"John F. Who?"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode CCXXXV

Brendan Miniter writes at OpinionJournal today.

When John Kerry returns from his snowboarding vacation, it'll be time to set about deciding who he is, what his candidacy is about. It may seem to be a strange quest to begin this far into a presidential campaign. But it's essential when there is no obvious answer in most voters' minds to this question: Why is Mr. Kerry running for president? Wanting to be president or opposing the current occupant of the Oval Office is rarely an adequate answer. What Mr. Kerry really needs now is a defining moment.

We all know why Howard Dean ran — to pull back from the war on terror (usually voiced as opposition to liberating Iraq), raise taxes and institute universal health insurance. His defining moment was arguing that catching Saddam Hussein didn't make America safer (defining moments aren't always good for candidates). Ronald Reagan didn't have much trouble defining himself. He ran on a series of ideas — shrinking government, promoting economic growth and confronting the evil empire. Vice President Bush promised to continue implementing those ideas in 1988 and gave himself a defining moment by saying "Read my lips, no new taxes" (a moment he later wished was less defining). Bill Clinton was able to win by offering new ideas of his own. Mr. Clinton ran as a New Democrat, a man who was liberal enough to look out for the little guy but conservative enough not to go gooey when it came to keeping law and order.

This is all something Mr. Kerry and the press corps, now panting about "negative ads" running so early in the campaign cycle, might want to keep in mind. Candidate Clinton emerged from the primaries in 1992 victorious but somewhat battered; among other things, voters already had a glimpse of his philandering. What he needed was a new defining moment, and Republicans made a fatal tactical error by giving him until late summer before rolling out the attack ads. In the meantime, as a secret memo leaked to the New York Times after the election revealed, the Democrats quickly developed a plan: Hillary Clinton should be publicly more affectionate toward her husband, the campaign should focus on Mr. Clinton's humble and at times rough childhood, and Bill needed to find a way to humanize himself. As Michael Kelly described it after the 1992 election, "by the time the Republicans made their move, the program of image modification drafted by Clinton's consultants had so changed the Clintons' public persona that the feared attack failed to wound him at all."

George W. Bush isn't going to make his father's mistake, which is why he's already airing ads nailing down Mr. Kerry's defining characteristics. This is where the strategy — dreamed up by Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe — of an accelerated, nonbruising primary season will start to cut against the Democratic candidate. Nothing defines a candidate like a good fight, and Mr. Kerry never had to fight for the nomination, which means he hasn't gotten around to staking out the rationale for his candidacy. A real attack from John Edwards might have pushed Mr. Kerry into a defining moment. He would have had to take a stand, look courageous and serve as an inspiration.

Instead, Mr. Kerry rode an "anybody but Bush" wave, winning not because anyone really wanted to vote for him but, paradoxically, because Democrats deemed him "electable." Now he has to win over the broader electorate by defining himself on the national stage, while already being attacked by the Bush campaign.

The first test of whether Mr. Kerry would be able to play this higher-stakes game came with his claim of support from foreign leaders. That line of reasoning would have played well in Democratic primaries — the party's base loves "internationalist" talk. But once Mr. Bush started promising to keep his campaign "right here in America," and some unsavory foreigners openly endorsed Mr. Kerry, he was forced to disavow his foreign support.

Welcome to the national stage, Mr. Kerry. Now, who are you?

Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.

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See also "Where Were You?" and "The Constitution Be Damned".

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 03/23/04 06:54:28 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & John Kerry & Political.