Inside America

U.S. Political Report

Dick Morris
President, Vote.com

Dick Morris, the President of Vote.com, was President Clinton's chief strategist and advisor in the 1996 campaign and contributed to his re-election. Now he's also a commentator on the Fox News Channel and writes a weekly column in the New York Post. He has written four recent books: Behind the Oval Office, The New Prince, Vote.com and Power Plays. He is a graduate of Colombia University.

DEAN SURGES TOWARD DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION...
...BUT BUSH GROWS STRONGER TOO

Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean about ends any serious chance that any of the other pigmies will win the Democratic nomination.

Why did Gore do it? To become relevant again and to take the Party away from the Clintons. Smarting at the obsessive focus on Hillary to the exclusion of himself, Gore has reinjected himself into American politics with one bold master stroke.

During his last two years in the White House, Gore saw himself increasingly sidetracked by Clinton as the president focused on Hillary and getting her elected to the Senate. Since his defeat, he has seen himself fade from the political scene while Hillary has surged. Now he is determined to get out ahead of Hillary as the darling of the left by backing Dean early, publicly and strongly.

Forget the November election. The fight we are witnessing is a battle for control of the Democratic Party. In one corner are the Clintons, sending contender after contender out to center ring in an effort to stop Dean from taking over their party. First Joe Lieberman came limping back. Then Wesley Clark ran away from the early primaries and forfeited the match. And now John Kerry is so far behind in New Hampshire that he is down for the count.

Two months ago, Howard Dean was an untested candidate whose surge in the polls was largely due to the publicity he received with his successful Internet fund raising. In the interim, his Democratic opponents have been hammering away at him. But he has resisted their attacks and is now moving into an even clearer front runner position.

Frustrated Democratic candidates Dick Gephardt and John Kerry have accused Dean of everything they could imagine:

• Dean said that he wanted the votes "of everyone who has a Confederate flag license plate. Gephardt and Kerry were all over him in a flash demanding that he apologize for invoking a racist symbol in his campaign.
• Dean refused to open his gubernatorial records for his years as Vermont Governor. His opponents called him secretive and "Nixonian" and demanded he release his records.
• Dean seemed to imply that states should be able to restrict abortion, a heresy for the Democratic left.
• General Wesley Clark attacked Dean for ducking the military draft during the Vietnam War, pointing out that he went skiing right after he was disqualified from service in the military due to a back problem.

But the Vermont ex-Governor rose above all of the attacks and emerged even stronger. Despite the attacks, he now leads in the Iowa caucuses by 26-22 over Gephardt and leads in New Hampshire by more than 25 points over Kerry. He even leads Edwards in South Carolina, making it likely that he will shut out - and therefore knock out - three of his rivals in their next-door, must-win states.

Dean's constituency is solidly for him. They represent the most liberal third of the most liberal party in the US. This 10% is literally the tail that is now wagging the dog of American politics. These voters regard draft-dodging as an asset and realize that it is only Howard Dean who opposed the War in Iraq from the start and still opposes it.

John Kerry, the darling of the left before Dean, voted for the war powers resolution, permitting Dean to move to his left and capture his constituency out from under him. Kerry, confident that he would carry the left against his other rivals - Gephardt, Lieberman, and Edwards - stopped trying to court the liberals and moved to the center to beat Bush too early. He needed to stay to the left and win the nomination before he moved to the center to beat the Republicans.

General Wesley Clark, touted by the media as the general-who-opposed-war, made a fundamental tactical error in deciding not to contest the Iowa caucuses, the first nominating event of the year (except for the Washington DC primary a week before). He could not hope to counter Dean's momentum from winning Iowa and New Hampshire and his hope, that he could enter the subsequent primaries and still win, is proving delusional.

BUSH GROWS STRONGER

Although Bush's poll numbers are still poor (he gets only a 52% approval rating and voters say they prefer him over a Democrat by only 43-36) he is showing signs of life lately.

