[KRbGA0Bg]

June 29, 2004

Bush's Rating Falls to Its Lowest Point, New Survey Finds

By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

President Bush's job approval rating has fallen to the lowest level of his presidency, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. The poll found Americans stiffening their opposition to the Iraq war, worried that the invasion could invite domestic terrorist attacks and skeptical about whether the White House has been fully truthful about the war or about abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison.

A majority of respondents in the poll, conducted before yesterday's transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government, said that the war was not worth its cost in American lives and that the Bush administration did not have a clear plan to restore order to Iraq.

The survey, which showed Mr. Bush's approval rating at 42 percent, also found that nearly 40 percent of Americans say they do not have an opinion about Senator John Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, despite what have been both parties' earliest and most expensive television advertising campaigns.

Among those who do have an opinion, Mr. Kerry is disliked more than he is liked. More than 50 percent of respondents said that Mr. Kerry says what he thinks voters want to hear, suggesting that Mr. Bush has had success in portraying his opponent as a flip-flopper.

Americans were more likely to believe that Mr. Bush would do a better job than Mr. Kerry would in steering the nation through a foreign crisis, and protecting it from future terrorist attacks. Support for Mr. Bush's abilities in those areas has declined in recent months, but the findings suggest that Americans are more comfortable entrusting their security to a president they know than a challenger who remains relatively unknown.

Even so, the poll was scattered with warning flags for Mr. Bush, and there was compelling evidence that his decision to take the nation to war against Iraq has left him in a precarious political position.

As he heads into the fall election, Mr. Bush appears to have much riding on the transfer of power in Baghdad yesterday. The 42 percent of Americans who say they approve of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job is the lowest such figure in a Times/CBS News survey since the beginning of Mr. Bush's presidency in January 2001; 51 percent say they disapprove.

Over the past 25 years, according to pollsters, presidents with job approval ratings below 50 percent in the spring of election years have generally gone on to lose. Mr. Bush's father had a 34 percent job approval rating at this time in 1992.

Similarly, 45 percent said they had an unfavorable opinion of Mr. Bush himself, again the most negative measure the Times/CBS Poll has found since he took office. And 57 percent say the country is going in the wrong direction, another measure used by pollsters as a barometer of discontent with an incumbent.

Yet the survey found little evidence that Mr. Kerry has been able to take advantage of the president's difficulties, even though Mr. Kerry has spent $60 million on television advertising over the past three months.

Nationwide, Mr. Kerry has the support of 45 percent of registered voters, with Mr. Bush supported by 44 percent. When Ralph Nader, who is running as an independent, is included, he draws 5 percent, leaving 42 percent for Mr. Kerry and 43 percent for Mr. Bush

In the 18 states viewed by both parties as the most competitive — and thus the subject of the most advertising expenditures and visits by the candidates — the race was equally tight. Forty-five percent of voters in those states said they would support Mr. Kerry, and 43 percent said they would back Mr. Bush. Indeed, on a host of measures, the poll found little difference in public opinion between the nation as a whole and that of voters in the competitive states.

The tight race indicated by the poll reflects how aides to both Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry have described the overall state of play for weeks. But other polls have, at times, shown Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush bumping ahead. A CBS News poll taken last month found Mr. Kerry with a lead of 49 percent to 41 percent over Mr. Bush.

The nationwide poll of 1,053 adults, including 875 registered voters, was taken by telephone June 23 to June 27. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

For all the signs of opposition to the war, Americans appear prepared to stay in Iraq until the situation becomes stable. The poll found that 54 percent of respondents said that the United States should remain in Iraq "as long as it takes," while 40 percent said the United States should withdraw "as soon as possible."

Overall, the poll's findings left little doubt about the extent to which Mr. Bush's decision to go to war is proving to be perhaps the most fateful of his presidency. About 60 percent of respondents said they disapproved of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy, while just over 50 percent said they disapproved of his foreign policy. Those disapproval figures are the highest measured in his presidency on those subjects.

And 60 percent of respondents, including a majority of independents, said the war has not been worth the cost.

"We attacked a sovereign nation, and we went in there and we did things that the United States shouldn't have done," Charles Drum, 36, a Republican from Alameda, Calif., said in an interview after the poll was taken. "I feel that we went after the wrong people, and it's unacceptable, and it's absolutely ridiculous that innocent people are dying over there in Iraq, and our own troops are dying for a cause that is not just."

Respondents said that Mr. Bush's policies in Iraq were having the effect of creating terrorists and of increasing the chances of another terrorist attack at home. Concerns about the war appear to undercut what has long been one of Mr. Bush's strong suits, his handling of the fight against terrorism. Fifty-two percent of Americans now say they approve of the way Mr. Bush is conducting that fight, down from 90 percent in December 2001.

