The polls say ninety percent of the people are already firm about who they\u2019re going to vote for.\u00a0 And many of them made choices based not so much on the economy or the war in Iraq but on the far more mundane, and critical, determination of who\u2019s the cutest and who\u2019s the coolest.\u00a0 When the remaining ten percent decide that, we\u2019ll know the identity of the next president.<\/p>\n
In the age of electronic communication, personal appeal is paramount. \u00a0In 1976 Jimmy Carter looked a little hipper on TV than Gerald Ford.\u00a0 In 1980 and 1984, the suave and still-chiseled Ronald Reagan proved insurmountable against Carter and Walter Mondale.\u00a0 The sleek and urbane George H.W. Bush \u2013 and don\u2019t forget he has those attributes \u2013 toppled your next-door-neighbor Michael Dukakis in 1988.\u00a0 Then Bill Clinton, another matinee idol in the Reagan and JFK mold, lit up the screen and outshined Bush and Dole.\u00a0 And in 2000 the energetic and often charming George W. Bush edged the handsome but klutzy Al Gore.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t matter Bush failed to get as many votes as Gore.\u00a0 His we-want-him-as-our-captain quality surely helped launch him out of the post-election electoral jungle.<\/p>\n
Now Bush is battling Kerry, an attractive and sophisticated man but one who sometimes looks vaguely cadaverous.\u00a0 The president, conversely, was recently the subject of one of the most portentous photos in political history.\u00a0 Yes, photos are an old medium, but they\u2019re now electronically conveyed, and thus used and assessed quite differently than, say, a photo of Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address.\u00a0 Honest Abe certainly never received the kind of political bounce that rascal Bush did when photographed astride his trusty mountain bicycle.\u00a0 There he was, wearing the chicest of wrap-around shades under a neat helmet, sporting stylish cycling shorts that revealed muscular legs, and behind him, erect as Washington\u2019s Monument, stood a flagpole bearing Old Glory.\u00a0 Do you really think an incumbent president who looks so spiffy is going to lose a close race?<\/p>\n
Better grimace and accept it.\u00a0 Personal appeal is probably going to propel Bush to victory in November.\u00a0 But he\u2019s not going to rely solely on that.\u00a0 No, a lot of being cool depends on having a shrewd sense of what to do politically.\u00a0 And he and his team are certainly effective.\u00a0 They recently alerted us that the danger of terroristic attack had become more acute \u2013 one can\u2019t afford to doubt that \u2013 and a few days later followed with news they had taken new and aggressive steps to deal with announced threats to five financial centers in the Northeast.\u00a0 Later, the administration conceded that most of the information prompting the alert was three or four years old. \u00a0But according to two senior intelligence officials, some of the information is \u201cvery, very recent\u201d and \u201cvery, very current.\u201d\u00a0 Again, one should not doubt that enemies of the United States are constantly looking for ways to strike, and they\u2019re willing to plan and wait for years for the most devastating opportunities. Bush will therefore repeatedly have galvanizing opportunities to announce: the enemies out there are still trying to get us, and though the danger is acute, I\u2019m doing more than anyone else to protect you.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the duty of a commander-in-chief.\u00a0 It\u2019s beyond political, yet it\u2019s consummately political.\u00a0 When Franklin Roosevelt was asked how the 1944 presidential election \u2013 his fourth \u2013 would turn out, the king of political cool said if the war was still going, he\u2019d win.\u00a0 If the war was over, he\u2019d lose.\u00a0 In May 1945, a couple of months after Roosevelt\u2019s death, the war was just ending in Europe and the great wartime leader Churchill was given the flabbergasting news that he\u2019d been defeated by Clement Atlee.<\/p>\n
The war on terror is not over.\u00a0 And, really, how will we know when it is?\u00a0 There won\u2019t be any official ceasefire.\u00a0 There won\u2019t be whole armies defeated in the field.\u00a0 There won\u2019t be an internationally enforceable armistice.\u00a0 Neither candidate is going to be able to eliminate terrorism soon.\u00a0 That\u2019s why many undecided voters are going to step into booths on election day and think, damn, who should I choose?\u00a0 I guess I\u2019ll go for that Bush cat with the wrap around shades and shapely legs astride a mountain bike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The polls say ninety percent of the people are already firm about who they\u2019re going to vote for.\u00a0 And many of them made choices based not so much on the economy or the war in Iraq but on the far more mundane, and critical, determination of who\u2019s the cutest and who\u2019s the coolest.\u00a0 When the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,40],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n