Sunday, October 03, 2004
Believing the Hype
One of my persistent themes here has been the self-indulgent and self-defeating consequences of liberals attacking Bush's intelligence. For various reasons, I find these attacks unseemly and unbecoming. More to the point, I find them dangerously self-destructive - showing a distasteful degree of smugness and self-attributed superiority. Moderate voters still matter and they're not generally impressed by such things.
This problem exists on the left, but it now seems to me that the right is even more afflicted. The problem with constantly caricaturing your adversary is that after a while you might start to believe it and underestimate him. Democrats owe it to themselves to understand that Bush is a capable adversary. Bush, too, would have been well advised to consider the possibility that John Kerry is actually a smart and dangerous opponent.
Somewhere in the last month's crescendo of negative advertising, the Republicans forgot to respect their adversary. They started to believe their own wild advertising. They had a hard time concealing just how receptive they were to the claims of the Swift Boat clowns - the disgusting purple heart bandages on display at the RNC were one sign of that. They got so plugged into the exuberance of their convention and the post-convention polling bounce that they essentially forgot that Kerry had led them decisively for a month. To some degree, they can't help it. The image of a Democratic candidate as wishy-washy predates this election by decades. The image was set a long time before Bush journeyed forth from Crawford. And it's been useful more often than not.
This time, they woefully underestimated Kerry. Bush was deeply unprepared on Thursday and was clearly rattled. This represents more than his own failure - it's the failure of his advisors. They lost the fruits of a smear campaign that cost them hundreds of millions and suffered a defeat that cannot fully be undone. Thursday was supposed to be Dubya's night to shine on security issues. He can fight to drag them in next Friday, but this was supposed to be his to win.
The same wishful thinking that has so undermined Bush's governance is now unraveling his reelection bid. There's something excellent about that.
One of my persistent themes here has been the self-indulgent and self-defeating consequences of liberals attacking Bush's intelligence. For various reasons, I find these attacks unseemly and unbecoming. More to the point, I find them dangerously self-destructive - showing a distasteful degree of smugness and self-attributed superiority. Moderate voters still matter and they're not generally impressed by such things.
This problem exists on the left, but it now seems to me that the right is even more afflicted. The problem with constantly caricaturing your adversary is that after a while you might start to believe it and underestimate him. Democrats owe it to themselves to understand that Bush is a capable adversary. Bush, too, would have been well advised to consider the possibility that John Kerry is actually a smart and dangerous opponent.
Somewhere in the last month's crescendo of negative advertising, the Republicans forgot to respect their adversary. They started to believe their own wild advertising. They had a hard time concealing just how receptive they were to the claims of the Swift Boat clowns - the disgusting purple heart bandages on display at the RNC were one sign of that. They got so plugged into the exuberance of their convention and the post-convention polling bounce that they essentially forgot that Kerry had led them decisively for a month. To some degree, they can't help it. The image of a Democratic candidate as wishy-washy predates this election by decades. The image was set a long time before Bush journeyed forth from Crawford. And it's been useful more often than not.
This time, they woefully underestimated Kerry. Bush was deeply unprepared on Thursday and was clearly rattled. This represents more than his own failure - it's the failure of his advisors. They lost the fruits of a smear campaign that cost them hundreds of millions and suffered a defeat that cannot fully be undone. Thursday was supposed to be Dubya's night to shine on security issues. He can fight to drag them in next Friday, but this was supposed to be his to win.
The same wishful thinking that has so undermined Bush's governance is now unraveling his reelection bid. There's something excellent about that.
