John L. Perry
Tuesday, Mar. 09, 2004

All of a sudden, John Kerry and the Democratic National Committee are on their way to winning this campaign … by default.

Their Bush-hating rallied the party’s radical core, but failed miserably to sell among most mainstream Americans, and won’t. However, it gave the leftist news media what they wanted – blood up their nose in their quest to defeat President Bush.

From Hating to Harassing

In just the past few days, the Kerry campaign has shifted gears, feeding the press more-substantial meat in the form of a tactical campaign of nagging at Bush on every conceivable issue, major or minor, in unblushing disregard for accuracy.

This has kept Bush off stride, occupying his campaign with answering allegations – responses that are lost amid the next Kerry cheap shots.

When the president does assert some initiative by pointing out Kerry’s voting flip-flops, the press sees to it that Bush’s own message is drowned out or distorted. Example: a Scripps Howard headline: “Bush Insults Kerry’s Intelligence Record.”

It’s Become Bearbaiting

Subjected to 24-hour assault after assault, Bush is depicted by hostile television and press commentary as vulnerable to all those attacks.

Chained in the triple roles of chief executive, commander-in-chief and Republican reelection candidate at the center of the largest public arena ever known, Bush jerks around to answer the attack dogs from one direction even as he is beset from another direction, and another, and another.

The Kerry campaign has taken on the relentless nature of 13th century bearbaiting.

The Madding Crowd

All to the frenzied delight of a roaring gallery, assembled and egged on by satellite television from every nook and cranny at home and in foreign lands.

This crowd registers the cries of derision it hears from one quarter and echoes them in another, and the catcalls reverberate in waves around and around the stadium.

The bear’s managers in the White House and the Republican National Committee seem not to feel his pain, but continue pushing him back down into the pit to endure more and more injury and insult with admonitions to keep on smiling through.

Concern Is Mounting

Now, some of Bush’s supporters are urging him to “fight back.” Well, obviously. The question, of course, is not whether but how.

Manipulating Bush to answer attack with counterattack is a campaign tactic made in heaven for his opponents. They jab, he responds. They bite, he snaps back. First from this side, then the other. Then the front, then the rear. In no time, they have him twisting and whirling, sweating and frothing.

The inevitable culmination of bearbaiting is never pretty. It is always certain.

So how in heaven’s name does George W. Bush get out of this nightmare?

Preemptive Politics

The answer lies not in matching Kerry’s attacks with his own counterattacks. That’s conceding the outcome to the opposition.

There is only one campaign strategy that turns bearbaiting into victory for the attacked. It is something called preemptive politics, and ideally it should have begun a year ago.

The better news is that it is still not too late.

Preemption is at least as old as Sun Tzu, the name given to probably a succession of wise Chinese military strategists some 2,500 years ago. The strategy of preemption is chronicled in Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War,” studied even today at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

From the Heights

In essence, it advises: Take the high ground above the battlefield and command the fighting before it becomes war.

The fighting has already begun, in earnest. But this war can yet be won, by preemption.

The political equivalent translates something like this:

Bush should identify the one, two or three overriding election-winning, election-losing issues. They must be issues that Kerry cannot lightly shake off, that he is impelled to answer yet cannot answer effectively. The more he tries to explain them away, the more they adhere to his coat.

Taking Up a Position

Bush will have to stake out major strategic, commanding heights from which to rain down the heavy ordnance upon Kerry.

The objective is to take away from Kerry the multiple initiatives he now employs in the form of jabs and bites that keep Bush twisting around in response.

Bush must keep those strategic blows falling on Kerry, one after another and all together, in parallel series, so often and so heavily that Kerry has no time or or room to make his tactical thrusts.

Never Let Up

If Bush is to survive, he must preempt the field of battle and never allow Kerry another moment to catch his breath and regain his footing.

This is not the same as answering volley for volley, punch for punch, jab for jab, bite for bite.

Nor does it mean Bush should become mean-spirited, nasty, vindictive, arrogant. Quite the contrary. He can do it all while remaining presidential, magnanimous, concerned, caring, smiling.

Anger Has Its Place

There is also a proper time for him to conduct such a strategy with stern disapproval and justifiable indignation. He is, after all, in charge. An entire nation’s fate rests with him, and he shouldn’t brook any irresponsible accusations.

Certainly, Bush should not adopt Kerry’s campaign tactic of hatred. That is untrue to Bush’s nature, and it will sink him for certain if he opts to sling mud for mud. People expect mud from Kerry, not the president. Leave the hog wallow to Kerry.

It Bush starts off matching Kerry tactical shot for tactical shot, he will never reach the commanding heights from which to control the battlefield and win the war.

Someone Will Get There

Bush must pick the handful of unanswerable issues to use against Kerry, launch them from the heights and begin doing this right away.

Otherwise, Kerry will, through minor attack after minor attack, scrabble his way to the top of the heights, and the outcome will not be in doubt.

He who reaches there first wins.

Time’s a’wasting.

John L. Perry, a prize-winning newspaper editor and writer who served on White House staffs of two presidents, is a regular columnist for NewsMax.com.

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