Message to Kerry - Run to the Right of Bush

This period of time should lead to a great political realignment in the US Bush's twin towers of a quickening quagmire in Iraq and a daunting deficit at home make him vulnerable, and his vulnerability will lead to a political restructuring, either in 2004 or 2008. Yelnick will post an historical perspective on this shortly.

Bush has left himself vulnerable to half his base. In his eagerness to follow the Clinton strategy of triangulation, his Compassionate Conservatism has moved him too far left. If Kerry is careful, he can run to the right of Bush and therefore carry the center. He needs to embrace the same sort of Kennedy Republicanism which so helped Arnold in the California Recall. Here are the bumper stickers:

* Iraq: in winning the war with too few troops, he lost the peace
* Budget: "Read My Lips, No New Programs"
* Social: keep the government out of our private lives

If he wants an overarching theme, it is: It's the Mess, Stupid.

Iraq: James Fallows in The Atlantic has a superb analysis of what went wrong in Iraq. Both the State Department and the Army recommended about twice the troop levels, not to win the war, but to secure the peace. Rumsfeld overruled them. He had been a notorious dove on Vietnam in the Nixon Administration. He concluded back then that the Army was fighting the wrong war. The Army doctrine was of a war of attrition, and they turned Vietnam into body counts and bomb craters. Rumsfeld spent the next 30 years preparing for this moment, the moment when he could transform the Army war doctrine to one of special forces with extreme maneuver rather than conscript armies with methodical mayhem. He was determined to prove his point, and prove it he did - the US military victory in such a short time over such a long distance is unprecedented. In doing so, he failed to have sufficient troops to stabilize the situation following the fall of Baghdad. A tragic error, and an avoidable one. The next President has little choice but to put more troops in, if not now then after the election.

Ironically, in gaining his special-forces victory, Rumsfeld might have forced us to reinstate the draft. The US is in an untenable position. If the situation continues to spiral out of control, Bush will either have to cut and run, or put in many more troops. He will be unable to find those troops within the volunteer army (enlistments have dropped, no surprise), and will find it extremely difficult to cajole those troops out of our allies. Hence the draft after the election.

Kerry should stake out his Iraq policy right now. We need to put in more troops to secure the peace. The only way to do this is with our allies. They won't come in under Bush's leadership, but probably would under Kerry's. The price is to turn over control to a multinational organization, perhaps the UN or NATO, and allow the post-war prizes (the Haliburton contract, for example) to be shared among the allies, not all to the US. The alternative is a deeper mess next year, and the draft.

It may be said that Kerry should wait until after the election to raise this position, as it could undermine the US effort and embolden the oppostion in Iraq. The same criticism was hurled at him during his now-famous hearing in front of the Congress in 1971 as the most noteworthy Vietnam Vet to oppose the war. But in a democracy, if a war is misguided or unjust, the political opposition must speak up or the mistake continues. In addition, time appears to be of the essence in stabilizing Iraq. Hence, it could be better said that he has the obligation to state his position now, and not hide behind some 'secret plan' to end the war as Nixon did in 1968.

Economy: With the his budget mess and tax cuts, Bush has created a period of rising corporate profits with a jobless recovery - in effect, a transfer of wealth to the classes from the masses. The hope is these benefits trickle down as the recovery continues. Yelnick has presented the case that this recovery is financed on credit rather than fueled by fundamentals, and we run a serious risk of falling back into a double-dip recession. But this is not the platform for Kerry to run on, as it will sound like the same-old same-old from a Massachusetts liberal. Instead, the platform is one of fiscal responsibility. First with the Reagan deficits and now with the Bush deficits, the Republicans have risked triangulation to the right. Ironically for Bush Jr., Bush's father showed supreme leadership when he broke his "Read my lips, no new taxes" pledge in exchange for budget caps. These caps held during the Clinton years and led to the longest periood of spending constraints since the New Deal. The Era of Big Government seemed to be over. Bush Jr. has run right by the caps, especially with his new drug entitlement, doing more to undermine the Reagan Revolution than any Democrat! To avoid the old-time liberal label, Kerry needs to pledge no new spending or programs. To ice this issue, he needs to support tax reform of the right sort, such as a gas tax increase in exchange for lower income tax rates.

Culture Wars: These two positions are straightforward compared to going to the right of Bush on social policy. In his embrace of the Religious Right, Bush has gone so far right it is hard to see how Kerry can triangulate on him. The conservative movement, however, has two disparate threads: those that which to impose traditional values on others, and those who wish to be left alone. Kerry can triangulate on the left (alone) of the right. Abortion for example can be reframed as a right to keep the government out of private matters, rather than a right to choose or a right to life. This is the traditional conservative position, that government power should be limited. Similarly, gay marriage can be reframed as not an assault on the institution of marriage but as a mechanism for society to encourage an otherwise restless subsegment to settle down. (It would be relatively straightforward to create a domestic partners law that falls short of the label of marriage but achieves the conservative aim; other societies, such as the Romans, recognized multiple forms of marriage, ranging from the High Marriage of the priesthood to the casual marriage of the masses.) While these are not necessarily the issues to fight on, they do show the direction to take.

The key in this social triangulation is not to 'diss' the evangelical movement per se. The Democratic Party is already losing religious voters in droves. The 'left of the right' position does not in any way disparage the religious movement or religion itself, but leaves it a matter of personal conscience. The evangelical movement is credited with cleaning up the drug-infested army of the '70s, and has brought a whole new group into politics. The battles over 'In God We Trust" or 'Under God' are simply the wrong battles to fight. Keeping a neutral government posture on religion does not require stripping society of religious tenets and symbols. Indeed, the failure of both business and political leadership in the '90s to evidence good values, to put their own greed and needs above proper behavior, calls into question the civic virtue of a society devoid of religious life among its leaders. Kerry can embrace religiousness without embracing a religion.

Comments

[Daniel Godigna]

hello i'm a student of 20 year living in venezuela and i wan't to express my feelings about the gobern this is coming into a comunist system that it talks about the finish of the republican system and the process revocatory of the president was a huge fraud.
I'm sure the people here in a great number is against this president and his allies.
This is the real situasion here i do this because this is great country and it don't deserves this and the most importat to me is make the people of U.S.A undestand and be inform this realy big problem of terrorism and comunism that it would be extended in america.
P.D: you can use my name to publicate this letter.

[Very nice site. Will sure visit again.]

Very nice site. Will sure visit again.