Ker.ry’s Wa.ger \ ‘ker-Es ‘wA-j&r \ noun (2004) 1 : Senator John F. Kerry’s risk -- on the 2004 American presidential election -- that most voters believe President George W. Bush misled them about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq 2 generalized : (on the same basis) that most voters believe President Bush misled them about the seriousness of the Islamist terrorist threat
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Since Senator Kerry’s convention speech so confounded the Republicans, it should be obvious by now he’s an unusually intelligent, deft campaigner with a carefully thought-out strategy. Yet Republicans continue to insist that the speech and the moderate, hawkish, patriotic “face” the Democrats showcased at their convention was a “façade”; insisting that the bulk of the delegates were actually steaming, conniving leftists. Therefore, they say, Kerry is a “phony.”
Whether true or false -- this misses the point. This obvious deception at the convention is a decoy; it’s not taken seriously by Democrats, and shouldn’t be by Republicans, either. It’s politics. Get used to it.
What’s more important is that Kerry is making a wager he’s not talking about. One can misdirect simply by NOT directing, and Kerry is a superb practitioner of the magical arts.
In my article of July 10th -- “Election Warning to GOP: Hand Is Quicker Than the Eye” – I said that Senator Kerry “will not offer much in terms of policy alternatives -- and this will drive his critics crazy: they’ll scream that Kerry’s ideas are vacuous, unspecific, vague. Their shouts will vanish in the fog….Kerry impresses like a hazy pall on an overcast day. Don’t look at his face. His hand is moving. His finger’s on the trigger….Look where he’s aiming.”
We can see, now, after his speech, that he’s holding up a mirror: he’s blending in with the background (of the country as a whole) by reflecting back the projections and fears of the viewers. What’s important is not what he says – but what he doesn’t say:
He’s making a wager that he doesn’t have to argue for a detailed alternative to Bush’s Iraq policy or to explain an alternative strategy for defeating the terrorists. Regardless of the screeching of his critics, he doesn’t have to debate foreign policy and the war at all.
He only has to be moderate, set forth views on terrorism and the war that appear to agree with Bush’s, and speak about domestic issues -- while he drops lines now and then to the effect that Bush “misled us,” or was not truthful about the war, or was in some way lying.
The voters will do the rest.
Jeffrey Bell and Frank Cannon are consultants for Capital City Partners in Washington, and in the July 19th issue of The Weekly Standard (only available on-line to subscribers) they wrote an article (“Why Bush Is Losing”) that lays out this approach.
They point out that Bush’s approval ratings dropped from the 60s to the 40s only recently when David Kay resigned as chief weapons inspector and told the country there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As they say, the revelations “caused something to snap.”
These drops occurred among Democrats and independents, so if there’s a debate on the war – Bush could still win the exchange. But by not arguing with Bush, by presenting his own position on the war as similar to Bush’s, Kerry has taken the issue off the table (for the bare majority of voters). This allows his wager to come into play.
How does this work?
Ask yourself: why is Michael Moore’s movie so popular among Democrats? Why do liberals and many moderates all across the country continue to believe that Bush lied?
The hard facts of recent history support the contention that Bush believed the information the intelligent agencies gave him about the WMDs; that though the information ended up being false -- he did not know this before the Iraq war. Whether we go to Bob Woodward’s book Plan of Attack (in which it was revealed that George Tenet told Bush the reality of WMDs was a “slam dunk”) or to any of the special investigative reports (9-11 Commission, Senate Intelligence Committee Investigation, Lord Butler’s British Investigation) – there’s evidence that Bush took the WMDs seriously. Furthermore, the intelligence information that claimed there were WMDs in Iraq was universally consistent regardless of the source: whether from the CIA, the British, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the Israelis, or the United Nations.
The Democrats and independents are not being rational on this claim that Bush lied, because they are, in effect, defining a “lie” as anything that turns out not to be true. As Bill O’Reilly says, “By following this logic, weather forecasters everywhere must now be categorized as pathologically dishonest.” (Column of 8/1/04 – as quoted in Los Angeles Daily News, page 3 of Viewpoint.)
Therefore, a psychological phenomenon must be in play that would explain how people “know” that Bush lied – even though they can’t argue the assertion from the evidence. But what is it?
I’m speculating, here, but I can think of three possibilities:
((1)) As soon as the WMD rationale for the war evaporated, another underlying rationale was put forward by the Bush Administration – one that had been guiding US policy all along (as an additional rationale); but this one hadn’t been clearly seen by the wider public before: a complex long-term strategy to extend democracy to the Middle East and remove (peacefully if possible, but violently if necessary) dictatorships from some of the rogue states -- in order to remove the breeding grounds that created radical Islamist terrorists in the first place.
