Fear: Bush
strategy for ’04?
By PAT MURPHY
The growing field of eager Democrats
clamoring for the 2004 presidential nomination to take on George Bush may find
their likely fate in Israel’s recent elections.
Despite staggering majorities as high as
70 percent disapproving of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s tactics against
Palestinians and his settlement expansion policies, they voted him back into
office anyway out of the most compelling human motivation of all—fear.
Israelis feared that other candidates
whose policies were more to their liking lacked the brass knuckle stuff to deal
with Palestinian terrorists.
So, how does this translate for 2004’s
U.S. presidential elections?
The political juggernaut masterminded by
the cunning White House Svengali, Karl Rove, is conditioning Americans with a
subliminal foreboding of the future, and, ipso facto, that 2004 is no time to
change leaders. As another Republican, Abraham Lincoln, said in 1864 during the
Civil War in his second run for president, "It is not best to swap horses while
crossing the river."
Rove makes certain there’s no evidence of
overt political exploitation of terrorism or an Iraqi war.
But images and words are relentless.
On Sunday, commander-in-chief George W.
Bush ramped war talk to a new level. "We are now a battle ground."
The government’s color-coded terrorist
threat level alert is periodically ratcheted up, then down, along with warnings
of increased peril that have yet to develop.
Television follows troops in battle
camouflage bidding farewell to weeping children and spouses as they head for
harm’s way.
Small pox vaccinations are provided for
homeland responders to protect them against biological attack.
The Justice Department admits it’s
discussing amendments to the Patriot Act to give John Ashcroft more police
powers without judicial oversight.
Criticism will be regarded as un-American.
A fund-raising letter bearing the signature of the most powerful Republican on
Capitol Hill, Majority Leader Rep. Tom ("The Hammer") DeLay of Texas, accuses
labor unions of unpatriotically "(using) the national emergencies we face today
to grab more power." DeLay, known for his below-the-belt tactics, haughtily
claims he didn’t authorize the letter; an assistant was responsible, he claims.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge
advises Americans to carry personal documents—as if papers are needed (a) to
navigate police checkpoints or (b) for identification in the event of death
during a terrorist attack.
President Bush also talks of long-term
domestic programs, hinting (as Israel’s Ariel Sharon did) that none are
attainable without his hand on the national tiller for years to come.
Suggesting his indispensability in a
crisis is a winning tactic. With the crisis continuing for as far as the
political eye can see, war and talk of war and symbols of war will be
everywhere, everyday for Americans right up to Election Day 2004.
Democrats hoping to outsmart Bush will
have to come up with something better than their simple-minded whimpering if
they hope to change the American mood and debunk Lincoln’s cracker barrel wisdom
about changing horses.