GOP could make nasty 2004 campaign
Democrats are already making this into one of the nastiest presidential campaigns ever. It could get much worse if Republicans again play the “patriotism” card.
Democratic presidential candidates have accused President Bush of being a “liar,” a “phony” and a “cowboy” who “deceived” the country into war and now is “failing to protect American troops.” According to various Democrats, he is also “the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history” and runs the government to benefit his “campaign contributors.”
And, some of them say, Bush got to be president in the first place because his party “disenfranchised” black voters in Florida and “stole” the 2000 election.
Depending on events, the Iraq war could produce some very bitter campaign ads, showing Bush landing in his flight suit aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln with its sign “Mission Accomplished” and then counting U.S. combat losses since then.
Or, ads showing Bush and Vice President Cheney claiming that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, was working on nuclear weapons and had Al Qaeda links, then alleging that Bush “lied us into war.”
But, the GOP proved itself capable in the 2002 campaign of savagely accusing Democrats of harming the war on terrorism by opposing Bush. They could well do it again.
Most notorious was the ad run by now-Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., against then-Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., who lost an arm and both legs fighting in the Vietnam War.
The ad showed pictures of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Then a narrator declared, “As America faces terrorists and extremist dictators, Max Cleland runs television ads claiming he has the courage to lead. He says he supports President Bush at every opportunity, but that’s not the truth. Since July, Max Cleland voted against President Bush’s vital homeland security efforts 11 times.”
Similar ads were run against other Democrats; it was part of a concerted GOP strategy. In late September last year, Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., then chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told me that he personally approved all his candidates’ ads.
Cleland, a war hero, was made out to be aiding America’s enemies by joining other Democrats in trying to protect the union rights of federal workers.
One can only imagine what Republicans could do if, as seems certain, the Democratic nominee either opposed the Iraq war in the first place or Bush’s conduct of it since.
So far, the GOP has done little negative campaigning. Bush is out telling voters and fellow Republicans what he’s done and tried to do.
But, in Senate testimony in late 2001, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that “to those … who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.”
Ashcroft now says that debate about his anti-terrorist methods is healthy, but some Democrats have bitterly attacked Ashcroft, and the GOP might well exploit their criticism by accusing them of “aiding terrorists.”
Bush himself has raised the stakes in the Iraq struggle very high. Of the violence occurring there, he said last Sunday night, “The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world.”
The GOP has shown it is not above using policy disagreement to accuse opponents of aiding the enemy. As low as Democrats have gone in attacking Bush this year, the GOP could go even lower.
(Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.)