It was nearly twelve years ago that President George Bush was basking in the glory of a victorious Gulf war. But it was only a year and a half later almost exactly ten years ago that the American electorate ejected him from office for failing to pay sufficient attention to the country s domestic and economic problems.
It s a parallel that Democrats in the US will no doubt be dwelling upon in the next year in the hope they can repeat the feat and eject Bush Junior from office. After the first Gulf war, some of the big name Democrats Senate leader George Mitchell, New York governor Mario Cuomo who were expected to challenge President Bush decided to stand aside, fearing that the war would carry him to an easy victory. The field was left to a group of Democrats whom journalists slightly cruelly caricatured as the seven dwarves and out of those seven, one of the less well-known ones a governor of a small southern state made it all the way to the White House by pitching himself as a New Democrat and capturing the centre ground as war fever receded from mind. Could it be the same this time?
There are some parallels with the past and causes for hope for the Democrats. Look beneath the surface and you find real concern in the US over the economy. The huge fall in the stock market has had a crippling impact on many people s security and hopes for retirement, whilst Enron and other corporate collapses have shifted cultural attitudes towards big business and profit, which this particular White House had so depended on. There is little doubt that without September 11th and its wake and without the current focus on Iraq, George W Bush would be struggling and would most likely be looking highly vulnerable.
But will the Democrats be able to provide a challenger who can exploit these problems? The complication this time round is that the Democratic field is confused by the awkward presence of Al Gore. The argument still rages in Democrat circles about why Gore lost in 2000. Of course, on one level, he won the popular vote and only the Supreme Court denied him electoral victory. Yet it should have been much easier than that. An incumbent number two running on the back of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity against an inexperienced and not entirely convincing Republican should have walked it. Two different schools of thought explain that problem one (largely held to by Gore s people) says that it was the Lewinsky saga which cost Gore the election, because it prevented him from associating himself with Clinton and utilising the advantages of incumbency and of the positive aspects of the previous eight years. Meanwhile the other camp mainly Clintonites say that Gore basically lost because he blew it, he ran a poor, unfocused campaign that led to voters doubting his authenticity and failing to warm to him.
Both theories have some truth. But will Gore run this time and can he win? Some of the weaknesses of his 2000 campaign now perhaps fortuitously look less like misjudgements than they did at the time. His focus on economic populism and standing up for the little people was decidedly un-New Democrat but in the new post-Enron climate may be more of a strength. Gore has also undergone a shift on foreign policy he was a hawk, one of only ten senators who voted for the 1991 Gulf war. Yet in September 2002 he came out criticising President Bush s rhetoric on Iraq and the President s go-it-alone, cowboy-type approach to international affairs .
To many observers it was a strange move, throwing away Gore s hawkish credentials at just the moment when many other Democrats were trying to forget their dovish pasts. It could be a piece of positioning to appeal to the Democratic leftwing base which he will need or it could be an extremely high-risk strategy of giving him the chance to appear highly prescient if anything goes wrong in Iraq. He would be able to say I told you so on the war as well as the economy.
Whatever the calculations, Gore s candidacy complicates things enormously for other Democrats. His stature is such that he is automatically the front-runner for the nomination but, equally, very few believe he could beat Bush in the election. After all, it s said, if the public didn t warm to him when he was already in the White House and the economy was roaring, why will they do so now when he faces a Bush who thanks to September 11th has grown in stature and popularity in the intervening years?
The person hoping most that Gore doesn t run will be his running mate in 2000, Joe Lieberman. Lieberman has had a good couple of years hitting the headlines on the economy and on foreign policy and has been touting himself as the centrist New Democrat candidate for 2004, criticising Gore for having strayed from the centre. But Lieberman may well regret his promise not to run if Gore does and his orthodox Judaism may sadly still be an obstacle in reaching some voters.
Senate majority leader Tom Daschle has a strong public profile but he may lack the charisma to really make a top-notch run and analysts are unsure if he really wants to. The same charisma deficiency also stands in the way of the leader of the Democrats in the House Dick Gephardt. His closeness to the unions and the protectionist lobby may play slightly better in the current economic climate than it did in the past and will give him a base of support amongst organised labour. But he still stands little chance of firing the public imagination or convincing moderates in the way that Clinton did through the 1990s.
Also in the Senate, John F Kerry of Massachusetts seems to be gearing up for a run. As a Vietnam veteran who returned home to criticise the war, he has unparalleled authority to talk on foreign policy and especially to criticise Bush over the war on terrorism a latitude that few other Democrats will have. He has a strong environmental record but coming from Massachusetts, a state stereotyped in the rest of the US as ultra-liberal, will not help, although he may have more chance than most at capturing the public s attention. If there is to be a new Clinton , some think it might be North Carolina senator John Edwards, a former trial lawyer who is almost Kennedy-esque in his youthful good looks. The problem with Edwards is that he s only been in politics for six years and observers say they can t really make up their mind whether he is brilliant and full of potential or simply an empty vessel, whose balloon will be easily popped under scrutiny.
Surprisingly few senators make it to the White House (the last was JFK in 1960), partly because the chamber tends to bog candidates down in legislation and ties them to voting records whilst state governors can portray themselves as chief executives. But there are few real stars amongst the Democratic governors at the moment. California s Gray Davis burned bright for a while but has now faded somewhat. Howard Dean, of Vermont, is one who has been touted and he s been positioning himself as the anti-war candidate. This could help him win amongst Democrat activists who are notably more dovish than Democrat voters or the general public but it makes it harder to see how he converts any early success in the primaries into wider public support.
Unseating an incumbent president is not easy it has only been done twice in the last 70 years Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Bush Senior in 1992. And it is not just the Democrats who remember 1992: this President Bush remembers that defeat all too well and is sure to try not to repeat the mistakes of his father.
Candidates thinking of running against Bush need to decide by the new year, in time to get on the fund-raising trail. The problem for them will be that there are still simply too many uncertainties at home and abroad to have any idea what the context will be in 2004. September 11th transformed America and with it the presidency of George W Bush. Iraq may do the same. But only if the Democrats get the agenda back onto the economy will they have a chance of recapturing the White House.