"I watch the news quite a bit, and I'm kind of thinking it's getting these terrorists motivated to do more," said Charlie Buck, 54, a Republican from Indiana, Pa. "Whether it's their religious beliefs or it's us trying to step into their country, I just get that feeling that they feel that we're stepping into where we shouldn't be, and it's inciting them. It's stimulating them to be more aggressive in getting us out."

In what could prove to be a particularly far-reaching development for Mr. Bush — especially because he and his campaign have sought to undercut Mr. Kerry's credibility — nearly 60 percent said he was not being entirely truthful when talking about Iraq. Similarly, just 15 percent said the administration had told the entire truth when it came to abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison.

There are some ways in which Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush are viewed similarly. They are seen as political leaders who keep their word, and both are viewed as optimistic, suggesting that Mr. Bush's attempt to portray Mr. Kerry as pessimistic has not taken hold.

But there are signs that Americans are beginning to form very different personal perceptions of these two men. Mr. Kerry was described as more likely than Mr. Bush to admit a mistake, and to listen to divergent opinions. Mr. Bush is viewed as someone who takes a position and sticks with it, and while those interviewed were split on whether that was a positive trait, it is a contrast that Mr. Bush's campaign has encouraged as a way of trying to undercut Mr. Kerry

"Kerry has flip-flopped too many times," said Joseph Martin, 52, an independent voter who lives outside Seattle. "The one thing that I think that a lot of people understand is a position of strength, and you cannot be waffling around. You've got to show a commitment, show a determination and keep a steady hand, and I just don't think Kerry has got that."

For Mr. Bush, the poll contains a number of potentially worrisome findings. By 51 to 32 percent, Americans believe that he has divided the nation, rather than brought it together. The number of Americans who said that Mr. Bush did not care about the "needs and problems of people like you" edged up to 42 percent from 36 percent in March. More than 50 percent said that Mr. Bush did not have the same priorities for the country as they did.

On the issue of the economy, even though job-creation numbers have been rising over the past few months, 45 percent of Americans say that the Bush administration has been responsible for a decline in jobs, compared with 24 percent who say it has brought an increase. Fifty-five percent of respondents said they were very or somewhat concerned that they or someone in their house would be out of work over the next year.

Republicans, remembering what happened when Mr. Bush's father lost in 1992, have long expressed concern that any improvement in the economy will happen too late to capture the notice of voters.

Both men are disliked by more people than they are liked. The number of people who view Mr. Kerry unfavorably has jumped to 35 percent from 29 percent in mid-March, when Mr. Bush began a huge television advertising campaign against his opponent.

In Mr. Kerry's case, 36 percent said they had no opinion of him, despite the campaign's record-setting expenditure on television advertisements. That figure is fairly typical for challengers at this point in the campaign; in June 1992, 44 percent of the public did not have an opinion of Bill Clinton.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company


42% and the election is deadlocked. Pick a running-mate you fool, and send him on the road.

[Gozmand]

That's not the point. The "fact" of what Lynne Cheney is doing is not how the undecided electorate is going to judge the remark. When the issues are generally against the incumbent and the majority opinion is that the country is heading in the wrong direction (as is the case here), the challenger needs to appear presidential to convince voters to change leadership.

The only people that are going to analyze that statement as you did are already going to vote for Kerry. The people that haven't made up their minds are going to view it as a cheap shot.

That other stupid remark by Edwards about Christopher Reeve also made me cringe.

[nerohedfrs]

9/11 letters

Arthur Schlesinger tries to allay European anxieties about the bellicose new America. Timothy Garton Ash replies

Arthur Schlesinger and Timothy Garton Ash

Saturday September 11, 2004

The Guardian

· Arthur Schlesinger Jr is a former adviser to President Kennedy and the author, most recently, of War and the American Presidency; Timothy Garton Ash's latest book is Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time

Arthur Schlesinger:

My European friends, do not despair of America! It is still the bold and idealistic country of FDR and JFK, though boldness and idealism have latterly turned somewhat into bellicosity and arrogance.

This is the result of two history-making experiences. One is the victory of democracy over communism in the cold war. The dissolution of the Soviet Union leaves the US as the planet's unchallenged and unchallengeable superpower - not just in the military and ideological sense, but in economics, technology and popular culture.

Neoconservative ideologues in Washington were confident that the US could dispense with allies and international institutions. They systematically disparaged and vilified the UN, ironically enough, in the house of its founders Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. Many Americans sought comfort in reverting to traditional mistrust of what Jefferson called "entangling alliances".

The second history-making experience we mark today - the third anniversary of the assault by hijacked airplanes on the World Trade Centre in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington, twin symbols of what President Eisenhower once called "the military-industrial complex". This has had a terrific impact on the national psyche, even more so than the surprise Japanese attack on the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941.

After all, in 1941 we knew who the enemy was. The Japanese attack took place on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, far from American shores. The target was American naval power, not innocent civilians going about their daily business. Today the enemies are stateless; they strike in cities well know to every American; they blow themselves up or retreat into the shadows; they turn a familiar convenience - the aeroplane - into a vicious weapon; and ordinary people are the target.

