Beating Bush the Freedom Tickler Way

So far, it looks like the grand strategy of the Kerry campaign is to try and hang on to its post-debate bump and weather Bush's attacks, without falling into any traps and avoiding any risky moves that could scare off swing voters. This is sound enough, as far as it goes. Incumbents below the 50% approval line usually lose, and whatnot.

But I am not convinced that this approach will be enough to win on November 2. Between now and then there are three crucial, no-debate weeks, with Bush in control of the terror alert apparatus and the U.S. forces' actions in Iraq (both of which he is clearly willing to manipulate in the interests of his campaign). This plus the numeros dirty tricks up Karl Rove's sleeve mean, at a minimum, an attrition of a few percentage points, in a race that currently has Bush in front in terms of electoral votes.

Kerry needs, in other words, something up his sleeve.

I suggest taking a page from Rove's book and attack Bush where his is strong. His character.

Three memes, three lines of attack: 1. Bush cannot be trusted. 2. Bush is incapable of admitting a mistake. 3. Bush is out of touch with reality. I would add a 4th, Bush is in the pocket of the big corporations. But I'm too far from the US to gauge if this would fly with swing voters.

I think that Kerry needs, and I mean needs, to hammer on at least two of these in the next three weeks. Get these ideas out there, so that Bush's reactions will be interpreted in terms of them. Repeat and repeat lines like "You are going to believe him? This is the president who told you Iraq had nukes!" Or, "You think the president understands the economy? this is the guy who says everything in Iraq is going well!" or, "You trust this guy to win back our allies? He's the one who said he hasn't made a single mistake in 4 years!", or "You think Bush will create responsible energy policy? This is the guy who let Enron get away with murder!"

The non-trustworthy meme is crucially important for the debate tonight. On domestic policy, Bush's arguments are almost entirely based on outright distortion. If Kerry doesn't address this, it will just come down to he-said-she-said. The only way Kerry can decisively win this debate is to bring the issue of Bush's distortions to the fore, to convey that Bush is simply lying much more and more seriously than Kerry is. That said, the "unable to accept reality" meme is equally valid: Kerry should repeatedly link Bush's rosy vision of the economy to his rosy vision of Iraq.

After the debate, Kerry needs to hit Bush in unexpected ways. Get headlines with unforeseen attacks, and be thinking one step ahead about how to frame Bush's (predictable) responses.

Here are two ideas:

1. Take back the Dalfuer report. This report is not ambiguous: Bush was wrong about WMD. Way wrong. End of story. Kerry (or his surrogates) should repeatedly call on Bush to make a public apology. "He owes it to the American people to acknowledge his error and the degree to which he exagerrated the nuclear threat." As the Times noted, Condi Rice knew the threat was exagerrated, so either Bush is responsible because he knew as well or he is responsible for not holding Condi responsible. Either way, he should apologize.

Of course, Bush will refuse to apologize. But in the process he will confirm all three memes mentioned above.

2. Frame any possible terrorist threat to come as evidence of Bush's failure to make us safer. There is a 99% of terror warnings, whether real or imaginary, so frame the issue now. Talk about the latest school warning, which turned out to be unwarranted, and talk in plain language about how irresponsible fearmongering makes us less safe.

And while Kerry is at it, why not throw in some coded barbs about being a cokehead?