October 26, 2004, 8:19 a.m.
One Week to Go
On the trail with W.

Davenport, Iowa — President George W. Bush gave speeches in two swing states on Monday. In Greeley, Colorado, he launched a new round of attacks on John Kerry's record and positions on national security. In Iowa, he gave his standard stump speech with a few of those new lines thrown in.

The attack on Kerry is occasionally funny, but mostly tough. Bush offers variations on the theme that Kerry is a flip-flopping liberal. Bush points out that Kerry has said that we're better off with Saddam Hussein in jail, and that the Iraq war has made us less safe; that Saddam Hussein was a threat, and that he wasn't. Bush isn't letting the media's biased "fact checkers" keep him from saying that Kerry would give other countries a veto over our national-security policies. He hits Kerry on the $87 billion in Iraqi reconstruction and troop-funding money he voted against, and on his 1991 vote against the first Gulf War. There are as many boos for Kerry as cheers for Bush, and at one point when Bush is laying into his opponent a man yells, "Neville Chamberlain!"

Bush also, however, makes the positive case for his "forward strategy of freedom" in Colorado (although he did not use the phrase). He is trying to "shrink the area where the terrorists can freely operate" and thinks that "spreading liberty" will make the world "a much safer place for future generations." "The election in Afghanistan this month and the election in Iraq next January will be counted as landmark events in the history of liberty."

The standard stump speech, which he gave in Iowa, does some quick scene-setting. ("We both have records. I'm proudly running on mine. The senator's running from his.") He then moves to five "clear choices" that face the electorate. Bush says that he is good, and Kerry bad, on national security, the "family budget," the "quality of life" (by which he means health and education), retirement security, and values. He covers the waterfront, from Kerry's past tax hikes ("When someone does something that often he must really enjoy it") to Kerry's health-care plan ("It is a plan that will lead us down the road to federal control of health care") to Bush's views on judges and tort reform. It's a good, effective speech.

The Bush aides I talk to seem confident, as do the Democrats. Dan Bartlett was crowing about Kerry pulling out of Colorado on Monday. "We feel like we've closed the deal there," he tells me. "And Kerry was in three states that Gore won today: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin." (He forgot to mention that Kerry started the day in New Hampshire, which Bush won last time.) "And having to bring Clinton out to mobilize core constituencies demonstrates that he's underperforming in key areas." The polls out Monday, he says, average to a 3.3-3.5 percent advantage for the president.

Bush headed to La Crosse, Wisconsin, on Monday night to begin the next day's campaigning. If he moves Iowa and Wisconsin into the red column, he can, just barely, get by while losing New Hampshire and Ohio.

The president faces some tough circumstances: rising oil prices, falling stock markets, a war that is, at best, not terribly popular. The rest of the case for a Democratic victory is that "undecided voters break against the incumbent" and Democrats will turn out in greater numbers than Republicans.

In 2000, Democrats made up a lot of ground in the last few days of the campaign because the Bush-DUI story broke, they ran ads attacking Bush on Social Security, and they had a better turnout operation. In 2002, it was Republicans who outperformed the polls. Was that because it was only a year after September 11 and Republicans do better in off-year elections? Or because September 11 has changed American politics for the long run and Republican turnout operations have improved?

Both parties have put a lot of effort into turnout this time. My guess is that since 2000, Republicans have improved the mechanical part of getting out the vote more than Democrats have. They had further to go. Also, the growth of the exurbs gives Republicans a concentrated pool of voters they didn't have before, which makes turnout easier. But mechanics aren't all that go into turnout, of course. There's also passion, and it's hard to gauge its relative balance in this election. But I suppose we'll all know soon enough.

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