Memo to Dems: Misunderestimate Bush
--at Your Own Peril

Posted 10:55 p.m., Aug. 16, 2004

---

|

---

What does George W. Bush know and when does he know it? (A.) Not much and (B.) not without long study periods and (C.) even then not well.

-- Todd Gitlin,
Salon.com
Oct. 24, 2000

...

There are a lot of folks that don't think I can, you know, string a sentence together. ... Expectations were so low, all I had to do was say, 'Hi, I'm George W. Bush.'

-- Gov. George W. Bush,
"Late Night With David Letterman,"
Oct. 19, 2000

I got an email from the independent-minded Minneapolis political-ad guru, author and Kevblog reader Bill Hillsman recommending a column about the presidential campaign. Here's part of his note:

You should do a piece on the overconfidence of the Kerry campaign. Talk to most Dems (especially party lifers and insiders in D.C., N.Y., Boston or L.A.) and they are convinced the race is over. It reminds me of the overconfidence and arrogance of the Gore campaign never imagining they could lose to "that bumbling idiot from Texas."

-- Bill Hillsman

As it happens, I already had that column in mind, inspired by reading James Fallows' cover story in the July/August Atlantic magazine, "When George Meets John." I highly recommend it.

The story echoes Hillsman's point: that President Bush's opponents may be woefully underestimating their quarry--discounting especially what linguist George Lakoff says may be an intentional Bush strategy of presenting himself as a language-mincing, shit-kicking bonehead. Or if you prefer, "a regular guy." Either way, expectations of the president are conveniently lowered.

On his radio show, Al Franken has a habit of illustrating the public's forgiving reaction to Bush's blockhead demeanor by acting out a fictitious presidential supporter's indignant response to some anti-Bush slight. "Leave him alone," the Franken character whines. "He doesn't know!

There's more to that than perhaps Franken even realizes.

This is particularly important to consider during the approach of the presidential debates--the first of which is Sept. 30. Given overwhelming expectations on the left that John Kerry will crush Bush in that setting much as Lloyd Bentsen once rolled up Dan Quayle, Bush once again need only use the most rudimentary jujitsu to turn his opponent's advantage against him.

Bush only needs to stand up straight and avoid uttering his worst battered-grammar Bushisms, and like as not, he wins. If it is true as many say that, like the Kennedy-Nixon campaign in 1960, the current race comes down to the debates, it could well mean another Bush term.

After all, it isn't the meat of what is said--certainly not the policy statements--that will determine who prevails. Presidential debates don't matter at that level. It's all about who can resonate best with voters at an emotional level. Maybe that's likeability, or maybe, as Fallows says of Kerry, it's demonstrating possession of "an interesting mind." But it's not about who has got the best tax policy.

(I would opine at this point that I anticipate these debates may deviate a little from that standard wisdom, because of the war. Whatever war policies the candidates espouse are sure to elicit emotional responses from viewers.)

Case Study: Bush v. Richards

Fallows details how, during the race for Texas governor in 1994, Bush's handlers made a great show of being too terrified to square off against then-Gov. Ann Richards, a woman as famous for her rapacious wit as for her ability to govern. The Bush campaign stalled, dragged its feet, finally agreed to just one head-to-head debate.

That night, a different George W. Bush showed up than the one we see today.

The Bush I saw on the 10-year-old debate tape from Texas was almost unrecognizable. This Bush was eloquent. He spoke easily and quickly. He rattled off complicated sentences and brought them to the right grammatical conclusions.

-- James Fallows, The Atlantic, July/August 2004

Bush only had four themes that he pushed in his campaign for governor--reforming welfare, toughening juvenile justice, improving public education, and tort reform. No matter what question he was asked or what verbal hand grenades Richards tossed his way, he simply sidestepped and returned immediately to his themes.

One of Richards' handlers from those days, Mary Beth Rogers, told Fallows that the 'fraidy cat routine was a matter of lowering the bar on what people expected of Bush. "We worried all along that what happened would happen," she tells the reporter. "They had the press and everyone else convinced that they were so worried. But in fact, he had rehearsed, he had his answers down pat."

And he was on-message.

This is where I think that the Democrats really have to take the blinders off. Because being perceived as a dimwit can be a tremendous advantage, particularly if in reality, you're not so dumb as people think. Conversely, there is no better time to get your ass kicked than when you're feeling smug.

In a Slate magazine essay, Jacob Weisberg asserts that the left's smarmy attitude toward Bush the Bumbler arises from "the soft bigotry of low expectations." He describes why that works to the president's advantage.

Calling the president a cretin absolves him of responsibility. Like [Ronald] Reagan, Bush avoids blame for all manner of contradictions, implausible assertions, and outright lies by appearing an amiable dunce. If he knows not what he does, blame goes to the three puppeteers, Cheney, Rove and Rumsfeld. It also breeds sympathy. We wouldn't laugh at FDR because he couldn't walk. Is it less cruel to laugh at GWB because he can't talk? The soft bigotry of low expectations means Bush is seen to outperform by merely getting by. Finally, elitist condescension, however merited, helps cement Bush's bond to the masses.

-- Jacob Weisberg, Slate, May 7 2004

I can't resist taking note of the fact that Weisberg believes "elitist condescension" apparently is sometimes "merited." As an artifact of the usefuleness of that attitude, I give you Adlai Stevenson.

In his letter to me, Hillsman notes that few true swing voters have yet begun to pay attention to the race--and won't, he says, until next month. This is the guy who helped direct Ralph Nader's media campaign in 2000, so I'll demur to his experience on this point.

That being the case, he thinks that the so-called "527 ads" (those paid for by groups outside the two campaigns) that have run in support of Kerry have been done by the "Anybody but Bush" crowd--precisely the wrong people to target messages to independents. In effect, Kerry's supporters are trying to sell him to people who already support him, a strange miscalculation.

Somehow, the Dems must believe that just by getting out their core believers they are going to have enough votes to overcome the core Republican vote and the Independents. They are either stuck in a pre-1980 time warp or whistling past a graveyard that has tombstones with the year 2000 and the year 2002 on them.

Gore blew it in 2000 because he was overconfident. In 2002, the Dems were in complete disarray, and lacked any message or messenger(s). This year, they seem to think "anybody but Bush" is not only a necessary but a sufficient message. I don't get it.

-- Bill Hillsman

This is a lesson the Democrats had better absorb. And quickly. Whatever you want to say about Bush and his cronies, these people have a history of brilliance in the art of winning elections.

Sure, Kerry's reputation is that he is a latecomer in campaigns, and the Fallows piece in The Atlantic does a good job illustrating his prowess, especially as a debater. But the Kerry campaign so far has done little to inspire confidence that his campaign handlers are any match for Bush's.

If Democrats want to win this election, they may want to get past their false sense of confidence that Bush is going to bumble his way out of office. Instead, given the "soft bigotry of low expectations," he may be perfectly positioned to blunder his way right back to a second term.

-- Kevin Featherly

---

Visit the Kevblog archive.

---

---