The second world war was a far more menacing conflict with far more dangerous foes. But it did not threaten Americans in the daily rounds of their lives. Today many feel an intense personal vulnerability they have never felt before. Of course, Europeans have grown accustomed to local terrorism - ETA Basques in Spain, Red gangs in Italy and Germany, Corsicans in France, and the old IRA in Britain. For Americans terrorism is a novel and horrid experience.

This mysterious new threat led a new administration in Washington to change the basis of US foreign policy. That basis had been containment and deterrence, a combination that won us the cold war. The new basis of US foreign policy is preventive war, which cold war American presidents had abhorred and vetoed. The Bush doctrine is to attack an enemy, unilaterally if necessary, before it has a chance to attack us, a right reserved to the US. This casts the US as the world's judge, jury and executioner. Hardly a popular position.

Most Americans had supported the war in Afghanistan against al-Qaida, which committed an act of monstrous aggression, and against the Taliban, which protected the terrorists. The second, and separate, war against Iraq was an optional war, a war of presidential choice. That war was fought on two false premises - the alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and the alleged partnership between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

The case for preventive war rests on the assumption that we have near-perfect intelligence about the enemy's intentions and capabilities. Post-mortem inquiries into our intelligence agencies show how imperfect our knowledge of Iraq was.

In the meantime, "homeland security" anxieties abide in many American households. People in the age of terrorism are willing to pay a price for the protection of their families. As all wars do, the Iraq war has expanded presidential power. More than 30 years ago, I wrote a book called The Imperial Presidency, and an imperial presidency has been born again in Washington today.

A so-called Patriot Act, rushed through in the wake of 9/11 by an imperial attorney general, it imposes restrictions on civil liberties of American citizens. The Supreme Court has condemned the presidential suspensions of due process for detainees held for many months without access to counsel at Guantanamo Bay, the American base in Cuba.

The Bush administration is the most secretive within memory and grows more secretive every day. The attorney general has done his best to sabotage the Freedom of Information Act. There has been a 60 per cent increase in the number of classified documents from 2001 to 2003. The administration of Richard Nixon had held the record for secrecy heretofore, but now Nixon's counsel, John Dean, has written a bestseller called Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W Bush.

Such restrictions trouble many Americans. It must not be supposed that a majority of voters elected George W Bush. He was a minority president, elected by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. If the votes cast for Al Gore and Ralph Nader are combined, Bush lost the popular vote by three million. Opinion polls suggest that 45 per cent of the electorate love Bush, another 45 per cent loathe him.

It is not likely that many people in the two opposing camps will change their minds between today and November 2, election day. The battle is for the undecided 10 per cent. The Democratic candidate, Senator John F Kerry of Massachusetts, is in the school of FDR and JFK. His campaign has faltered momentarily but in the past he has shown himself to be a hard fighter and a strong finisher.

Immediately after 9/11 a wave of worldwide sympathy engulfed America. Three years later, America is regarded with hostility around the world. Never in American history has the US been so unpopular abroad. That is not lost on the American voter. And the great strength, the great virtue, of democracy is its capacity for self-correction. So my European friends, do not despair!

Timothy Garton Ash:

We have not forgotten. We will never forget. We all know where we were the moment we learned the news of the assault on the twin towers. I heard it first from a Frenchwoman. I remember her stumbling words of bewilderment and instant solidarity. That solidarity between Europe and America - the twin towers of the historic West - lasted about three months, through the rout of Al Qaida in Afghanistan. But where is it now, three years after 9/11?

Not lost and gone for ever, but waiting to re-emerge. Waiting for the America that will enable it to re-emerge. The America evoked by Arthur Schlesinger. The America whose best hope is the rather wooden yet statesmanlike John Kerry.

A recent international poll shows that most of the world overwhelmingly wants Kerry to win. If any American thinks that counts against the Democrats' candidate I can only conclude that the shock of the 9/11 attacks has led them to stop thinking straight. And that's a result that Osama bin Laden, if he's still alive, will be celebrating today.

This great argument inside the West is about how, not whether, we should defeat the human evil that showed itself in New York on September 11 2001, in the bombing of Madrid on March 11 2004, and in the massacre of the innocents in Beslan last week. Three years on, the West is divided roughly thus: half of the Americans are with about four fifths of the Europeans against perhaps one fifth of the Europeans who line up with the other half of the Americans. In this case, the majority is right.

Let me, however, make one big European self-criticism. Sometimes it's not enough to be clever, subtle, cultured, tolerant, reasonable and understanding. Sometimes, if we are to defend tolerance, reason, culture and understanding, we have to be fierce, militant and downright bloody-minded. We have to fight. For we face enemies who love death and will not be deterred by sweet reason. I think more Americans than Europeans understand this.

