politics

Bush's Shadow Campaign

By Neal Shaffer
10/22/03

Editor's note: This was the third entry in what was regular coverage of the campaign for the 2004 presidential election.

In a move that surprised no one, Florida Sen. Bob Graham announced recently that he is dropping out of the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination. The decision came on the heels of the quarterly fundraising reports, which showed Graham lagging far behind his rivals at around $2 million for the quarter and only $5 million so far. By contrast, Howard Dean solidified his status as one of the frontrunners with $15 million for the quarter and $25 million to date, easily setting Democratic records. Fundraising is perhaps the only accurate gauge of a candidate’s strength this early in the game, and lagging behind usually spells doom. Accordingly, and assuming the numbers continue to hold up, the death watch will begin shortly for the efforts of former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, demagogue Al Sharpton, flower child Dennis Kucinich, and soon to be ex-Sen. John Edwards.

Which will leave the Democrats with Dean, Rep. Richard Gephardt, Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Joe Lieberman, and General Wesley Clark. Only time will tell which one emerges to take on Bush, but by then we can be sure that the opportunity was well earned.

Lost in all the attention the Democrats have been getting is, however, something equally important: the reelection campaign of sitting President George Bush. Bush is enjoying the perks of incumbency to full effect, sitting back in Crawford, Texas with a war chest that, if he meets his target, will be at roughly $170 million for the primary season. To make matters even more interesting, Bush is not participating in the Federal matching funds program, meaning that he has no spending restrictions. No matter who faces him in the general election, they will be at a marked monetary disadvantage.

Since he faces no opposition from within his own party—no John McCain or Pat Buchanan this time around—Bush has the luxury of being able to blur the line between his reelection efforts and the business of being President. Virtually nothing has been written in the mainstream press about his campaign, in stark contrast to the almost daily updates on the Democratic field. That will certainly change as the primary season comes and goes, but the lack of coverage puts the public at a disadvantage. As the Democrats struggle to simultaneously distinguish themselves from one another while elucidating their basic platforms, Bush can mask his will-to-power as policy in the public interest.

Make no mistake: the Bush reelection campaign is in full swing. With his overall approval rating at only about 50 percent and the questions about Iraq and the related $87 billion funding request continuing to grow, Bush has begun to show his hand. In a series of recent speeches, the White House has launched a PR offensive designed to silence critics of the Iraq war, which is natural enough. But they haven’t stopped there. The speeches have also been thinly-veiled attacks on Bush’s critics and potential opponents, tiny slices of vitriol that show the true colors of an administration that’s poised for a fight.

The first shot may very well have been Dick Cheney’s October 3rd speech to a group of Iowans gathered at the Wakonda Club for a campaign reception. After the obligatory Praise Be To Iowa preliminaries, Cheney went on to state that he had two points of focus. The first was the economy, on which he spent four transcribed paragraphs playing the old tax cuts and “it’s getting better” cards. The second was 9/11. On this he spent the remainder of his speech, which amounted to no less than twelve times as much attention as he paid to the economy. His point is easily distilled: that critics of the war don’t know what they’re talking about because the Bush Administration has things fully under control. In other words, trust us.

The same sentiments showed up a week later in Cheney’s speech to the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., where he went even further. He blasted the U.N. as functionally irrelevant and portrayed the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack as essential to U.S. security. Most importantly, the tone of his speech clearly sought to assert the dubious claim that Saddam Hussein represented a threat to U.S. security and that said threat fully justified the Iraq war.

When taken as a whole (including other recent similar speeches by Condoleezza Rice and Bush himself), a picture emerges of the Bush strategy: to link 9/11 with subsequent actions and stated policies and to portray opponents of those policies as dangerously ignorant of just how much he has done to make us safe. A Sept. 11, 2003, article on MSNBC.com goes into detail about Bush’s increasingly frequent mentions of 9/11 in his speeches, even those that are not directly related to the event or even national security. In that article, he is quoted in response to a July question about his primary campaign budget as saying (in part), “Every day, I’m reminded about what 9/11 means to America.” And the Republican nominating convention will take place next year in Manhattan, just two weeks before the third anniversary of the attacks—a much later date than has been customary in the past.

It’s the “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” strategy with a new twist. Instead of allowing us to decide for ourselves, they simply inform us that, yes, we are better off…we’re safer. On top of that, they’ll tell us that people who happen to not buy into that construction of things are themselves an actual risk. Cheney said as much in the Heritage Foundation speech, saying of Bush’s critics that “weakness and drift and vacillation in the face of danger invite attacks.”

Any rational mind—even one that supports Bush and the war—has to admit that linking 9/11 to Iraq is specious at best and an outright deception at worst. That same rational mind would also have to admit that there is very little actual evidence to suggest that Hussein represented a real threat to U.S. security. Even if every single claim made about Hussein’s weapons capabilities is true, it still does not amount to an actual threat. Maybe to his neighbors (maybe), probably to his people, but absolutely not to the people of the United States. Not one person—either in the administration or anywhere else—has been able to make that case without slipping into speculation and hyperbole. This much can be seen in the shift of Bush’s PR strategy regarding Iraq. We’ve seen him go from telling us that there was a clear and present danger to simply presenting evidence that Hussein was in “material breach” of U.N. Resolution 1440, and, as such, military action was justified. Is that the same U.N. that he has declared irrelevant? He can’t have it both ways.

What Bush is doing is no different from what any Presidential candidate does. He’s selecting the facts that support his positions and presenting them in a way that makes him appear to be on the right track. That’s fine as far as it goes. What’s troubling is that he’s doing it from the shadows—on our time and with long-term consequences that will extend beyond the administration of whoever wins next November. It’s critical, as we assess the nine Democratic candidates and their potential suitability for the office of President, to apply the same rigorous standards to Bush. He may be the incumbent, but he is also now a candidate.