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This scenario is not going to happen, because if McCain was going to take a shot at Bush he's had plenty of opportunities to do it already. But it's a fun little piece of speculation about an obscure piece of election law, so if you want to find out how McCain could be elected President this year, go read it.
Oct. 29th, 2004
Lawrence Haws wrote me the other day and pointed out that Bush recently said it was "up in the air" whether we could ever be safe from another terrorist attack. He said this disproves my assertion that Bush pretends he can keep us safe.
True enough! And Kerry responded to Bush's comment by saying that he was going to win the war on terror, which is just as ridiculous when Kerry says it as it is when Bush says it. Terror is not an opponent, it's a tactic.
Of course, Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, promptly said that "The president said we can win the war on terror and we will win the war on terror." So it's not as if Bush and his team are going to stand by their admission, any more than Bush stood by his comments at the GOP convention when he said he didn't think it was possible to win the war on terror.
Bush wants us to think he can keep us safe. So does Kerry. Every now and then the truth slips out -- I really liked Kerry's comments to the New York Times, when he explained that he wanted to reduce the threat of terrorism until it doesn't affect the fabric of our everyday lives. And every time it slips out, the other side pounces on it and uses it as a stick. I don't particularly see either campaign occupying high moral ground here.
With one caveat: Kerry, so far, has not told Americans that they will be nuked if Bush wins.
Because I could, I made a spreadsheet for the election night drinking game. You enter the predictions for each player, using the nifty little pulldown menus for the candidate choice, and then you enter the actual winner and their percentage over in those right hand columns. If the square in the "Glug" column goes red, that player has to drink.
No, I don't expect anyone to actually use this or anything.
Right. You're going to get one of these once a day between now and Tuesday. They're mostly directed at my friends who are feeling mopish about the potential for a Kerry victory.
Today, I've got an Al Giordano essay for you. Al is one smart cookie. He predicted Kerry's victory in Iowa. He knows Kerry and Kerry's people really well. He is not randomly making stuff up to make himself feel better.
See, here's the deal. Kerry fits nicely into the frame of "another boring liberal from Massachusetts." If you want to take the lazy way out, you just recycle all the Dukakis stories and you've got yourself a news cycle. Now, I liked Dukakis -- but Kerry is simply a tougher candidate. He knows what it means to be on the national stage. He is the guy who refused to let go of the BCCI scandal, he's the guy who defeated an incredible popular William Weld in his last election, he's the guy who wins.
If Kerry wasn't charismatic -- if he wasn't good at what he does -- Nixon wouldn't have singled him out for special attention in the 70s. Nothing's changed. The media frame is wrong. Kerry is not Dukakis.
Read Al's piece. More tomorrow.