The conduct of the Bush administration in the war against terrorism has been strong. But it has not been wise: unconditional backing for Ariel Sharon in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Washington's war of choice on Iraq, in claimed pursuit of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist and with wholly inadequate preparation for the postwar occupation. These foolish policies have alienated moderate Muslim opinion everywhere, set Europe against America, increased the threat of terrorism, and made the US resented in almost every corner of the globe.

To win this struggle together, we need to be both strong and wise. That means recognising that this is a war that war can't win. Because Washington has such a giant hammer, it tends to see every problem shaped like a nail. Unfortunately, terrorism is not a nail; it's more like an underground fungus, spreading invisibly for miles before suddenly reappearing above ground in a different place.

I am alarmed by the militarisation of political rhetoric in the US over the three years since this century's Pearl Harbor. Too often, the country seems to be engrossed in a mythic, heroic narrative of patriotic, martial prowess. This extends to the heroic pleasure of standing not just tall but alone, like Gary Cooper in High Noon. In real life, it helps to have a few friends.

Terrorism is never excusable, but it is often explicable. Explanations point to causes. Only if we address the political and economic causes of terrorism, as well as the thing itself, will we ever have a chance of winning this war. There is not just "terror" or "terrorism"; there are terrorisms, and they differ greatly. What the Chechen terrorists did to those children in Beslan was among the most evil acts that any human being can perpetrate against another. But it had causes, and some of them lie in the brutality and stupidity of Russian policy towards Chechnya over the last decade.

To reflect on the political causes and how they can be removed is not weakness or appeasement, as the American right insists. It's the kind of common sense that the US itself showed when it encouraged political negotiations with representatives of the Kosova Liberation Army, the Albanian-Macedonian National Liberation Army and the Irish Republican Army, all of which used the methods of terrorism to achieve their political goals.

Equally, nothing can justify Palestinian suicide bombers killing innocent Israeli civilians. Nothing. Ever. But their acts have causes, and if we are to win the war against terrorism, we have to remove those causes. We have to be strong, but also wise. At the moment, Europe needs a bit more strength and America a bit more wisdom. So, my American friends, we're in this together and we look to you. We have not forgotten; we will never forget.

· This exchange of letters was commissioned by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

[Cnbaapuy]

Would they count the guy who wanted to auction his head on EBay as advertising space (tatoos).

[casinobonuswer]

Kerry Picks Edwards as His Running Mate

New York Times

CNN



NY Post picks wrong running mate

[UTHZzJ6f]

Kerry leads 291 to 215 in electoral votes...

Behind The Numbers: A Hidden Bounce For Kerry

Undecided voters seem more impressed than ever with Kerry

By Lee Walczak and Richard S. Dunham in Washington
Business Week
AUGUST 16, 2004

First came the seamless convention, a Democratic pageant unblemished by doubt or discord. Now pundits are puzzling over a new phenomenon -- the bounceless convention.

In what looks like an anomaly, Democrat John Kerry, who delivered a well-received acceptance speech at his party conclave in Boston, seems to have reaped little gain. While post-convention jumps in opinion polls typically range from 10% to 15%, new surveys show the Massachusetts senator left Boston gaining at most 5% against President George W. Bush. One, the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, even shows Bush pulling ahead 50% to 47%, leading critics to argue that Kerry missed his big chance to convince folks that he's got the right stuff.

But such interpretations miss the significance of an electorate where most voters have made up their minds. With just 7% still undecided, according to a July 30-Aug. 1 ABC News/Washington Post poll, tectonic shifts aren't likely. "There's a lot of ice in the river, and it's hard to get much movement," says ABC polling director Gary Langer. That means when the President decamps from New York City on Sept. 2 after the GOP convention, he may not move the dial much, either.

A better way to assess Kerry's performance is to look past the horse-race numbers and dig down into the public's answers. By that standard, he helped himself. In an ABC/Washington Post post-convention poll released on Aug. 2, Kerry holds a 49% to 47% edge among likely voters, a 6-point swing from a month earlier. The Democratic candidate fared much better on personal qualities, where he had suffered in comparison with Bush. On the crucial question of leadership, Kerry cut Bush's pre-convention lead of 19 points to just 6. On the question of which man would keep America more secure, he sliced a 16-point Bush margin to only 3.

How about "values," a word that kept ricocheting inside the FleetCenter? While Bush had a 6-point advantage before the Democratic gathering, Kerry now leads the President by 6. "The convention allowed voters to deepen their understanding of John Kerry's background, values, and plans for the nation," contends campaign pollster Mark Mellman. "From that point of view, it was completely successful."

Bush aides, of course, beg to differ. Senior strategist Matthew Dowd crows that Kerry received "the worst lift in the polls since [Democrat George] McGovern in '72," which was the biggest debacle in modern electoral politics. Indeed, polls show that Republicans reacted to the Democratic pageant in Boston by becoming even more ardent in their support for Bush -- an intensity factor that could play out in higher voter turnout.

