The torrent waits for no man

So is the war party the steamroller after all? Is Kerry sunk? Can he come back?

For the last few weeks, the Swift Boat barrage smacked Kerry around at what he was supposed to be his strong point, Vietnam – with a strong assist from the usual credulous media exhibiting the Kerry–haters’ tricky and downright dubious assertions as worth saturation coverage even when they contravened documents and sometimes themselves. It did indeed look as though Kerry did not know how to fight the dirty tricksters: immediately, hard, sacrificing neither defense to offense nor vice versa, etc.

August days elapsed when Kerry seemed to be missing in action. His staff, I’ve been told by two reporters, were slow to release all his documents. So now hopeful Democrats comfort themselves with reminders that Kerry is supposed to be the fiercest of closers – and those who have lost hope contemplate real estate listings in La Midi and muse about joining Richard Perle in Provence.

Why? Because Time and Newsweek both came out with polls giving Bush an 11–point edge among likely voters. (Weirdly, ditching professionalism in favor of commerce, the newsmagazines, rushing to score on the weekend TV shows, polled some of their subjects before Bush’s convention speech and some after.) Dissectors of polls, entrails, horoscopes and other signs are more frantic than usual, taking poll breaks more than cigarette breaks, these days, for pickups (or crashdowns) from Internet electoral vote calculators (like www.electoral-vote.com).

Democratic honchos grumble: Kerry is flabby, lame, butterfingered, erratic, and diffuse. He wanders. He made the wrong move on Iraq and his explanations don’t help – at least according to the late Lee Atwater’s dictum, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” Kerry is said to have painted himself into a corner by sticking to his yes on his war authorization vote of 2002. He was late combating the Swift boaters. He let himself be photographed windsurfing during the Republican convention. Why didn’t somebody make him show up for an auto race? Ain’t there anybody here who knows how to play this game?

An e–mailer sends me a tirade on the subject of talk radio, which has it in for Kerry. My cousin calls to say that her friend has analyzed Kerry’s speeches for their rhetorical character and found that while everybody knows what a Reagan or Clinton speech sounded like – even (or especially) a Bush speech (blunt, bullying, illogical, a. k. a. “on message”) – nobody knows what a Kerry speech sounds like. He’s, you might say, unbranded.

In hot pursuit of focus, Kerry has taken on Bill Clinton’s A–for–Advisory Team – so the front page of the New York Times tells us. But if God didn’t seem Republican enough, Clinton, the original comeback kid, had to go off to the hospital to get himself four more arteries, and may be sidelined for the rest of the campaign.

Whoa.

One of the most experienced readers of entrails in the United States is the analyst Ruy Teixeira. On 6 September, Teixeira summarized Gallup’s latest as follows:

• “Gallup Poll Gives Bush Only a 2 Point Bounce”

“I think those of us who have expressed skepticism about the results of the Time and Newsweek polls can consider ourselves vindicated. The new Gallup poll, conducted entirely after the GOP convention and therefore the first poll that truly measures Bush’s bounce, shows Bush with a very modest bounce indeed: 2 points…. His support among registered voters has risen from 47 percent before to 49 percent after the convention, so that he now leads Kerry by a single point (49–48) rather than trailing by a point….

“Note also that Bush’s 2 point bounce from his convention…is the worst ever received by an incumbent president, regardless of party, and the worst ever received by a Republican candidate, whether incumbent or not (see this Gallup analysis for all the relevant historical data). In 2000, Bush received an 8 point bounce. And even his hapless father received a 5 point bounce in 1992.”

The next day, Teixeira broke down some of Gallup’s numbers and concluded: “Prior to the Republican convention, Kerry had a one point lead among registered voters (47–46) in the battleground states. After the Republican convention, now that battleground voters have had a chance to take a closer look at what Bush and his party really stand for, Kerry leads by 5 in these same states (50–45)! Note that Kerry gained three points among battleground voters, while Bush actually got a negative one point bounce.”

No doubt some polls show different. Gallup has its fans and its detractors, and my expertise runs out pretty quickly. I don’t know exactly what to make of the clashing polls. But neither, I think, does anyone else.

The thousandth American soldier died in Iraq this week. Wednesday night, former Texas Speaker of the House Ben Barnes went on CBS to recount that he helped young ne’er–do–well Bush get into the champagne unit of the Texas Air National Guard in 1968. Next week, Kitty Kelley’s long–awaited book on the Bushes appears, including former W. sister–in–law Sharon’s testimony that Bush did cocaine at the presidential Camp David retreat when his father was in the White House – that is, when he was at least 7 months past age 42, a bit late to claim that “when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.” It is even a bit late for retroactively extending his youth to age 40 like a Communist Youth Leader of yore.

Kerry’s risky calculation is to let his opponents get personal first. He attacks when attacked, so to not be tagged as an American who snipes his war time commander–in–chief. Here’s a sample, courtesy of Ian Williams, at midnight in Springfield, Ohio, just after Bush’s convention speech as the gloves came off:

“Let me tell you what I think makes someone unfit for duty. Misleading our nation into war in Iraq makes you unfit to lead this nation. Doing nothing while this nation loses millions of jobs makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting 45 million Americans go without healthcare makes you unfit to lead this nation. Letting the Saudi royal family control our energy costs makes you unfit. Handing out billions of government contracts to Halliburton while you’re still on their payroll makes you unfit.” Mostly, you wouldn’t know that Kerry can sound this clear. The media coverage muffles his efforts. You’d think the networks could make room for the 85 words above – but they don’t; not yet.

Can the blunter Kerry get through? If he keeps up his tattoo about Bush’s “wrong” policies, his discipline should pay off. The sound-bite “wrong” is something networks can understand. As for the other side, how many more times can Bush and Cheney trash Kerry without inciting backlash and offending undeciders who hate negativity?