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2009-08-24 Home Front: Politix
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The American Debate: Bashing Bush may not work this time
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By Dick Polman
Is George W. Bush on the ballot in New Jersey this November? I recently saw a Democratic TV ad that invoked him as a bogeyman six times in 30 seconds.
Is he on the ballot in Virginia? I recently heard the Democratic candidate for governor declare, "Let's be clear: George Bush is responsible for our economic problems."
The two marquee races of 2009 - Jon Corzine's fevered bid to save his gubernatorial job in New Jersey, and his party's ambitious bid to elect a third successive Democratic governor in Virginia - will demonstrate whether Bush-bashing can still sway the voters and deliver the goods.
The tactic worked well for the Democrats in 2006 and 2008. And running against unpopular ex-presidents is a tried-and-true tradition. Forty years after the Democrats thrashed Herbert Hoover, they were still banging on him.
The Republicans are no different. They racked up a landslide against George McGovern 37 years ago, yet they still circulate his name as a synonym for wimp. And I remember how the Republicans ran against Jimmy Carter in 1988, even though he'd been gone for eight years. For TV ads, they dug up footage of cars waiting in gas-pump lines during the '79 energy crisis, complete with Johnny Mercer on the sound track crooning "I Remember You."
But I question whether bashing Bush will work this year. It's just as likely that the Republicans can win both races by framing them as referendums on Barack Obama - not necessarily by attacking the president directly, but by identifying and mobilizing those voters who seem particularly angry about the policy changes he is seeking.
The Republicans need only look at the polls. In blue New Jersey, a new Quinnipiac University survey shows that Obama's approval rating has fallen 12 points in the last two months (from 68 to 56 percent), due largely to a plunge among swing-voting independents. And in Virginia, a new Washington Post survey shows that Obama is actually a drag on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds; only 23 percent of swing voters said Obama's endorsement made them more likely to support Deeds and 37 percent said it made them less likely to do so.
A bit of perspective, however, is necessary. If Obama appears to lack coattails, he would hardly be the first. The party that controls the White House tends to lose these New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. The Republicans won both races in 1997, one year after Bill Clinton was easily reelected. The Democrats won both in 2001 - a mere eight weeks after 9/11, when Bush was a war president at the peak of his popularity. These "off-year" voters don't like to take directions from Washington.
Nevertheless, Obama's people recognize the potential spin problem: If Corzine and Deeds go down in November, their defeats will be widely interpreted (by the political media, with GOP encouragement) as a thumbs-down verdict on Obama, further imperiling his political capital.
That would not be fair to Obama, at least in New Jersey. Corzine's woes are his own; he was taking heat for the economy, corruption among his fellow Democrats, and taxes long before Obama broke big. Obama has been stumping for Corzine, and Corzine has put Obama in a TV ad. But in the end, the race is a referendum on Corzine.
Perhaps Corzine's best hope is to link Christopher J. Christie, his Republican opponent, to a politician who is even more unpopular than Corzine. That would be Bush, of course. Hence the Corzine TV ad that seeks to weigh down Christie with Bush baggage - noting that Christie raised money for Bush, allegedly awarded millions in no-bid contracts to "Bush cronies," is pushing "the same failed Bush economics," and is "Bush's friend."
The Corzine team got some luck the other day when news surfaced that Christie had on several occasions discussed his prospective candidacy with Bush political guru Karl Rove while serving as U.S. attorney, a job that is supposed to be nonpolitical. The question, however, is whether New Jersey voters care more about Rove than they do about their property taxes. Quinnipiac found last month that 77 percent of New Jersey voters want Corzine to focus on state issues.
But it's arguably smart politics (or perhaps just desperate politics) to link Christie to "failed Bush economics." Even though Obama has taken hits in the polls, people are still more likely to blame Bush, not Obama, for the nation's economic woes. The latest Rasmussen poll reports that 55 percent of Americans cite Bush as the main culprit. The latest CBS-New York Times poll, asking a different mix of questions, reports that 30 percent blame Bush for the downturn and that only 4 percent blame Obama.
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Posted by Fred 2009-08-24 00:00||
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