The Washington Post survey has Bush up by around 8 percentage points coming out of August. The bump was the result of a concerted attack first to undermine Kerry's record in Vietnam by the Swift Boatees and then a pile on by McCain, Giuliani, the batty senator from Georgia, Zell Miller, Cheney and the President himself. What they all said was that the present Iraq War, despite some pre and post attack mistakes, was succeeding in bringing the attack (in the War on Terrorism) to the enemy over there and hence was making us all safer over here.
The double pounding worked for much of August as the media took its eyes off the real story on the ground in Iraq, the anemic economic situation at home and focused on the spectacle of a smear campaign working its corrosive magic. For days the Kerry folks seem stymied by an attack that they should have fully anticipated. Our guess is that Kerry's emphasis on his Vietnam War record at his convention that overshadowed any political agenda he might have presented, was designed to preempt attacks that his campaign must have known were coming.
But by going for the jugular Bush has put his own campaign at great risk. For Kerry the only good news is that the election is not going to be held this week and there are still over 7 weeks left before voters actually go into the booths and cast their votes. A lot can happen. Here's Bush's major problem as we see it: He has now virtually wrapped himself around his Iraq War strategy and this presents him with major potential pitfalls, mainly the truth as to what the situation on the ground in Iraq really is.
Everybody in Washington, including John McCain and the brass at the Pentagon knows that the Iraq strategy is becoming a catastrophic failure. Given enough time and media focus the reality on the ground in Iraq will be revealed to the American people who will then have to face a much graver choice than the one offered in the turmoil of 1968 when Nixon managed to get elected. The strategic importance of the Vietnamese War hinged on what was called the Domino Theory that promised that any Communist expansion would lead to a cascade of falling neighboring countries. We all know now that there was no such catastrophe after the abandonment of Saigon by the Americans and an entirely different dynamic occurred in the region as Hanoi played off Moscow against Beijing. The second factor, of course, was lost American blood, treasure and prestige. All those deaths, all that hard feeling at home, all that loss of innocence and swagger in the jungles of Southeast Asia; is it any wonder that we are still trying to sort this out?
The blowback for W may occur before the election. Since he has so tightly bound his premise for re-election to results on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is always the possibility that major attacks on US and Iraq and Allawi-led government forces will re-inflame what is already a knawing feeling among a majority. But, more significantly, whether it's Bush or Kerry who gets elected, the victor will be faced with a much more difficult situation than Nixon and Kissinger had: Iraq is not Vietnam. It festers at the heart of the world's energy supply zone, an area that has been newly put in play by Osama Bin Laden. There is no Iraqi nationalistic movement that might emerge victorious as did Hanoi. Instead there is a newly resuscitated mullah-led government in Iran that will become the major backer of the Shiites in the South, militias on the ground, break-away Kurds in the North and a determined group of Sunnis and Mujahadeen in the center --all the makings of a failed state.
Notice that J. Paul Bremmer, the erstwhile Proconsul has been put into the witness protection program never to be seen again. Notice that neither Rumsfeld nor Powell were anywhere in view at the Republic Convention. Cheney would have been gone too, if they could have thought up an excuse. Instead, he was nicely positioned right after crazy Zell who would make anyone, even the Vice President look reasonable by comparison. And notice most significantly, the total absence of any mention of Osama Ben Laden and the head of the Taliban, Mullah Omar.
And so goes our little drama. Can Carl Rove and company continue to dominate the news cycle with distractions right up until Election Day? Take the argument over whether the letter that CBS showed the other evening was created on a word processor and thus a forgery. Could CBS have been set up or will we find that IBM had a proportional font wheel for its electric typewriters that allowed for the questionable "th"?
So far so good for the Bushies who couldn't have asked for anything better than seeing Clinton's heart operation grab the oxygen for a day or two or even another 5-day hurricane cycle. But one thing is for sure: whatever we see on the big tube is not going to be a palliative for what is happening on the ground.... ironically, though, it will determine who ends up in the White House and in place for the day the shit (of a failed policy) really hits the fan.
