TPM Reader PB reads Josh’s mind …
If the Democrats want to achieve a substantial victory in November there are two words they need to excise from their vocabulary, “ashamed” and “politicized.” Those words need to be replaced with “failure” and “accountability.” Every time a Democrat gets the understandable urge to cry foul and say the President should be “ashamed” for having “politicized” national security, they need to exercise some self-censorship, and go on the offensive and attack the President for his many failures and promise the American people to hold him accountable.
Unfortunately, looking at the Democratic response to Bush’s speech last night I feel like Bill Muarry in Groundhog day. It’s the same thing over and over. Bush uses the memory of 9/11 to advocate for his policies and like Pavlov’s dogs the Democrats cry foul. How many times can Democrats pretend to be shocked that Bush would politicize 9/11? Republicans have done it the last three elections, and each time it worked. Of course they are going to do it again.
The simple fact is that Bush’s approach works. Any psychologist, advertiser or propagandist will tell you that people will be more receptive to your message if you soften them up emotionally first. The Republicans understand this, why don’t the Democrats? If the Democrats are serious about re-taking power they need to stop complaining about what is acceptable in political discourse and start running ads with footage of people standing on rooftops in New Orleans, chaos in Iraq, and bin Laden still on the loose and remind the American people all of these things are Bush’s fault. Republicans will go wild complaining that it is not fair and it politicizes tragedies. Let them.
Rather than trying to work the refs, Democrats need to remind the American people over and over that this President has failed at everything he has done: he has failed to capture bin Laden, his policy in Iraq is a monumental failure, and he has failed to make the American people safer. Every level of government has broken down because of Bush’s mistakes. These guys can’t even get the little things right let alone the big stuff. And voting Republican only means more of the same.
Working the refs has its place. Definitely. But fundamentally, making this the centerpiece response is just whining.
I’m always reminded of the president’s notorious Mission Accomplished speech on the aircraft carrier off San Diego. At the time, the Dems were complaining that he’d delayed the return of the sailors and airmen on the ship, that it was political and all the rest. But as long as he was riding high it was all just words in the wind. Needless to say, the event became an albatross that still hangs around the guy’s neck.
That didn’t change because anyone realized it was political when they hadn’t realized it before. It changed because the ‘victory’ he was crowing over started to seem more and more like a failure. People will accept a lot from someone who delivers. But they’re merciless when a leader fails.
Today, the record is really quite clear. Pretty much everything the president has done on the foreign front since 9/11 has been an abysmal failure. Even the things were legitimate successes early on, taking down the Taliban, for instance, have turned into failures.
If the president is politicizing 9/11, which he is, people who are open to seeing that, can see it already. And the way to focus attention on that is not to state the obvious. It is rather to point out the almost countless ways in which his record is one of failure. Where’s bin Laden? Where are the weapons of mass destruction? Is Iraq part of the problem or part of the solution in making the United States safer from terrorism? All these questions all but answer themselves. And all in ways profoundly damaging to the president. Start asking them. And stop whining.
