Reply #22: For Voters, Osama Replaces the Common Criminal - NYT [View All]

[Wonk]

By Eric Lichtblau, New York Times News Service
July 18, 2004

WASHINGTON — Murder rates are edging up around the country. In the shadow of the White House, the capital has suffered a rash of gang violence and car thefts, with five people shot in one attack last week. Police chiefs nationwide complain that federal officials are cutting the money they need to protect their cities.

But you won't hear much talk about these problems from either George W. Bush or John F. Kerry, his Democratic rival for the presidency. Crime, once as much a staple of campaigns as the sight of politicians kissing babies, has become perhaps the biggest non-issue of the 2004 election.

(snip)

But the overriding explanation is that crime has simply fallen under the emotional shadow of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Willie Horton, the rapist made notorious by Mr. Bush's father in the 1988 campaign, has been replaced by Osama bin Laden as the poster boy for what ails America.

Few challenge the grave importance of terrorism as an over-arching issue that will define the 2004 campaign. But the lack of political attention given to much more common crime grates at longtime law enforcement leaders like Hubert Williams, a former police chief and president of the Police Foundation, a Washington group that studies law enforcement issues, and they are beginning to bring their concerns to the surface.

Mr. Williams says the threat of terrorism issue is "an emotional hot-button" that diverts politicians from addressing gun violence and drug trafficking, even as police departments are pressed to devote more money to counterterrorism. "We've got serious problems that are not being addressed on the crime front, and neither party is doing much to deal with it," he said. "There's a real frustration within the law enforcement community that these issues are not even being discussed."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/weekinreview/18eric.html