This policy aims to “head off” terrorists by stopping them in the Middle East instead of waiting to fight them on US soil – where our open borders and liberties make us vulnerable to such a post-modern threat. John Lewis Gaddis has outlined the theoretical background (from the perspective of the history of US foreign policy) for this strategy in his book Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2004).
The problem was that this policy, because of its complexity, could not be easily offered to the public as a reason to go to war. Those who follow foreign policy issues were not surprised by the appearance of this second rationale, but the general public was taken off guard. A president has to use the political resources at his command to defend the country. Bush sincerely used the WMD issue to do this, but after Kay’s report, this created a problem:
A large part of the public now feels (emotionally) that the sudden appearance of another rationale implies they were misled. There’s the appearance of a “bait-and-switch” maneuver, here. It’s an honest reaction, though a shallow and uninformed one. This public reaction will not go away no matter how skillfully Bush or the Republicans make the case (and Bush is not exactly known for being articulate, anyway; where is Tony Blair when we need him?) because the emotional impact HAS ALREADY REGISTERED.
The political and psychological reality is that the GOP will only get blue in the face trying to defend Bush’s honesty or his deeper policy.
That is the luck of the draw.
((2)) Much of the public has a memory of the infamous Nixon White House and how “Tricky Dick” fooled the nation for awhile. Merle Haggard wrote a popular song -- “Are The Good Times Really Over For Good” -- that spoke of a time “back before Nixon lied to us all on TV.”
Any hint that a president may have lied on something important will cause an involuntary rash of fear and revulsion throughout the land. This is a character issue, and not a foreign policy issue. This is why Kerry can avoid a discussion of the war and yet mention the way Bush is being “misleading”: because he brings to the debate questions on Bush’s morality and integrity while NOT bringing up a complicated analysis of Iraq.
Bush’s strong reputation as a person of integrity – one of his best assets -- is being undermined. Kerry talks of “values” now in his speeches. He’s referring (hint, hint) to Bush’s “lies.” Merely making the accusation – and having it come from a moderate and reputable and rational leader like Kerry – raises the fear in the public’s mind of being duped by a sitting President once again.
Being lied to on TV!
((3)) The “deepest” reason why many believe Bush lied connects to part “2” of Kerry’s Wager (see definition at top of article). Again, this is an emotional feature, and not a rational one.
Notice that Bush’s over-all strategy to fighting terrorism is dependant on an assumption that is frightening and disturbing: that we are “at war” with an implacable and evil foe, and that radical Islamism -- being a neo-fascist movement -- contains converts who are willing to die to kill us. Furthermore, we’ll be struggling for a long time in this war and paying a much greater cost than we’ve paid so far.
This is hardly an optimistic or positive prospect. It contains enough negativity to induce dread in even the most realistic of us. There’s a sense, then, when Kerry says he is conducting a “positive” campaign – he’s telling the truth. His “positive” vision denies the existence of such a serious and frightening long-term terrorist threat.
Furthermore, Bush’s scenario of the contemporary world seems fantastical; for after all, how can a long-declined civilization in the Middle East – full of failed states where corruption and poverty and dictatorships and ancient tribal- and clan-based social systems still exist -- possibly be a threat to the modern West?
The reality is that it is true that the radical Islamists are not a threat to the survival of America. But because of the new technological environment and the post-modern borderless ability of hidden organizations to travel and communicate over great distances – the terrorists CAN sneak a nuclear device into an American city. The effects of such an event are literally unimaginable. Therefore – we can’t think about it! (Though we could say that, after a detonation, American culture would never be the same.)
There is an overwhelming emotional tendency to refuse to accept the new threat as a subject for serious discussion – regardless of whether you argue rationally for or against Bush’s particular policies. The threat is so palpable and demoralizing that any open debate is itself felt as a threat to our well-being.
Kerry is going to put his audience at ease merely by NOT talking incessantly about this threat. Bush WILL talk about it.
That is exactly the point Michael Moore and many activist Democrats make: that it is Bush who is the “threat” – not the terrorists.
Result: much of the public views the various difficult arguments about this threat, themselves, to be “misleading.” People who advocate them must be doing so with a hidden agenda. As such: Bush must be “lying.”
Kerry’s Wager has an irresistible logic of its own. It just might work.
Posted by Rick Penner at August 2, 2004 12:16 AM