Best Laid Plans

An Elizabeth Drew article in the New York Review of Books provides a nice in-progress assessment of the Bush campaign to date. Among Drew's findings is a point that seems obvious in hindsight but went utterly unremarked upon (as far as I've seen) up this point--it's somewhat surprising, given all the ways in which the Bush administration has parted ways with traditional (read: principled) conservatives, that no third-party challenge has arisen:

The first step Rove and Bush took to assure Bush's reelection was to raise an unprecedented amount of money: at least $187 million by the beginning of May (Kerry had by then raised at least $106 million). Then, virtually unnoticed, Rove sought to make sure that no third-party candidate on the right ran for president. While few people would have considered this a possibility, Rove took no chances. Since many Republicans have been unhappy about Bush's immigration policy and his running up a huge deficit, a third-party candidacy didn't seem out of the question. But Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform and a close ally of the Bush White House, told me that "Bush didn't leave enough breathing space to the right of him to allow that to happen, whereas the Dem- ocrats left room for a Nader. If you ask how the campaigns are doing, the first advantage the Republicans chalked up was that Pat Buchanan didn't run and Ralph Nader is running." To keep Buchanan out of the race, Bush put off announcing his proposals for immigration reform, anathema to Buchanan, until late in his first term of office, leaving Buchanan little time to organize a campaign opposing them even if he did want to run.

When you think about it, the pandering Bush has done within his own coalition has been remarkable for its dexterity--and has been so pronounced that it really is surprising that no group has stepped forward to claim their piece of the pie isn't big enough. Sure, the Club for Growth wackos have opined that Bush is an even worse "Big Government" culprit than the despised Clinton, and the Christian ayatollahs grumble now and then that Bush hasn't yet outlawed abortion or even put a stop to those dastardly gay couples looking for a little happiness and acceptance, but for the most part, he's managed to keep everyone in line. This really is a remarkable achievement, and a testament to the political skills of both the president and his team.

Drew also covers some of the ground broken recently in the Times Sunday magazine profile of the "Amway-like" Bush ground operation, which served the Republicans so well in 2002. Not surprisingly, the administration is pushing its core supporters--evangelicals and business types drunk on tax cuts--to turn out every vote. But even with all that, the campaign staffers realize that the election almost certainly will be determined by events beyond their control:

At the Bush reelection headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, I recently talked to Ken Mehlman, the head of the reelection committee, and Matthew Dowd, who is in charge of media and polling for the reelection campaign. Dowd told me that since each party was "sitting on 45 percent of the vote," decisions "made in the campaign, and events, have a bigger impact." Dowd says that the issues of Iraq and the prosperity of the economy will "fill the space"�i.e., that they, and the effects of September 11, will be far more important to voters than, say, positions on abortion or on the environment. (An estimated 40 percent of the job losses in 2001 were caused by the economic shock of the September 11 attacks.) One Bush adviser says, "If the economy turns worse, he's dead."

Considering the steady downward drift of public opinion on Iraq, and the growing perception that the economy is in the toilet despite statistics showing strong GDP growth (a discrepancy I tried to address here two weeks or so back, and one no doubt fueled, so to speak, by spiking gas prices and the uptick in various other costs, like dairy products), I still think the tide is running strong for the Not-Bush campaign (also known, I guess, as Kerry for President). Arianna Huffington writes in Salon that Bush's oil industry buddies are swimming in profits, and unless they act on his behalf to take money out of their own pockets, frustration will continue to build. Even if gas prices drop, I don't see tangible gains manifesting for the non-wealthy, in terms of good job creation, lower prices, or wage increases outpacing inflation, between now and November.

And then there's Iraq. If spending all those hundreds (thousands?) of hours playing Civilization III has taught me anything, it's that democratic societies have a very limited appetite for war. (Note: fairly extensive history reading also supports this hypothesis.) Even if the June 30 "transfer of sovereignty" somehow doesn't turn into the clusterf--k one would expect, given the direction of events since "victory" in April 2003, I think the sheer cost, and the gathering economic effects, of the war will make it almost impossible for the administration to paint this as a success. Putting it simply, Americans are now far more "receptive" to bad news coming out of Iraq than good. They've simply lied about too much, too often. The Chalabi revelations, and the newly underway investigations into what leading neoconservatives inside and outside of government might have fed Their Man in Baghdad, could serve as a second tide reinforcing all the negative perceptions from the prison abuse scandal: not only did we behave abominably, but the main reason we were there to start with was the false witness of a swindler in the pay of Iran's mullahs.

All that said, it's still way, way too close for my comfort. The close of Drew's article provides a chilling reminder just why this is:

Bush has told people that he wants a "mandate" in this election to carry out his deepest wishes. If he receives one, or believes that he has received one, it is altogether likely that the environment will be further damaged, civil liberties will be further threatened, the Supreme Court will likely be set in a radically conservative direction for many years to come, and there will be a greater effort to privatize or cut social programs. The President is likely to feel that he has an even freer hand in foreign policy and in the use of military power, and less need to be accountable to Congress. For these reasons�and probably some that we can't yet imagine�this is the most consequential election in decades.