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Mark Shields is a nationally known columnist and commentator. |
Kerry over? Not.
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- -- Back before becoming a syndicated wise guy, I was lucky enough to work in political campaigns, including three presidential races, where you can learn an awful lot in a large hurry about human nature.
When the candidate for whom you're working becomes the favorite to win and leads in the polls, imperfect strangers overnight discover that your own jokes are hilarious and your offhand comments are profound.
But when your candidate stumbles and develops the scent of a loser, even other politicians who had once been clamoring to appear on any platform with your guy suddenly remember unbreakable scheduling conflicts, such as a nephew graduating from driving school or an appointment with the family taxidermist.
This is by way of saying I have at least some idea about what Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry is now going through.
Many of his recently acquired (when the polls were better) "best friends" now disloyally seek out reporters to bad-mouth the latest speech, strategy or hire. Democrats panic. The same press that fulsomely praised the boldness and discipline of your winning primary campaign now find a top-heavy staff rife with internal stress. So I have some advice for Kerry:
Take a deep breath.
Ignore the polls. Voters care whether their jobs will be there, whether there will be good jobs for their children, whether they will be able to afford health care.
Their votes are not influenced by polls. If they were, candidates George McGovern and Barry Goldwater, who both trailed by two-to-one throughout the fall, would not have won two out of five votes each on Election Day.
Ronald Reagan's pollster and advisor Dr. Richard Wirthlin once told me that during the 1984 re-election campaign, when the Gipper carried 49 states, his Democratic opponent Walter Mondale had led Reagan on only two nights of polling -- both during the Democratic convention when Geraldine Ferraro was nominated for vice president. Defense rests.
Understand your opponents. Von Clausewitz once observed, "War is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means." Under Karl Rove, the Bush-Cheney folks have made politics the continuation of war by other means.
The War on Americans' minds in the fall of 2004 is Iraq, not Vietnam.
It is irrefutable fact that you bravely volunteered to fight in combat and bravely came come home to oppose what Colin Powell called "a war so poorly conceived, conducted and explained by (the) country's leaders. ... You do not squander courage and lives without clear purpose, without the country's backing and without full commitment."
In fact, it could be said that you did everything you could to stop that war so that others, such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Tom Delay and John Ashcroft would not have to fight it.
Yes, Republican partisans have made much of the fact that while your boat-mates strongly affirm your leadership and courage under fire, one man from your crew strenuously opposes your candidacy.
But nobody can be found who ever served with George W. Bush, who even his critics would concede is a colorful and memorable personality not easily forgotten.
In politics and life, you can say important things in a very few words -- from Abraham Lincoln's "as I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master," and FDR's "The only thing we have to fear is fear, itself," and Ike's 1952 promise of "I'll go to Korea," to every man or woman's "Will you marry me?"
On Iraq, knowing what we now know, the following can be confidently said: "With no Iraqi involvement in 9/11 and with Iraq possessing no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and constituting no serious threat to the United States or to its own neighbors, there simply never would have been either a House or Senate vote.
Invading and occupying Iraq after 9/11 made about as much sense as if after Pearl Harbor, the United States had bombed Brazil. Either negligently or consciously, Mr. Bush led the United States into an unnecessary and unjustified war against Iraq."
In baseball and politics, you can only score when you're on offense. Consider this: The Republican Medicare prescription drug bill that Bush proudly signed prohibits the U.S. government from using the purchasing power of 41 million Medicare beneficiaries to negotiate with drug companies to lower the price of drugs, something the Veterans Administration is free to do.
One difference: A month's supply of Pravachol ,a popular cholesterol-regulating drug, costs the VA $19.80 -- and at the drug store, a customer would pay $116.75 for the same dosage.
Forbidding the public sector to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies, it is estimated, will mean $139 billion in windfall profits for the drug industry.
Voters care much more about the price of prescription drugs for Grams and Gramps than they do about who saw Saigon.
