Careful what you Bush for

[Emillereid]

 

By Spengler 

08/04/04 "Asia Times" -- Two predictions:  1) George W Bush will win a second term as president of the United States. 2) He will be sorry he did. 

The dog that did not bark at the Democratic Party's convention was opposition to the Iraq war. To the chagrin of the Europeans, who oppose the war by vast margins, the Democratic leadership all but muzzled opponents of a war. The battle will be fought on Bush's ground. 

Senator John Kerry set himself up for defeat by making an issue of the conduct of the Iraq war, rather than the war itself. Bush will pull a rabbit out of his hat or, to be more precise, a bear, as I reported last week (When Grozny comes to Fallujah, July 27). 

Replacing the commander-in-chief in the midst of war is something Americans never have done, although Abraham Lincoln had some sleepless nights before the 1864 elections. Americans want a war, and will choose the war party in the end, however they may chastise the president for his numerous errors. As in war, in politics as well, the threat is mightier than the execution. Poor results in the opinion polls are a warning to the president, not repudiation. 

Bush opened Pandora's box a year ago, and not even Kerry proposes to shut it. In this case Pandora's box better resembles a nested set of Russian dolls. Open one, and a bevy of demons flies out, forcing you to open the next one, and so forth. Dubya will be the president who led the US into a world civilizational war, although it is more precise to say that civilizational war led the US into it. Many will be the night during his second term that Bush will wish he were still in Texas, and still drunk. .........

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6624.htm

Sure hope this guy is wrong -- but I fear he isn't. When Teresa said four more years of hell under George, I don't think she knew the half of it!

[shoelace414]

1. but but but

Replacing the commander-in-chief in the midst of war is something Americans never have done

Vietnam?

[Emillereid]

2. LBJ took himself out of the election -- the American people didn't

vote him out.

[calico1]

5. True. But I wonder if he would

have been reelected had he stayed in the race? The difference between Vietam and Iraq and both World Wars for example is that with the latter the country was very united. Vietnam divided the country as has Iraq. Of course there is the terror issue which is Bush's best trump card. What I fear is that there are enough stupid people to vote based on fear and on the illogical conclusion that even though Bush has done a lousy job of protecting the country we can't change leaders with the country under terror threats. A lot of people don't read, don't inform themselves and they just don't understand everything that is at stake.

[lapfog_1]

6. True, on the face of it.

But LBJ most likely could NOT win the democratic nomination, so
for him to stay in he would have had to form a third party or
switch to republican (and they would not have been happy to have
him). So he decided not to run.

But it is true that we have been reluctant to change presidents
while in a shooting war. But the difference here is that the
War on Terror is and is not a shooting war... plus a lot of people
think we are simply "mopping up" in Iraq now (doesn't help that
Iraq gets almost no news airtime anymore). So are we in WWII or
are we fighting the "War on Drugs" or the "War on Poverty" or
the "War on Crime"? (we 'Mericans like to start these types of
"wars", apparently)

[Emillereid]

7. What worries me is the way Bush exploits people's fear -- neither LBJ or

Nixon even did that.

Check out the following on how effective Bush plays the terra card:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/07/30/vote.psych.reut/

Study: Fear shapes voters' views

Responses to candidates differ after thinking about tragedy




WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President George W. Bush may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the September 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

"There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat," said Sheldon Solomon of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, who worked on the study.

<snip>
"In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV," Solomon said. "What we found was staggering."

When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq. But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.

"They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq," Solomon said......

In almost every speech Bush refers to 9/11 or something that says: danger, danger, danger!

[RC]

3. And if the present pResident started the war

for fun and profit? To steal the oil of a country Innocent of 9/11. Is that not reason enough to replace him?

Whether or not a president has been replaced during war time is a strawman argument anyway. This has nothing to do with anything.

[Hoping4Change]

4. I wasn't going to post this but John MacArthur of Harpers raises

questions about Kerry's contortions about the war though he doesn't foresee a Bush win.

"I think John Kerry is fundamentally anti-war -- he has to be after experiencing the insanity of Vietnam. I think his vote for Mr. Bush's Iraq folly was a cynical political choice, not a genuine commitment. I have to believe that fewer people will die in Iraq during a Kerry administration.

In an earlier life, Mr. Kerry famously asked, apropos of Mr. Nixon's continued ferocity in Vietnam, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" I hope we're not asking the day after the election why more men will have to die for a mistake in political strategy."




Iraq confounds, Kerry contorts

You'd think ending an unpopular and bloody war would be central to John Kerry's platform. He's twisting himself in knots to avoid the topic, says JOHN MacARTHUR

I know what the Kerry strategists are thinking -- the anti-war types will vote against Mr. Bush no matter what Mr. Kerry says about Iraq, so why buy trouble with potent fundraisers like Bill and Hillary and the "support our troops, Abu Ghraib or not" lobby? They also believe that, without a draft, resistance to Iraq will build more slowly than it did in the late 1960s. Who is going to care if a few hundred more working-class kids die between now and November in the noble cause of nation-building?

But the strategists may be wrong. In 1968, with Vietnam deteriorating rapidly, the Democratic presidential nominee, vice-president Hubert Humphrey, refused to break with president Lyndon Johnson's self-destructive war policy. While Richard Nixon talked up a "secret" peace plan and George Wallace was grabbing votes in the South, Mr. Humphrey found himself trailing Mr. Nixon into the last week of the campaign. Finally, the deeply selfish Mr. Johnson bowed to political reality and declared a bombing halt of North Vietnam; Mr. Humphrey surged in the polls. Too little, too late; Mr. Nixon won by a nose.






wins.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040802/COMACA02/TPComment/TopStories