Still, Republican strategists have a much harder time explaining why swing voters are more smitten than ever with Kerry. And while national polls appear little changed by the convention, the extravaganza may have solidified the Democrat's edge in the only count that matters: the state-by-state battle for the Electoral College.

According to a Zogby International poll released on Aug. 3, Kerry holds a clear electoral vote lead over Bush, 291 to 215. That's 21 more votes than needed to win, with some 32 electoral votes left in states too close to call.

Of course, the tally is likely to change if the Republicans manage their convention as successfully as the Democrats ran theirs. And swing voters -- who are impressed with Kerry but not yet sold on him -- could easily shift back and forth a few more times before the election on Nov. 2.

In an era of ultrapolarized politics, the 30-point bounce received by victorious challenger Bill Clinton in 1992 or the 15-point spurt enjoyed by eventual loser Bob Dole in '96 is unlikely to be repeated. But that's not to say that a mini-bump should be dismissed out of hand. These days, a Presidential candidate should be grateful for any bounce that he can get.

[Jenisoisy]

Mary Cheney worked as a PR rep for Coors beer's relations with the gay community. If her family wants to talk about cheap and tawdry, they should start there.

[Sillaycheg]

NBC poll: Bush holds narrow lead

Many voters don't believe Kerry has a clear message

By Mark Murray
NBC NEWS
Updated: 7:24 p.m. ET Sept. 22, 2004

WASHINGTON - Less than six weeks before Election Day, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows President Bush with a lead over Democratic challenger John Kerry — but it's within the margin of error, and it's much smaller than some other recent post-GOP convention polls indicate.

Still, the survey has some troubling numbers for Kerry as he tries to close Bush's narrow lead: Female voters aren't flocking to the Massachusetts senator as they have to past Democratic candidates, and a solid majority of overall voters believes he doesn't have a message, or doesn't know what he would do if elected.

The poll, conducted by Hart/McInturff, shows Bush receiving support from 48 percent of registered voters, Kerry getting 45 percent, and Nader getting 2 percent. Among likely voters (defined as those expressing high interest in the November election, who represent 78 percent of the survey), Bush holds a four-point lead over Kerry, 50 percent to 46 percent.

"The difference between those couple of points and being in a dead-even race is modest," said GOP pollster Bill McInturff. "This is not a difficult race [for Kerry] to get quickly back to being functionally tied."

In fact, the results among registered voters are virtually identical to the results from past NBC/Wall Street Journal polls — even though many experts claim that Bush had a resoundingly successful convention, and noted that Kerry (dogged by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who attacked his Vietnam record, and Democrats who questioned whether his campaign had a concrete message) had a dreadful August.

In the last poll, which was released just days before the Republican convention, Bush held a 47-45 percent lead over Kerry, a result unchanged from the survey in July. Moreover, June's poll had Bush leading 45 percent to 44 percent; May's had him up 46-42; and March's had him leading 46-43.

At odds with other polls

In addition, the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll — conducted Sept. 17-Sept. 19 among 1,006 registered voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points — finds that Bush's lead among registered voters may not be as large as some other recent polls have suggested. For instance, the CBS News/New York Times survey had Bush's lead at 9 points; Gallup had it at 8 points; and ABC News/Washington Post had it at 6 points. (Other national polls, however, have shown a much closer race.)

Nevertheless, examining the national polls might not be the best way to gauge the current state of this race; what really matters is the electoral map. And according to an NBC analysis of that map, Bush has 222 electoral votes leaning his way, Kerry has 200, and 116 appear up for grabs.

Although Kerry narrowly trails Bush in this poll, the survey also has some discouraging findings for the Democratic candidate. For example, he has just a 48-45 percent lead among women voters. By comparison, exit polls from 2000 show that that Al Gore won the women's vote 54-43. And the reason behind this shift, it seems, can be attributed to the war on terror. In the poll, when asked what set of issues is more important, 44 percent of respondents said terrorism, social issues and values, while another 44 percent said the economy and health care. Among women, though, 45 percent cited the economy and health care, while a surprisingly large 42 percent said terrorism and values.

Another troubling sign for the Kerry campaign is that most voters don't know what its message is. Fifty-four percent of respondents say that the campaign doesn't have a message, or that they don't know what a Kerry-Edwards team would do if elected. That's compared with just 36 percent who believe the campaign has a message. On the other hand, 68 percent say the Bush campaign has a message, while just 23 percent think it doesn't.

Troubling signs for Bush, too

But Bush has some troubling signs of his own. Even though the president has a slight lead in this poll, when voters were asked what they would want in a second term for Bush, 58 percent say they want major changes, compared with only 9 percent who say they want his second term to look a lot like his first term. "Look, he has to prove that he will pivot" in a second term, said Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart. Yet McInturff, the GOP pollster, added that this is something Bush can accomplish at the upcoming debates.

And heading into those debates, this poll — with a near-even horse race and problematic signs for both Bush and Kerry — shows that the presidential contest could be as close as the one four years ago. "For now, the race has all the hallmarks of a photo finish," Hart said.

Mark Murray covers politics for NBC News.

http://msnbc.msn.com/ID/6073871/

I don't see how Bush can easily "pivot" after that ridiculous UN speech. A classical horse-with-blinders.

[Qesomud]

September 12, 2004

OP-ED COLUMNISTS

Westerns and Easterns

By MAUREEN DOWD

It's a remarkable feat, but teeter-tottering John Kerry is even managing to land on both sides of the ambition issue.

For his entire life, he was seen as so ambitious to be president, as so eager to consort with heiresses, that it was off-putting; his St. Paul's classmates played "Hail to the Chief" on kazoos when he walked by, and in the Senate, Bob Dole mocked the Massachusetts senator's love of cameras by nicknaming him Live Shot.

But this summer, when that lust for power should have been coursing through his veins, Mr. Kerry grew timid and logy. He let the Bush crowd and Swift boat character assassins stomp all over him and, for the longest time, didn't fight back. He stumbled into every trap Bush Inc. set.

Finally, the only Democrat who has fended off the WASP Corleones reminded the nominee of the prep-school mantra: punch the bully in the face, and do it in the same news cycle.

When he hasn't been busy with his quadruple-bypass operation, Bill Clinton has been chatting with John Kerry on the phone from the hospital, urging him to juice it up. The Clinton posse - James Carville, Paul Begala, Joe Lockhart, Mike McCurry, Stan Greenberg, Lanny Davis - has intervened to prop up the sagging leadership of Bob Shrum, who had advised Mr. Kerry not to go negative (and allowed the once-hot John Edwards to vanish without a trace).

Mr. Kerry listened to Shrummy, despite the fact that the strategist renowned for his speechwriting talents had not even given his candidate a single stirring speech.

Writing about the Curse of Shrummy in The Washington Post, Mark Leibovich said: "It is common to see him in the back seat of a car driven by a young aide, an image that reinforces a somewhat regal bearing. He loves gourmet food and fine wines and has his suits handmade by a Georgetown tailor."

Democrats were rolling their eyes at the spectacle of a former president in a hospital bed resuscitating a would-be president.

"Howard Dean had the base all warmed up and now Kerry's turned into a girlie-man," said a Democratic insider, comparing it with the scene in "The Godfather" when the singer Johnny Fontane shows up at the wedding of Don Corleone's daughter and whines that a studio chief is being mean to him.

The godfather slaps the singer and barks, "Act like a man!"

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney jumped in the polls because they cast their convention as a Western. They were the "Magnificent Seven," steely-eyed, gun-slinging samurai riding in to save the frightened town: Rudolph Giuliani, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Zell Miller, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and Poppy Bush, who was on "Imus" comparing Mr. Kerry with Jane Fonda.

The vice president played up the Western motif by giving ABC an interview at his Wyoming ranch.

"The cowboy riding tall in the saddle and holding the reins for a little girl on her pony could have been Shane," wrote Alessandra Stanley in her TV Watch column in The Times.

After 9/11, Americans want tough guys who will protect them from Al Qaeda. They seem to be willing to settle for an impersonation of tough guys by Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who were so busy with their vanity war in Iraq that they missed critical opportunities to vanquish Al Qaeda and spent money on a foreign occupation that could have been used to secure American ports and come up with plans before the Beslan tragedy to protect children from terrorists.

But the White House has cleverly co-opted the imagery of Westerns, leaving Mr. Kerry to star in a far less successful movie genre: the Eastern.

In Westerns, the heroes are men of smoke-'em-out edicts and action, played out in gorges on their ranches; in Easterns, the heroes have windy, nuanced dialogue, delivered with a lockjaw in mansions on Beacon Hill and on windsurfing expeditions off Nantucket.

In Easterns, the effete heroes get upset when the wrong kind of people join their Boston clubs, and quibble, in the style of the "Late George Apley," about the rules when suit jackets must be worn.

In Westerns, the heroes treat womenfolk with gallantry, but tell them to stay back. In Easterns, Teresa rides shotgun and calls the opposition "idiots." There's a reason Easterns never caught on in Hollywood. High tea in a drawing room is just not as compelling as high noon in the town square.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

[CtEkM8Vq]

I wonder if Kerry ran that comment about Cheney's daughter by his advisors. No wonder the Democrats are having so much trouble getting that fool out of the White House.


October 15, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Courting the Finicky Women

By MAUREEN DOWD

I'm just not that into them.

I could apply all the rationalizations women use to make excuses for men who are clearly not their dream guys from the new best seller "He's Just Not That Into You," by two former "Sex and the City" writers:

"It's better than nothing." "It's just the way he was brought up." "He just says things he doesn't mean." "He's got a lot on his mind." "Maybe he's intimidated." "He's just finding himself."

