[Knight Ridder] Bush campaign banking on president's refusal to admit error

Bush campaign banking on president's refusal to admit error
BY DICK POLMAN
Knight Ridder Newspapers

ST. LOUIS - (KRT) - A joke is being circulated these days about the Bush White House:

How many members of the administration does it take to change a lightbulb?

None, because "there's nothing wrong with that lightbulb. It has served us honorably. When you say it's burned out, you're giving encouragement to the forces of darkness. Once we install a lightbulb, we never ever change it. Real men don't need artificial light."

The joke is ricocheting around the political world - among conservatives as well as liberals - and it reflects a broad recognition that the Bush campaign has settled on a risky reelection strategy. Bush is betting his presidency on the proposition that voters will applaud his refusal to admit error, his refusal to cede an inch to the critics who say he has mismanaged a war that he never should have started.

Bush is rolling the dice on the idea that he can ultimately make this election a positive referendum on his own character. As evidenced again in the town-hall debate Friday night, he is arguing that certitude equals rectitude. He's betting his future on the course of events in Iraq - and that's the risky part, because he cannot control those events.

Nor can he control his own people - two of whom, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, cast doubt during the past week about Bush's rationale for war and his management of the military occupation. And the newly released report by top American weapons inspector Charles Duelfer concludes that not only was Saddam Hussein bereft of mass weaponry, but that he also lacked any active program to obtain such weaponry - findings that do not square with Bush's prewar contention that Saddam's threat was "immediate" and "gathering" and "direct."

For Bush, the timing has not been ideal, particularly with so much fluidity on the political map. Kerry has clearly made gains since the first debate in Miami on Sept. 30 - his poll numbers have risen in two key battleground states, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, and he is now crowding Bush in the normally Republican state of Colorado. Bush's pollster, Matthew Dowd, says it's a 2-percentage-point race nationwide at the moment, "and we expect it to finish up that way."

But there's a saying in politics that a candidate should "hang a lantern on his problems." In this case, it means reframing Bush's potential vulnerability as a strength. And as John Kerry seeks to paint Bush as dangerously stubborn and impervious to facts, the Bush team is saying that steadfastness is an asset, that it's all about standing up for one's die-hard beliefs (and contrasting that trait with Kerry's allegedly irresolute tendencies).

Bush said again Saturday, at a Missouri Republican breakfast, that "Iraq was a gathering threat," and he touted his "principle and resolve." During the debate 12 hours earlier, he again called his invasion "the right decision," and said that "the Duelfer report confirmed that decision."

At one point he bullied moderator Charles Gibson into silence so that he could defend Great Britain and Poland for joining his fight. (He did say, at one point, that he hasn't been perfect on the job: "I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them.")

The chief risk, however, is that Bush's resolute adherence to his upbeat message ("Freedom is on the march," he said again Friday) will clash with the downbeat images that independent and undecided voters are seeing every day on TV - and that they will bring their qualms about the war to the polls on Nov. 2.

Wayne Fields, a nonpartisan Missouri political analyst, said Saturday: "What's really driving this election is general anxiety about the war news. People can see for themselves the proof that it's going badly, and that has put the Bush people in a very difficult position. For a long time, a lot of people were in a kind of denial about the war, but now they sense that the bill is coming due. Now it just feels like one shoe falling after another.

"At this point, Bush and his people have made it impossible for themselves to say that they were wrong on anything, and that just increases voter anxiety. They have left themselves no middle ground. Therefore, if things get worse in Iraq, they may not have much ground left to stand on at all."

Meanwhile, he said, Bush's adamant stance, coupled with the problems in Iraq, "have given new weight to Kerry's candidacy." That's worth noting, because it was just four weeks ago when many Democrats - reportedly including Bill Clinton - were urging Kerry to drop the focus on national security and turn his attention to domestic issues, where Democrats usually feel most comfortable. But they got flak from other Democrats who argued that, in a post-Sept. 11 world, it would be suicide for Kerry to ignore the task of convincing voters that he could be a more effective commander in chief.

And it's one of the ironies of this campaign that Kerry has essentially deadlocked this race by fighting Bush on traditionally Republican turf. Kerry's security arguments have hardly been flawless - he said Friday night that "I've never changed my mind about Iraq," a claim that doesn't square with his string of statements since 2002 - but Bush, seeking to target Kerry as weak and irresolute, has often misfired on the facts.

In the Friday debate, he said that Kerry "voted to cut the intelligence budget by $7.5 billion" during the mid-1990s. (During a fund-raiser in March, Bush said the proposed Kerry cuts totaled only $1.5 billion.) Yet, during the mid-1990s, a prominent Republican was urging deeper cuts than Kerry was proposing. That lawmaker was Rep. Porter Goss of Florida, who is now Bush's nominee to head the CIA. Moreover, the Senate in 1995 voted for a Republican proposal to cut $1 billion.

Nevertheless, Bush is now seeking new ways to sell his resolute style as an asset - by framing stark contrasts with Kerry on certain domestic issues. That's a reversal of conventional wisdom; after all, Bush's strength was supposed to be Iraq, and domestic stuff is thought to be Democratic turf. But one key exchange late in the Friday debate offered Bush a chance to buttress his embattled image at Kerry's expense.

Kerry was asked how he could justify, to an antiabortion voter, the policy of spending that voter's tax money on abortions for people who cannot afford them. In response, he went into a long soliloquy about being an altar boy, about AIDS and global family planning, but never nailed the answer.

Bush's prompt rejoinder: "My answer is, we're not going to spend taxpayer's money on abortion." He then rebuked Kerry for other abortion votes, whereupon Kerry said, "It's just not that simple." To which Bush said, "Well, it's pretty simple."

Bush will seek more such exchanges in the domestic issue debate on Wednesday, their final meeting. Bush is betting that simplicity beats nuance; that Kerry's character will still be judged insufficiently decisive; that, even with the woes in Iraq, voters in wartime will ultimately prefer a can-do guy who errs on the side of kicking butt.

It was all on display after the debate, when White House chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. showed up for the ritual spinning of the press. He insisted that the Duelfer report confirmed everything Bush had been saying all along, by concluding "that Saddam was cheating on the sanctions."

He was then asked whether that was sufficient justification for a preemptive invasion.

He replied, "I believe it is - in the context of Sept. 11, 2001. Saddam was still a gathering threat."

And they will ride that theme to victory or defeat in a mere 23 days.

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