Blog For Arizona

The Coming Battle for the Rhetorical Heights

The controversy over Bush's first TV ad in Iowa illustrates an important point for the coming general election; security is a dicey issue for Dems, even if they are right. The eventual Democratic candidate will have to appeal to swing voters and potential cross-over voters in order to win, even though such uncommitted voters are less numerous than in prior elections. What messages will succeed in appealing to those voters and get them to go out and vote the right way? Here is my completely gratuitous advice to all the Presidential candidates and the DNC on the subject.

Bush has become the GOP. They are wedded so completely to his agenda and so invested in his credibility that it would be a body blow to the entire party for him to be defeated in '04. Defeating Bush is mandatory. The GOP's margins in Congress will balloon obscenely if Bush is not put down.

Bush is apparently quite content to attempt to scare voters into voting for him. It's a actually a strong tactic based on an innate understanding of conservative psychological patterns. Can the Dems succeed simply by stating that they have a better approach to Homeland Security and National Defense and a more responsible Economic policy? In a word, no.

Many swing and cross-over voters are possessed of an innate conservatism that demands certainty, and black and white solutions. Saying to them, "Our nuanced approach using police techniques and intelligence gathering, combined with a mix of hard and soft power projection in close cooperation with traditional allies and non-radicalized Muslim states and factions while respecting human rights and carefully avoiding trampling the civil rights of anyone, is far superior to GWB's policy of simply trying to kill them all," is not going to work well. Many like the idea of just killing them all and "letting Allah sort 'em out," as the colorful expression goes.

What is needed is what Dean has been doing. Dems must attack Bush as weak on Homeland Defense, failing to provide for America's real anti-terror needs, and disastrously misguided in taking us to Iraq when the real threat was elsewhere. Conservative voters will respond to Bush being wrong, weak, and misguided; less will respond to a more nuanced, more appropriate policy proposal. Save that for the base. The Dem's argument must be that the terrorist body count is too low; that Bush has left us vulnerable to attack; that Bush has foolishly put our resources where the terrorists aren't; and that Dems will be more effective, more intelligent, more merciless, and spend resources more wisely. This is, of course, a very difficult argument for any candidate who voted for the Iraq war to make.

GOP counter-attacks must also be dealt with. Bush has already tried to portray the Dems as traitors for questioning his policies. Dems must place a rhetorical firebreak between Iraq and terrorism. They must consistently stay on message that there was no terrorism in, or from, Iraq before Bush's war, and that Bush's war created what terrorism is there. The war is a terrorism breeder, not a prophylactic. The President admitted this when he conceded that there were no ties between the Ba'ath regime and Al Qaida; this needs to be amplified over and over, and over again. Nor is the war drawing terrorists out into the open; it is quietly hatching new terrorists every day, and giving global terrorists new opportunities within the vacuum of effective control that is post-war Iraq. The resentment and hatred toward Americans the occupation creates will lead to innocent American deaths in the future. The occupation is costing around 1000 Iraqi lives per week, and each dead Iraqi has friends and relatives who may seek revenge.

Finally, Dems should take a cue from Bush; never mention Saddam Hussein, only refer to Ba'athists, and mention bin Laden at every opportunity. Minimizing the bird near to hand and emphasizing the one in the bush is the Dems best weapon against Bush's slights to their patriotism. Thus whenever Bush attacks using the rhetorical line of the GOP's Iowa ad, the retort should not be outrage over the attack being misleading, it should be scorn. Outrage is weak and womanly, scorn is strong and virile. Something like: "So, a few Ba'athists have 160,000 of our troops tied up with grenade launchers while North Korea develops the Bomb? Some leadership! Bush admited that Iraq and Al Qaida have nothing to do with each other. So what are we doing in Iraq since we aren't fighting terrorists? Chasing a few Ba'athists around the desert, that's what. And where the hell is bin Laden? Two years ago Bush said, "Dead or Alive!" Now he doesn't even dare to utter his name! bin Laden killed 3000 of our people! What has Bush done about it? Invaded the wrong country, that's what. Bush is a miserable failure and a traitor to the victims of 9/11 and their families."

At all costs, the Dems must push forward investigation of 9/11 intel failures and demand an explanation of the relationship between Bush and the bin Ladens. Any culpability on Bush's part for 9/11 will infuriate the public and further discredit Bush's exploitation of the tragedy for political purposes. This issue needs to be on the talking points of every Dem in the country every day, "Bush exploits the tragic deaths of the 9/11 victims for political gain," should be quoted somewhere every day. If something breaks in the 9/11 investigation, the GOP may even have to reschedule or move their Convention because of the backlash.

Grassroots protestors should be encouraged to make the New York GOP convention every bit as polarizing and divisive as the Chicago Convention of 1968. If possible, the GOP needs to be motivated to use the same techniques in New York 2004 as they used at the recent Florida FTAA meeting. If they are stupid enough to use from Iraq to do it, all the better. Democratic candidates need to speak out on this misuse of funds, the troubling police techniques, and coordination of anti-protest policy through the FBI now. If they don't get on record early and harshly, they could be seen as acquiescing in the persecution of political protest and lose their moral authority on the topic later; they'll be seen as trying to squeeze some political mileage out of the issue, not as taking a principled stand in favor of civil rights.