But in the end, I'm forced to admit, I'm just not that into them.

The third debate date with Long-Faced Guy and Mini-Me was not particularly gratifying, edifying or electrifying. Neither the robotic Kerry (still struggling to land an open punch on a president divorced from reality) nor the herky-jerky Bush (still struggling to find an appealing onstage persona) seemed presidential or inspiring.

The two candidates were trying for sparks on Wednesday night, jousting over the 61 percent of undecided voters who are women, such as the single women, the security moms and the Medicare grandmas.

John Kerry and George W. Bush remembered the ladies with bouquets of uxoriousness and spirituality.

It was a contest to see who was closer to his family and who was closer to God. Sounding like a New Age guru, Mr. Kerry burbled: "I think we have a lot more loving of our neighbor to do in this country and on this planet." Sounding like Moses, he intoned: "We're all God's children, Bob."

The two gentlemen callers competed to offer the sweetest encomiums to their wives and daughters, though Mr. Kerry showed the bite in his overwhitened, overeager "I'm smarter than you but I'm trying not to show it" grin when he strategically dragged Dick Cheney's gay daughter back into the debate, a dead-wrong thing to do.

The president - realizing that it's not enough to simply scare women to death about their kids by letting his creepy vice president put out his spooky threat that there will be more terrorist attacks if Mr. Kerry is elected - wooed women voters with a reminiscence that sounded like a gauzy Lifetime movie scene: love-at-first-sight over the burgers.

"I can't tell you how lucky I am when I met her in the backyard of Joe and Jan O'Neill in Midland, Tex.," Mr. Bush recalled. "It was the classic backyard barbecue. O'Neill said, 'Come on over, I think you'll find somebody who might interest you.' So I said all right, bopped over there. There's only four of us there. And not only did she interest me, I guess you could say it was love at first sight."

Mr. Kerry tried to show more anima than Mr. Bush by talking about the strong moral compass provided by his wife and daughters and throwing in a sentimental tribute to his late mom: "And just before I was deciding to run and she was in the hospital, and I went in to talk to her and tell her what I was thinking of doing. ... And she just looked at me and she said, 'Remember: integrity, integrity, integrity.' Those are the three words that she left me with."

After too much time spent on chummy talk about wives and not enough spent on tart talk about stem cells and on how the president and vice president should not be considered authorities on foreign policy or national security, given their dismal performance in these areas, I was missing the unsentimental fireball Howard Dean, whose wife never even showed up to see him campaign until the press made a fuss about it.

Wednesday's exchange was saintly, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum. The rivals, dressed in almost identical reddish polka-dot ties and the inevitable flag lapel pins, sparred with equally lame lines: Tony Soprano versus the Left Bank.

Watching Mr. Bush's tired retread of his dad's barbs against Michael Dukakis (He's a liberal! He's a liberal! He's from Massachusetts! He's on a first-name basis with Teddy Kennedy! Teddy Kennedy!), I found myself longing for some original moment. If only Mr. Kerry, who follows Mr. Bush's lead too much, had broken out with a Looney Tunes lapel pin.

Or if Mr. Kerry had only taken off after Mr. Bush when he began ranting that "only a liberal senator from Massachusetts would say that a 49 percent increase in funding for education was not enough."

Mr. Kerry should have at least tried to pierce Mr. Bush's nimbus of mendacity on Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda and the economy, and reached for a dramatic moment - à la Captain "Ah, but the strawberries" Queeg, or Jack "You can't handle the truth" Nicholson - by riposting, "Only a delusional frat boy from Crawford. ..."

Then I could have gotten into them.

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com


October 15, 2004

Nader Emerging as the Threat Democrats Feared

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 - With less than three weeks before the election, Ralph Nader is emerging as just the threat that Democrats feared, with a potential to tip the balance in up to nine states where President Bush and Senator John Kerry are running neck and neck.

Despite a concerted effort by Democrats to derail his independent candidacy, as well as his being struck off the Pennsylvania ballot on Wednesday, Mr. Nader will be on the ballots in more than 30 states.

Polls show that he could influence the outcomes in nine by drawing support from Mr. Kerry. They are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin.

Moreover, six - Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Wisconsin - were among the top 20 where Mr. Nader drew his strongest support in 2000. If the vote for Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry is as evenly divided as the polls suggest, the electoral votes in any one of those states could determine who becomes president.

Mr. Nader repeated this week that he had no intention of leaving the race. He said no one from the Kerry campaign or Democratic National Committee was pressing him behind the scenes to quit, and he said he thought that Mr. Kerry would not make a good president anyway.

"He's not his own man," Mr. Nader said on Tuesday in a telephone interview from California. "Because he takes the liberals for granted, he's allowing Bush to pull him in his direction. It doesn't show much for his character."

