Rule 1. Forget the distinction between foreign policy and domestic policy. As the economy stagnated in 2002, voters put some blame on Democrats and Republicans, but were more likely to blame terrorism. The threat of terrorism, they understood, shuts down travel, scares investors and makes long-term planning even more uncertain. That means President Bush faces a different landscape than the one his father faced, when voters thought he spent too much time on foreign problems and not enough on domestic ones. Now, when terror happens within our borders, foreign problems are domestic problems. The younger Bush argued that the way to get the country’s economic juices flowing is to win the war on terror and restore confidence. The Democrats, on the other hand, kept trying to change the subject from the war to jobs. That displayed a fundamental lack of seriousness about the main problem facing the country, and a misunderstanding of the essential anxiety that stifles growth.
Rule 2. The Imperial Presidency is back. In times of war the occupant of the White House is the commander in chief and voters instinctively want to give him the tools to wage war. In his final campaign swing, Bush delivered a stump speech that had about 20 long paragraphs devoted to the war on terror. He slammed the Democrats for their unwillingness to give him flexibility to manage the Department of Homeland Security. “This is a big issue in this campaign,” he declared. It was indeed a crushing issue for Democrats in places like Georgia, Missouri and Minnesota.
Rule 3. Trust radiates. The president won the voters’ trust after September 11, and voter confidence, once placed, spreads across the issue map. Last September, the Pew Center asked voters which party they trusted to tackle corporate corruption. Surprisingly, they gave Republicans the edge. Subsequent polls were more muddled, but none showed the issue was a clear winner for Democrats. Because voters had essential faith in Bush, because in times of war voters want to trust the president, and do not want to see executive authority undermined, they gave Bush and his party the benefit of the doubt on Enron. In that last campaign swing, Bush was even able to share the glow with Republican candidates.
The president won this election because he is in tune with wartime politics. But that doesn’t mean all is well in the Republican camp. There are a series of looming intraparty fights. Many Republicans in Congress call themselves Cheap Hawks. They want to beat terror, but, caring about tax cuts and budget restraint most, they don’t want to give the Defense Department the financial means to meet the president’s ambitious goals. Look for bruising budget battles. Second, many Republicans, including hawks in the White House, want to kill Saddam, but they don’t go for all this neoconservative talk about creating democracy in Iraq. For the GOP, the fight about when to end the war will be more bitter than the fight about whether to start it.
The challenges facing the Republicans are serious, but the ones facing the Democrats are existential. Some Democratic presidential aspirant is going to have to figure out what it means to be a War Democrat. Republicans will rally around their president if an assault on Baghdad goes bad. Should Democrats? Or should they become the peace party? These are big, new questions. But this is a new world, with new rules.