Dems also face a daunting task in convincing swing voters that Bush is a failure at managing the economy. Telling swing voters that Bush's tax cuts favored the rich and that Bush fiddled while Rome suffered through a recession will not be enough. Many think that taxes are too high, and, almost unfathomably, wrongly think that they are in the upper reaches of the income distribution. I know it sounds absurd, but nearly a third of people think they are in the top 5% in income. Attacking the rich doesn't work very well, even if people aren't stupid enough to think they ARE rich, they at least want to BE rich.

People will likely be willing to take the trade-off of dumping Bush's tax cuts in exchange for health care and other benefits, but it's not a resounding indictment of Bush's priorities; just different priorities. Bush will claim that his tax cuts are laying the foundation for the prosperity of the next decade, an inherently untestable claim and thus a difficult proposition to challenge. Most economists think that the simulative effect which tax cuts normally would have are almost entirely offset by the burden of financing them with mountains of debt instead of spending cuts, but one can always find a minority view in economics, or any other non-experimental discipline for that matter.

Nor are poor economic performance figures terribly problematic for Bush. He is a master of low expectations. As we have seen for the past month, any growth at all gets spun into a success and an exoneration of Bush's policies. Finally, the deficits Bush is running are definitely irresponsible, but there are positive and responsible deficits (investments in future productivity and short term stimuli of growth are generally considered acceptable) and the GOP will spin Bush's deficits as this type. People are not terribly sophisticated when it comes to public finance and macro-economics, so the spin will work for many swing voters. The notion of a "birth tax", the amount of debt that every American child is now born into, is a useful way to demonstrate the irresponsibility of running such large deficits, but it's not a home run.

Bush is a political vampire. Things that would kill the career of a normal politician stone dead, seem to bounce off Bush. The only thing that will harm him is sunshine. Career public servants coming out and telling about the Administration's attempts to stifle and pervert the government's self-monitoring functions are what can put Bush down for the count. We have gotten a glimpse of this in the intelligence apparatus, the scientific review boards, the EPA, and others. These efforts are the best basis for impeachment of the Administration's claims about the economy. People will stand for a lot things, cheating is not one. The revelations of the Administration gaming the system have already been a substantial part of Bush's slide in the polls. In my view, catching him red-handed in jiggering the data stream that keeps the government conversant with reality would be a stake through the heart for his Administration.

The second place where a little sunshine would harm Bush is a clear demonstration of how he has served political donors special interests at the expense of the public welfare and the vitality and competitive vigor of the economy. Bush's full-on deployment of crony capitalism in America is understood to be both ethically reprehensible and harmful to the public interest by nearly everyone who knows of and understands it. The Dems must pull out the stops to investigate and expose the marketing of the public interest to the highest bidder by the GOP and hammer Bush mercilessly with the results.

The torch that can truly immolate the Bush Administration is jobs. The job loss during this Administration is the worst since Hoover. There is nearly nothing the Administration can do to explain those job losses away and they are vulnerable to charges of attempting to hide the true extent of unemployment. A recent spin is that many of the unemployed are in sectors which were declining or moving off-shore anyhow, and thus those jobs would have been lost in any case, and it is the fault of the unemployed for not retraining for viable jobs and for continuing to look for jobs which will no longer exist in our economy. This is a very weak argument which highlights the Administration's weakness on job creation. Chronic unemployment strikes everywhere, and concerns everyone, because most people know that there are only a few months unemployment between them and ruination. It is a subject which is not amenable to counter-argument or obsfucation; it's hard to argue credibly the unemployment is good for anyone or anything. Even if the economy picks up somewhat before the election, there is simply no way, short of mass public works programs, that the Administration can get the economy to soak up that many idle workers.

There is no chance of a credible counter-attack by the GOP on the economy, nor specifically on jobs. The Dems aren't in any position to deny the GOP much of their agenda and the last Dem Administration presided over the largest peace-time economic expansion in history and an unprecedentedly low rate of unemployment and increase in wages. As such, this is the perfect place to hammer the Administration the hardest.

The GOP will try to switch the debate entirely to foreign policy and terror, because it is their self-proclaimed stronghold and they can hide behind the flag and patriotism. Dems mustn't let them define this election as a referendum on solely on Iraq or terrorism policy. Dems must focus on the economy, and jobs in particular to have a clearly compelling message for swing and cross-over voters. Some of those voters may disagree, or be led to disagree with the GOP on defense and terror policy, but concerns about the economy clearly have the best potential for a wider appeal. Allowing the GOP to frame the entire election as a referendum on defense is exactly the distraction from their vulnerabilities that they desire. The Dem challenger must address security, and contrast their views with Bush, but the winning issues are economic issues the GOP works hardest to keep out of the media -- jobs and the GOP's corruption.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 11/26/2003 08:29:00 PM