Having proclaimed George Bush’s invincibility in November’s presidential election, the media has now performed a stunning volte-face. If we are to believe reports, the president should already be contemplating moving back to his Crawford ranch next January. The reality, however, is somewhat more complex: Bush’s position was never as strong as it appeared previously; neither is it as weak as it now seems to be.
Since the mid-1990s, America has been a 50:50 nation, split evenly between Republican and Democrat supporters. Not since 1988 has either of the parties won a majority of the vote in a presidential election. Congressional elections – even the Gingrich ‘landslide’ of 1994 – have seen the two parties neck-and-neck in the popular vote. The close-fought 2000 presidential election – with Al Gore 500,000 votes ahead of Bush – was simply the natural culmination of this trend.
September 11th and the Republicans’ historic victories in the congressional elections of the following year (when they polled 51 percent to the Democrats’ 46 percent) appeared to signal a break with this pattern. National security – an issue that had worked to the Republicans’ advantage throughout the cold war but had slipped in salience with the fall of the Berlin wall – was once again centre-stage and President Bush exploited to the full the political opportunities provided by his role as commander-in-chief.
Certainly, throughout most of last year, Bush’s position looked strong. Most presidential re-election bids become a referendum on the incumbent’s performance in the Oval Office. If the polls are to be believed, this should not have provided the president with too many problems. His approval rating remained above 50 percent throughout the year. Indeed, his ratings have been at 55 percent or higher in 90 percent of the polls since he took office (Bill Clinton, by contrast, was only at this level in one out of seven polls in the first three years of his presidency). Americans also gave strong approval to Bush’s performance in the war on terror and Iraq.
On domestic issues, things also appeared to be going the president’s way. He faced an apparently weak yet crowded field of Democrat opponents and once a leader did emerge from the pack it turned out to be the White House’s dream candidate: an abrasive, anti-war, north-eastern liberal from the small state of Vermont, Howard Dean.
Bush also began to score successes in his bid to fight the Democrats on issues – and amongst constituencies – in which they have been traditionally strong. Having persuaded Congress to pass a major education reform bill during his first two years in office, he managed to secure passage of a prescription benefit bill last year (a politically useful but highly flawed and watered-down version of a popular Democrat proposal). The president has also been proposing a slackening of the US’ immigration laws, in a clear bid to win Democrat-leaning Hispanic voters.
Perhaps most importantly, though, were signs that the US economy – which slipped into recession soon after Bush took the oath of office and has performed sluggishly ever since – was not simply recovering but positively racing back. During the third quarter of 2003, growth was eight percent and still a highly respectable four percent in the final quarter. Add to that a stockmarket recovery and rising house prices and it’s surely just what the president’s spin doctors ordered going into an election year.
Two months into 2004, however, and Bush’s approval ratings had dropped ten percent and below the symbolic 50 percent mark for the first time. At the same time, polls registered sharp increases in the number of Americans doubting his trustworthiness. Only 52 percent now deem the president ‘honest and trustworthy’ – a figure that has dropped from 70 percent since the 2002 elections. These results appear directly related to the resignation of David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, and his admission that WMD may never be found in Iraq.
Polls also indicate a majority of Americans believe that the president intentionally exaggerated its evidence on WMD. On the question of his overall handling of the war on terrorism, Bush does continue to poll better, but even here his support is falling.
The president’s problem, it is clear, is that his apparent strength was reliant on the centrality of, and public approval for, his self-proclaimed role as a ‘war president’. However, while he appears determined to fight for re-election in this guise, American voters appear to be much more concerned by matters closer to home.
Recent surveys show that the number of Americans who regard some aspect of the economy as the top national problem is rising again and is now at 46 percent (unemployment and jobs alone are at 20 percent). At the same time, consumer confidence is slipping, while Bush’s approval rating on the economy is now negative. A staggering 85 percent of the public think most Americans are financially not better off than they were when the president was elected. On education and healthcare, too, a majority of Americans disapprove of the president’s record. Discontent with Bush’s domestic record has grown at just the moment when the Democrats look like they may finally be getting their act together. Support for Howard Dean amongst grassroots Democrats was always primarily a reflection of their anger at the perceived failure of the party’s leaders to stand up to the president. Dean’s strong attacks on Bush both helped to release some of that pent-up anger and forced the other Democrat candidates to sharpen up their acts.
Perhaps, most importantly, it also indicated that voters did not equate attacks on the president’s record with a lack of patriotism as many Democrats, post-9/11, had begun to fear. Although it may have slipped beneath the economy in the public’s main areas of concern, it’s highly probable that, as in the cold war, candidates for the presidency have to pass a threshold of national security credibility before voters are willing to hear their domestic message.
In their nominee, former Vietnam vet John Kerry, the Democrats appear to have picked a candidate who will be able to clear this threshold. Early surveys suggest that while Bush leads Kerry on Iraq and the war on terror, the gap is closing. Kerry has made it clear that while he believes America to be at war, he intends to question the manner in which the president is fighting it.
If Republicans may struggle to question whether Kerry could lead the war on terror, they’ll certainly hope to raise doubts about whether a senator from the liberal state of Massachusetts can reflect the social attitudes of ‘middle America’ and more conservative voters in the South. Already the Republicans’ lines of attack are clear: for instance, the president has announced his support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. There’s no doubt, moreover, that the fact that the ruling in favour of it came first from the Massachusetts Supreme Court will be highlighted by Republican operatives.
But even here, the president’s position is not as strong as it may first appear. Surveys indicate that while Americans may be opposed to legalising gay marriage, they’re much more closely divided on a constitutional ban. Moreover, independents and young voters, two key ‘swing’ voting groups, are both much more liberal – and thus hostile to Bush’s position – than the electorate as a whole.
So where does this leave the Democrats? The popularity Bush gained after 9/11 and the Iraq war has begun to fade. America is, once again, a 50:50 nation and, however important national security remains, domestic issues have, at present, returned to the fore. The election will thus be close and hard-fought.
The Democrats will have to battle the Republicans to both turn out their vote and, crucially, win over the vital undecided and swing voters. Their numbers are, in fact, falling fast. Ninety percent of registered voters have said they have made their minds up about the election (up from three-quarters in October) and they’re evenly split between those who want Bush re-elected and those who do not. By picking a credible candidate, the Democrats have put themselves in pole position to exploit this situation. The finishing line is, however, months away and their opponent is determined that this race will not be a rerun of that which saw his father ejected from the driving seat twelve years ago.