That is a change from May, when Mr. Nader met Mr. Kerry at his campaign headquarters and afterward praised him as "very presidential." Mr. Kerry did not ask him to withdraw then, but now the party is in a full-throated plea, with its chairman, Terry McAuliffe, saying on Thursday that Mr. Nader should "end the charade" of a campaign being kept afloat by "corporate backers."

Although Mr. Nader's support is negligible in much of the country, and scant in some of the nine states, even a tiny Nader vote could make a difference, as it did in 2000 in Florida and New Hampshire.

Democrats belittle Mr. Nader's efforts, portraying his campaign as a ragtag version of its former self, with the candidate's appearances limited to easy-to-book locations like college campuses. But they acknowledge that he could make a difference, and even Mr. Kerry has adjusted his stump speech in part to try to appeal to potential Nader voters, who tend to loathe corporate America and fiercely oppose the Iraq war.

Mr. Kerry now casts Mr. Bush as a tool of rich and powerful "special interests," and he has sharpened his critique of Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq.

Several Democratic and left-leaning groups sprung up this year to try to keep Mr. Nader off the ballot in the swing states, fearing he could siphon votes from Mr. Kerry as he did from Al Gore in 2000. In Florida that year, Mr. Nader won 1.6 percent of the vote. That accounted for 97,488 votes, and Mr. Bush beat Mr. Gore there by 537.

In 2000, Mr. Nader won 2.7 percent of the vote nationally. Pollsters say that this year, Mr. Nader's national support has dwindled, from a peak of 5 percent in May to 1.5 percent now.

In some states it is higher. This year in Iowa, the average of the latest polls shows Mr. Kerry with 47.5 percent of the vote, Mr. Bush with 46.6 percent and Mr. Nader with 4 percent.

The average of polls in Minnesota shows 45.5 percent for Mr. Kerry, 45.5 percent for Bush and 2.7 percent for Mr. Nader.

Mr. Nader is still in litigation to be on the ballot in Ohio, where Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry are in a dead heat and where Mr. Nader draws 1 percent of the vote. Mr. Nader is also appealing a court's throwing him off the Pennsylvania ballot.

Polls also show Mr. Nader drawing some support from Mr. Bush, though at a much lower level than from Mr. Kerry, which explains why Republicans have been supporting and encouraging his efforts to get on ballots while Democrats have mounted an orchestrated effort to keep him off.

"Though he hurts Kerry more than Bush, there's a potential that he hurts Bush, too," said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who has examined Nader voters, although she said potential Nader voters were difficult to find and hard to track.

Mr. Nader maintained in the interview "there is no evidence" that he takes votes from Mr. Kerry. He said surveys by Zogby showed him pulling equally from Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry.

A spokeswoman for Zogby International, Shawnta Walcott, said that Zogby polls showed Mr. Nader drawing far more from Mr. Kerry. She said the polls, aggregated from March through last month, showed that if Mr. Nader was not an option, 41 percent of his supporters went to Mr. Kerry and 15 percent went to Mr. Bush. Thirty percent went elsewhere and 13 percent were undecided.

Ms. Greenberg said that the profile of likely Nader supporters was changing and beginning to resemble that of voters who supported H. Ross Perot, the third-party candidate, in 1996, rather than those who supported Mr. Nader in 2000. Indeed, several celebrities and liberal activists who supported Mr. Nader in 2000 have renounced him and urged other former supporters to vote for Mr. Kerry, because defeating Mr. Bush is their top priority. Mr. Nader's former running mate, Winona LaDuke, has endorsed Mr. Kerry.

Voters who supported Mr. Nader in 2000 tended to split equally between men and women and who were white, liberal and college educated. Ms. Greenberg said voters who supported him tended to be white men, blue collar, fiscally conservative, populist, against open trade, angry about the high cost of health care and prescription drugs and virulently opposed to the Iraq war.

She said Mr. Kerry had helped diminish Mr. Nader's appeal to some of those voters through his advertising and in the debates.

"Nader is taking less out of Kerry now," she said. "So the leftover Nader vote is more conservative," meaning that they were Bush supporters originally but have defected, probably because he has allowed the deficit to balloon.

Still, the Nader factor seems wildly unpredictable.

"Nader is appealing to people who think neither party represents their interests," said David Jones, who runs an anti-Nader Web site, TheNaderFactor.com. "I don't know if we're dealing with the old 2000 voter or the new 2004 voter. The real question about them is will they vote?"

In the interview, Mr. Nader rejected the idea that he was a spoiler.

"I deny the designation entirely," he said. "Everyone is trying to get votes from everyone else. So we're all spoilers or none of us are spoilers."

Mr. Nader said his campaign was at the very least producing "great data" for him to use after the election to fight what he says are restrictive and unfair ballot-access laws. He said that in the long term his current fight would help destroy the two-party dominance of American politics, which he said was his goal.

"We lose to win, eventually," he said. "That's the story of social justice. You have to be willing to lose and fight, and lose and fight, and lose and fight. Until the agenda is won."


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