Christopher Ruddy
Monday, April 12, 2004

Here it is April –April! – and the bullets between the Bush and Kerry camps are flying.

Remember the good old days when the election hype began after Labor Day weekend – the “official” kickoff day for active campaigning?

Campaigning openly too much before Labor Day was considered a waste of time – the public would not focus on politics until the two months before Election Day, so the thinking went.

But Dick Morris changed all that. In 1994, he brilliantly advised Bill Clinton to raise and spend $200 million on local TV campaign ads – beginning two years before the 1996 election.

The effort worked. Now the wisdom is that it is never too early to campaign. It seems as if some candidates – Jeb Bush, Al Gore and Hillary, among others – are already campaigning for 2008.

Politics today has become better than most spectator sports – and the political “season” never ends. There are ongoing clashes and plenty of laughs. And there are several TV channels that give you a ringside seat – Fox, CNN and MSNBC, not to mention news sites like NewsMax.

Here’s my scorecard for Election Day 2004 in the third inning:

If the election were held today, George Bush would lose. I wish it were not so. I am not a pessimistic thinker, however; I think Bush can still win.

But oil prices are killing him. If gas were selling at $1.30 a gallon today, I would say Bush would be a sure bet to win. But prices are closer to $2 a gallon. There goes the weekend money for movies, Denny’s, Wal-Mart, and America’s right to the pursuit of happiness.

Jarret Wollstein writes in NewsMax’s Financial Intelligence Report that the OPEC nations, led by Saudi Arabia, want Bush out. The Saudis like Bush personally, but they know his administration is targeting Saudi Arabia because it is the prime source of funding for radical Islam.

Clearly, the economy has turned the corner. Jobs are being created – but not enough jobs to make the economy boom by November.

Americans vote their pocketbooks. “It’s the economy, stupid” won it for Clinton in ’92, and the same thing could win it for Kerry in 2004.

On the plus side, the Bush White House is not making the same mistake of the elder Bush, who lost to Clinton by brushing him off and taking the “high road.” The Republicans have come out swinging. They also are sticking to issues and Kerry’s official record.

No Mudslinging

Personal scandal won’t defeat Kerry. Republicans need to run from these issues like the plague. “Swing” independent voters will be repelled if it looks as if Republicans are out to sling mud at Kerry. Clinton’s Lewinsky scandals ended up being a diversion from the real worries about Clinton (national security) and actually helped his standing. Kerry’s personal life is his personal life.

That includes Kerry’s questionable Catholicism. Overt efforts by the Catholic Church to excommunicate Kerry during the election will backfire.

Kerry’s record on issues such as abortion have been well known for years – and the Church should have made its views about him known well before he ran for president. Rome and the Church’s involvement during the election season will help, not hurt, Kerry and create sympathy for him.

Without the economy in hand, Republicans are hanging their hopes on issues such as the war on terror and a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

While polling shows that both issues are winners for Bush and the Republicans, it is doubtful that these issues alone will help put Bush over the top.

For instance, in the so-called “red” states – the states that voted for Bush in 2000 – Bush’s opposition to gay marriage is hugely popular. But Bush has already won those states before the election. To win, he needs the swing states.

In states such as Florida, Ohio and New Mexico, it is questionable whether the gay marriage issue will be a help – and may even hurt with independent voters.

The Republicans should be battling for center voters. Kerry is desperately trying to do this, pretending to be a born-again conservative on spending and deficits and a hawk on foreign policy.

The reason for this is that 40 percent of voters solidly want Bush, another 40 percent want Kerry. The remaining swing, or independent, voters make up 20 percent. These folks are not as ideologically driven as those already in the Bush and Kerry camps.

The economy is key with this middle group. The economic indicators are not here yet to win them over, and so the Bush camp needs to take a new approach with them.

The Republicans need to explain that the Clinton recession was inherited by Bush – and began before he took office. Presenting himself as leading the recovery from a mess he did not create will help him.

Back in 2001 and 2002, I encouraged the Republicans to focus on the source of the recession. They would be in a much better position today had they done so.

The War on Terrorism

Then there is the war on terrorism. America is far safer because of George Bush. But safety is an intangible.

The media are playing the terror story that Bush should – and could – have prevented Sept. 11.

Again, right after Sept. 11, NewsMax was out of the box explaining that Bush inherited this national security nightmare from the previous administration. But the Republicans in Washington did not want to play the blame game.

Democrats, however, love playing the blame game. And now, years later, memories are blurred and people forget that Bush was in office less than eight months when al-Qaida struck.

It is not evident to most Americans that the Sept. 11 attacks were five years in the making, and almost all the terrorists entered the U.S. before George Bush even took the oath of office.

But the media are spinning Richard Clarke’s book and other information to make Bush the culpable party. The administration has to be more aggressive in explaining how the previous administration failed U.S. national security – and how those failures led directly to Sept. 11 and to the continuing vulnerability to terrorist attack.

By doing so, they undermine the Kerry-media effort to blame Bush for Sept. 11 while blunting the ability of the Democrats to blame Bush for possible terrorist attacks in the near future.

In politics, as in any other sport, success lies in anticipating your opponent’s next move. The Democrats will blame Bush completely for the next terrorist attack, if it happens. Shouldn’t the Republicans beat them to the punch?

Editor's note: