Kerry dealing with Nader factor
Here’s an irony: If the military situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, President Bush could benefit at the polls in November.
It sounds crazy, but it’s entirely plausible. As the price of the Iraqi occupation keeps rising, in lives and dollars, discontent could rise as well. If a true antiwar movement takes hold in the coming months, disillusioned Democrats could turn to Ralph Nader as their hero, and the country could face a rerun of 2000, when Nader’s votes cost Al Gore the election.
The latest ABC News/Washington Post shows how this scenario could play out. If voters choose among three candidates, Bush leads Kerry by five points, with Nader getting seven. If Nader is removed from the equation, Bush’s lead shrinks to just two points, well within the margin of error.
One key factor here is Kerry’s inability to capitalize on Bush’s mistakes in Iraq. First of all, he voted for the war, so his fingerprints are all over it. More important, Kerry is following the responsible course and agreeing with Bush that the worst outcome for American credibility would be leaving Iraq too soon. Good policy, but poor politics. Kerry can’t get a clean shot at Bush because he can’t offer a sharply defined alternative.
About all Kerry can muster is the suggestion that Bush should “internationalize” the conflict by relying more heavily on the United Nations. But that is exactly what Bush is doing by saying that he would accept a new governmental structure suggested by U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to replace American proconsul Paul Bremer this summer.
The president is copying his strategy right out of Bill Clinton’s political playbook: when in doubt, steal your opponent’s best ideas. Clinton filched welfare reform and a balanced budget from the GOP, Bush robbed education and prescription drugs from the Democrats. And now the president is essentially co-opting the one option Kerry has to offer.
But Kerry’s problems on Iraq go deeper. His 20 years in the Senate leave him with innumerable votes to defend, including some against Pentagon spending requests. And he seems afflicted with a bad case of Senatespeak, a disease that causes its victims to shade and qualify their public statements to the point of blandness and even incoherence.
When Kerry famously announced that he had actually voted for the Iraq appropriations bill before he voted against it, he was using pure Senatespeak. That’s what senators do, because that’s what life in a legislative body requires — accommodation, conciliation, a constant buffering of sharp edges in search of a compromise that can command a majority.
But presidents are executives, not legislators, and executive leadership requires clear, strongly held views. That’s why four of our last five presidents have been governors, and why only two men in the entire history of the country have done what Kerry is trying to do — win the presidency while still serving in Congress.
Nader is not stuck because he is not constrained by past votes or a sense of national responsibility. He is free to propose a “date certain” for pulling the troops out
If the war goes badly, and the peace movement grows, the temptation to back Nader as a protest candidate could grow as well. And those protest votes could help re-elect the president.
(Cokie and Steven Roberts are sydicated columnists.)