Bush's Biggest Flaw

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Bush's Biggest Flaw

Posted: 10/15/2004 7:35:46 AM EDT

www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/30331.htm

October 15, 2004 -- WITH debate season finally over, the presidential race is almost exactly where everybody predicted it would be eight or nine months ago. Polls say the race is dead even, which is what people mean when they say the election is going to be close. The key battlegrounds remain Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, just as everybody anticipated.
Even the statewide races that are surprisingly close — Colorado, which should be a Bush gimme, and New Jersey, which should be Kerry country — aren't terribly surprising, because they were showing signs of it months and months ago.

So we're where all the pros said we would be. With that in mind, just how significant were the debates?

They were significant because in the week before the first encounter it appeared the president might be running away with the race. Had the president performed brilliantly rather than disappointingly in the first debate, maybe he would have. There's no way of knowing.

But there's something wrong with the idea that George W. Bush was going to walk into his second term without having to sweat bullets in the final month. The 2004 election only felt like it might be a Bush landslide at the end of September because John Kerry was conducting himself so haplessly and had been criticized so effectively — not because the president had made a really positive case for a second term.

One way or another, even if Bush had put away Kerry in the opening debate, I believe the race would have tightened up. That's in part due to the profound divisions in the body politic. It's also due to Kerry's own competitive strengths. But mostly, I think, it's because of Bush's most damaging political weakness: His capacity for complacency.

It may be the only political weakness he inherited from his father, a far inferior politician who spent much of 1992 acting as though he simply could not believe the country would choose a philandering draft-dodger over him. We saw the same dynamic at play in the first Bush-Kerry clash, when the president acted offended and outraged at the kinds of challenges and counterstrikes Sen. Kerry was hurling at him.

You can only assume that Bush's peevishness was derived from his belief before the debate that everything was going his way and this Massachusetts liberal flip-flopper couldn't lay a glove on him. He was unprepared for Kerry's toughness and unable to adapt to an opponent who went so quickly and powerfully on the offense.

Is that because he only speaks to friendly crowds and avoids tough questions from the press? Perhaps. But throughout his career as a presidential candidate, the temptation of complacency has dogged George W. Bush.

It was present during the early months of the 2000 Republican primary, when he made ghastly speeches and debate appearances — confident that his organizational and money-raising skills would carry the day. They did, eventually, but his bumbling helped elevate his only serious contender, John McCain, into a full-fledged rival.

And it was present during the ruinous final week of his campaign against Al Gore. Bush was, in most polls and in his own internal polling, somewhere between 5 and 10 points ahead. Assuming that he had Florida in the bag, he spent a few days campaigning in California — a risk he could not afford to take and which he only felt comfortable in taking because he and his team allowed themselves to become complacent.

The complacent Bush we saw get his clock cleaned in the first debate was nowhere to be seen by the third debate on Wednesday, when he displayed the kind of ease and engagement that so many people find so appealing.

Complacent Bush would have shown up at some point, because he always has. It's better that he showed up on Sept. 30 rather than on Oct. 30, the way he did in 2000.

The president needed to feel that he could lose this race in order to do and say the kinds of things he needs to do and say to win it.

John Podhoretz is a pretty sharp guy... and a nice guy to boot.

Posted: 10/15/2004 7:40:07 AM EDT

[#1]

Quoted:

The president needed to feel that he could lose this race in order to do and say the kinds of things he needs to do and say to win it.

excellent observation.

Posted: 10/15/2004 7:45:46 AM EDT

[#2]

Quoted:

It may be the only political weakness he inherited from his father, a far inferior politician who spent much of 1992 acting as though he simply could not believe the country would choose a philandering draft-dodger over him.

This is one thing I've been afraid of this whole campaign season. All I can remember thinking in '92 was "C'mon George - Wake the f--- up!". He finally got energized in the last few weeks, but it was too little, too late.

Unlike Congressional races, it's tough running for Presidential re-election. The CinC actually has a "real" job. Imagine the stress of running this country, especially in wartime - AND- having to sack up and find the energy to fight a political opponent who has the luxury of giving his whole being to the effort.

Posted: 10/15/2004 8:02:04 AM EDT

[#3]

I was not impressed with Bush's comments regarding outsourcing in this last debate. Lucky for him Kerry did not drill him on it, because he was beginning to sound as out of touch as his dad did in regard to checkout scanners.

Posted: 10/15/2004 8:09:25 AM EDT

[#4]

President Bush won 49% of the popular vote in 2000....I dont' think he's done much in the eyes of the 50% that didn't vote for him to swing things very much. The fact that Kerry isn't ahead by 10% or more at this point has to be do to the fact that he's the one kind of candidate--gun grabbing New England liberal--that would fare the worst with Reagan/Yellow Dog/Conservative (a la Zell Miller) Democrats--the folks that any Dem hoping to be elected President is gonna need. Instead, they end up with Kerry, a tough sell even to the 50% that don't like the President. If the Dems had ANYONE who the could have passed off as "centrist", a la Bill Clinton, I think President Bush would be in real trouble.

They don't, though, and that's the reason why President Bush will be re-elected, and why the Dems are screwed in 2008...the 9 dwarfs they ran this year were pitiful, and illustrative of how bad the Democratic party machine is in finding national level candidates these days. Hillary is WAY too devisive to be a viable candidate (imho, anyway), so they've got to try to come with someone else. At this point, they've got a pretty shallow gene pool to choose from lol.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Bush's Biggest Flaw

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