon's day would have been called "The Silent Majority," driving them to the polls in key states like Ohio in defense of one of the culture's most enduring institutions.
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(Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com.)
Actually a pretty fair piece. I don't see much I can argue with. This is pretty accurate for an UPI story.
yah, not too bad.
RatherGate??
media story - not political story
Point taken. However, if the ploy had been successful in derailing W's campaign, it would have been politically huge (hugh?)
probably true
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