Thursday, July 22, 2004

What Kerry Should Do To Win The Presidency

I've been thinking about what Kerry needs to do to win this election:

He needs to focus on a key theme (at most two, one for foreign policy and one for the economy). This key theme should be "Time to Get the Terrorists" (hopefully, something more eloquent and less vague than "The War on Terror"). He should argue for more aggressive military/police/CIA action in Afghanistan/Pakistan, where Al Qaeda is, and for more aggressive domestic security measures. Since we are already in Iraq, on fictious and corrupt terms, moving the War on Terror to where the true fighting needs to be (even though fighting a war on terror is an impossible feat, especially without diplomatic conversations), would be a better stance for Kerry.

He should emphasize that our "go it alone" approach in Iraq has drained critical resources from bolstering our anti-terrorism and domestic security measures. He should imply that one of the benefits of having our allies go along with us in Iraq (and elsewhere) - through better diplomacy, less willingness to jump into a unilateral military approach, etc. - would have been that our allies could have shared some of the resource burden which we now unfortunately bear alone.

Hammering on this theme would accomplish a number of things. One, it would distinguish Kerry from Bush on the anti-terrorism front. A May WSJ/NBC poll question "Was removing Saddam Hussein from power worth it, yes or no?" yielded the following responses:

All voters - yes 40% no 51%
Republicans - yes 72% no 18%
Democrats - yes 14% no 80%
Independents - yes 29% no 59%
Swing Voters - yes 26% no 64%

So the "Time to Get the Terrorists" position would appeal to the critical swing voters as well as energize the Democratic base (much like Dean's early opposition to the Iraq war did). Two, it would improve Kerry's chances of "connecting" with the voters. Kerry is often perceived of as cold, distant and intellectual (sound familiar Gore?). This is a tough perception to have if you are trying to emphasize with the plight of middle class families. It also doesn't help that he's the once-divorced husband of a rich heiress. But the "cold" perception can be transformed into "tough" if you recast Kerry in the role as commander in chief. He's a war hero. Sure, he's distant, but that reflects toughness. Kerry can say he will be the tough AND intelligent (in contrast to Bush) anti-terrorism leader. Third, hammering on a few themes will help dispel the image of Kerry's being a "flip-flopper". Fourth (and finally), if Kerry focuses more on "Time to Get the Terrorists", it will leave Edwards more of a role to talk about domestic issues and middle class angst. This is right up Edwards' alley. A bonus benefit would be: every time the Bush administration issued a terror warning or monkeyed with the terror alert level (like in the recent past two weeks), it would remind people that all the Iraq business has not eliminated the terrorist threat.

More to come later...after all, this is my first blog!

posted by Only The Lonely @ 2:38 PM