John Kerry might yet come back and win. If not, it’s possible to pinpoint the moment he and the Democrats put themselves on a glide path toward defeat. It didn’t have anything to do with Kerry per se, but it affected contemporary Democratic politics in an irrevocable way. Last June, Howard Dean went on Meet the Press and had, by any reasonable standard, a disastrous performance. Among other things, he didn’t know how big the U.S. military is.
If the traditional rules of presidential politics had applied, Dean probably would have been laughed out of serious contention. Instead, he got a boost. Contributions poured into his website, helping create that famous Dean Surge. Donating to Dean despite his obvious shortcomings was a way to stick it to the establishment: “Sure our candidate is a walking embarrassment, but we like him anyway–so take that!”
This dynamic fueled Dean’s gravity-defying candidacy for months. He didn’t bother to become a better candidate because it didn’t seem necessary. Dean eventually got his comeuppance in a Kerry comeback widely interpreted as a return to Democratic rationality.
But the massive apparatus of outside Democratic money and activism that fueled Dean didn’t go anywhere. It hated President Bush, and it would do as much this year, with its financial might, to define the Democratic message as the Kerry campaign would do. Just one such outside group, MoveOn.org, has spent roughly $17 million. To what effect? A recent MoveOn.org ad was typical. It slammed Bush for getting us into a quagmire in Iraq, depicting a U.S. soldier slowly sinking into quicksand until he raises his rifle in a surrender-like gesture.
This ad must have been emotionally satisfying to produce, but the over-the-top image of a helpless U.S. soldier was radioactive and provided an opening to the Bush campaign to excoriate Democratic defeatism. Like the Dean candidacy itself, much of the advocacy of anti-Bush Lefties this year has been an expression of purposeless fury. MoveOn.org could just as well be called ActingOut.org. As the brilliant journalist Mark Steyn puts it, “Rather than making new converts for the party, they seem mainly to have radicalized the existing ones,” forcing “a vacuous establishment nominee to genuflect in their direction.”
The way a slave used to whisper in a conquering Roman general’s ear, “You are a mere mortal,” Democrats have been whispering in Kerry’s ear, “You must be angrier.” So he responded to the Swift Boat ads with an attack on Dick Cheney’s draft deferments and Bush’s Guard service, emphasizing Vietnam just when it was clear Vietnam was the wrong subject for him. Kerry has been advised at every turn to make the race about George Bush, natural advice from people who are motivated above all by their animus toward Bush.
What they are missing is that a challenger must offer his own compelling and substantive vision. Bill Clinton didn’t just bash the first President Bush in 1992, he sold his own detailed budget and economic plan. As Kerry has spent more and more time criticizing Bush, unfavorable impressions of his candidacy have steadily increased. He has been driving his own campaign into the ground.
Which in turn has led to more flailing on the left. MoveOn.org has taken to running attack advertisements against the Gallup Poll for conducting surveys that show its candidate is behind. Talk about blaming the messenger! In a perfect distillation of its work this year, the ad isn’t even accurate, suggesting Gallup’s survey is skewed by the evangelical Christianity of executive George Gallup Jr.–but he retired from the company back in May, well before Kerry’s numbers began to tank.
And so it goes. St. Augustine said the wages of sin are sin. Similarly, the wages of the Left’s impotent rage this year just might be the occasion for yet more impotent rage: a Bush reelection, even after he looked so beatable for so long. Come on, everyone, all together now for a good Dean screech: YAAAAAARGHHH!
–Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.
(c)2004 King Features Syndicate