Saving Dubya From His Own "New Tone"

At least one pundit believes that it is Bush, and not the Swifties, who is playing Kerry like a ten-cent flute.

[T]he President comes off as the champion of upright McCain-Feingold reform, while Kerry is stuck with George Soros & Co. If the senator cuts off his billionaire backers, he suffocates. If he sticks with Soros, et al., he's stuck with the Swifties, too. That's a hook Kerry can wriggle on until November 2nd. Then Bush will throw him back.

The 43rd President is often said by his critics to be a dunce. Maybe. But in politics, as in fishing, you don't have to be a genius. You just have to be smarter than the fish.

I don’t know that I’d lather up Dubya to that extent. Rather, I think that he is as much an innocent beneficiary of the Swiftboat Vets’ attack as Kerry is complicit in the shenanigans of his own 527s.

It all gets back to the famous “new tone” that was a centerpiece of the 2000 Bush campaign. Such themes are generally considered to be gimmickry, and certainly were by the Democrats, largely because they are incapable of not projecting their own modus operandi on their foes. Thus the incessantly ridiculous lib chatter about the “Republican smear and hate machine” and “GOP dirty tricks” and so forth. Either that or Dems are as unable to let go of Watergate as they are of Vietnam.

Thing is, as the last three and a half years have shown, for Bush the “new tone” isn’t an election angle. He really believes in it. Whether it’s just a quirk of his personality or a Bush family trait or a manifestation of his Christian faith, he simply will not engage in hardball, bare-knuckle, smash-mouth, knee-to-the-groin politics even in the midst of a hard-fought re-election bid. This explains why he sat back and let the disloyal opposition batter the bejesus out of him for ten solid months unopposed and unanswered. It explains why he has scrupulously avoided even looking cross-eyed at John Kerry’s Vietnam-era military record and anti-war agitating. And it explains why Dubya is condemning all 527 activity.

Since McCain-Feingold prohibits independent promotion of candidates, about all a 527 can do his attack the candidate(s) it opposes. And the President, having endured the months and months of lib bashing, probably – hard-core ‘Pubbies may want to sit down before reading further – feels sorry for the grief his opponent is currently getting from the Swiftboat Vets. IOW, “it isn’t nice,” just as the lib 527s aren’t “nice,” and so all 527s should sit down and shut up.

This is, of course, a case of Bush “reaping what he sewed,” since he was the one that signed McCain-Feingold into law in the first place. Before that there was at least some discernable level of accountability for “soft” money expenditures and activities. Now they’ve simply been driven “underground” where the same basic things still go on.

For Democrats, anyway. They recognized a golden opportunity when they saw one and pounced, much to the White House’s chagrin. Meanwhile, Republicans played King Kanute denying the sea, still clinging to their naïve belief that both sides would play by the new rules, and thinking that McCain-Feingold could be used to shut down Dem 527s when they starting popping up like dandelions. When you look at the whole thing that way, it’s difficult not to conclude that Bush and his party almost deserve the beating they’ve taken. As Leo Durocher once said, “Nice guys finish last.” As Lazarus Long will say, “The meek shall indeed inherit the Earth – in little 4x6 plots.” And as I say, “It’s better to want political power too much, like the Democrats do, than to be like Republicans, and not want it enough.”

And that’s where the Swifties have come in. They’re not pro-Bush, after all, but virulently anti-Kerry. They’d be going after the Boston Balker no matter who his opponent was, or if he was a Republican himself. And they’re taking him on in the “issue” on which he is actually campaigning – his combat tour in Vietnam – where Kerry needs to be challenged. Bush is neither well-suited nor temperamentally inclined to do that, and yet it is proving to be the fulcrum upon which this election campaign is turning in his favor. You could even say that the Swiftboat Vets are doing for the President’s re-election chances what then-Lieutenant Kerry did for Jim Rassman – whether he likes it or not.

In any case, it’s a bit late for either candidate to start lamenting the unintended (heh) consequences of the ongoing effort to gut the First Amendment for the benefit of the ruling class. And according to today’s Wall Street Journal…

A political group recently formed by backers of President Bush has amassed a treasure chest of $35 million and plans a barrage of commercials criticizing Democratic challenger Senator John Kerry, even though the President this week denounced such outside organizations for running negative campaign ads.

The Progress for America Voter Fund was launched in May after the Federal Election Commission refused to shut down a crop of well-funded liberal organizations that were going after the President. Those groups, known as 527s, had formed quickly and begun raising large sums in the wake of new campaign laws, gaining a substantial edge on Republicans. Now, in an election already steamrolling fund-raising records, the new Republican group's deep pockets - matching those of some of the big Democratic groups - seem sure to set up an intense, and highly partisan, big-money battle on airwaves this fall.

Progress for America plans to begin airing ads today in two battleground states, Wisconsin and Iowa, says Mr. McCabe. The ads question whether Senator Kerry would have adequately handled the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.

One of the commercials opens with the smoky ruins of the Twin Towers and moves to several pictures of Mr. Bush with New York firefighters and other rescue workers. A narrator praises Mr. Bush's leadership, and asks: ‘But what if Bush wasn't there? Could John Kerry have shown this leadership?’ Then the ad ticks off votes by Senator Kerry that it portrays as being against intelligence and Defense Department budgets.

Isn’t it amazing how dramatically the game changes when both sides compete?

As William Shakespeare once put it, “Cry havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!”

Or, as Judge Mills Lane likes to say, “Let’s git it on!”