Doing an Atwater on Kerry

[mia]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53583-2004Jul15.html

"...Atwater's spirit is hovering around this year's campaign, and the Democrats need to sleuth out the content of the 3-by-5 card on John Kerry.

...On the central issue of the campaign, Bush is understandably pushing the Iraq debate away from the specific -- the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, poor postwar planning, etc. -- to the general plane of character and toughness. Bush is using a zinger aimed at all soft and elitist believers in psychobabble. "You can't negotiate with terrorists," Bush says. "You can't sit back and hope that somehow therapy will work and they will change their ways."

Bush even suggests subtly that if the voters toss him from office, they will fail the values test by breaking the country's commitments. The reformist leaders of Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush says, "need to hear from America that they can count on the American people. You see, when we give our word, we keep our word." Message: Keep your country's promise. Vote for Bush.

Republican pollster David Winston's helpful definition of the two types of "values" arguments is a good guide to which Atwateresque moves might work this year. There are "values you default to that are appealing to your base, which tend to reinforce an existing belief." And "there are values that are oriented to the middle which tend to be fundamentally optimistic and designed to solve a problem."

Bush risks pushing too hard on the first kind of values issues, as he did on the gay marriage amendment. But in trying to paint Kerry as weak, vacillating and unprepared to lead the country in the war on terrorism, Bush is reaching for a much broader audience. Atwater and his excellent nerds would happily put that argument on a 3-by-5 card. That should be enough to make Kerry's campaign take it seriously.

The negative, pessamistic flip-flop argument against Kerry is getting old. What exactly, has the Bush administration done that is positive for the citizens of the United States? Can the GOP fill one line of a 3-by-5 card? Those of us in the middle may be fundamentally optimistic but it's not because Bush has solved any of our problems.

[BeyondGeography]

1. Bush's brain doesn't fill a 3 X 5 card

Unfortunately, neither do the brains of much of his target audience.

More proof that the global reputation of this country is on the line in this election. If we re-elect this dunce, we have officially become a Confederacy of Dunces (RIP John Kennedy Toole).

[mia]

2. Loved that book.

Here's for getting the dunce-in-chief his own hot dog cart.

[Skittles]

3. I remember that miserable bastard Atwater

he repented in the end, but not soon enough.