His visit to Iraq to serve Thanksgiving turkey to the troops was a master stroke, but he has gained on more substantive fronts as well.

With the economy having grown by 8.2% in the quarter from June through September, and job creation coming back, it looks like Bush will not have a recession on his hands when he runs for re-election.

In a master stroke, Bush persuaded his Republican colleagues to pass a Medicare benefit for prescription drugs, a key element in the Democratic Party's campaign platform for the past 20 years. Just as Clinton signed the historic welfare reform bill right before the 1996 election, taking away the Republican Party's best issue (welfare rolls are now down 60%), so Bush has stolen the Democrats' most appealing issue right before the election.

IRAQ WILL DETERMINE BUSH'S FUTURE

But the key question remains: Will Bush pulls the troops out of Iraq before the election. Which model will he follow: Lyndon Johnson's or Richard Nixon's? As the election approaches he has got to decide.

As public support for the War in Vietnam faded in late 1967 and early 1968, Johnson faced the choice of ratcheting back our commitment of troops or staying and fighting. He chose to remain in Vietnam, doubling his bet with more troops and further bombing. With no end in sight, voters turned on LBJ and backed peace candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy in larger and larger numbers. Facing a deteriorating political situation, Johnson threw in the towel, opting to end his presidency rather than the war that had come to consume it.

Four years later, Richard Nixon proved to be a lot smarter. His escalation of the War in Vietnam in the first two years of his presidency had brought antiwar sentiment to a fevered level. Peace activist George McGovern surged in the polls, winning the Democratic nomination and seriously threatening Nixon's grasp on the presidency. Nixon, unlike Johnson, saw the danger ahead and began to withdraw troops from Vietnam, ending years of annual escalation. He changed the draft to a lottery system that minimized selective service exposure to only one year and assured more than half of those still vulnerable that their high lottery numbers protected them against the draft - allowing Bill Clinton, for one, to breathe easier. The result? By 1972 the War had lost its political clout and McGovern was out of issues. When Henry Kissinger announced, on the eve of the election, that "peace is at hand" Nixon surged to a huge win.

Bush needs to pull out all but 30,000 to 40,000 troops from Iraq, turning the war over to the Iraqi Army and police forces. The remaining US presence should be at a Guantanemo-like base, self-contained and well protected. There, our troops, out of harm's way, need to make sure Saddam and his Baath Party goons do not come back to power. From such a base, they can project American power throughout the region.

Will American patience wear thin if a dozen Americans are killed in Iraq every week? You bet it will. In addition to the Dean liberals (10% or so) who opposed the war, another 25% of the vote opposes any foreign entanglement. These traditional isolationists, allied with the left, can make life very tough for Bush's re-election. In the meantime, Democrats are laying down a curtain of fire to stop Bush from taking the escape route. Kerry accused Bush of planning to "cut and run" in Iraq and Hillary Clinton said that the president was following a "political timetable" in prosecuting the war.

How ironic it is that the doves are trying to out-hawk the hawks in an effort to assure that there will be a raging war during the election season!

CAN DEAN MOVE TO THE CENTER?

Can Howard Dean move back to the center after he has won the Democratic nomination? He will certainly try. Already, he is campaigning on pocketbook issues, trying to cut into the labor union base of Dick Gephardt. But, on Iraq, he cannot cut back to the center. He just has to hope that the war goes badly.

But on two other issues, Dean is in trouble as well.

The Massachusetts State Supreme Court threw him an unexpected "victory" when it ruled that the legislature had no right to stop homosexuals from marrying. This ruling puts the issue of gay marriage right smack in the middle of the presidential race.

Dean would like to finesse the issue by speaking about "civil unions' - marriages in all but name. As Vermont Governor, he signed the nation's first gay civil union bill. But voters are increasingly likely to see through the euphemism and equate gay marriage and civil unions.

The nation opposes gay marriage by more than 2:1 and the issue highlights a key difference between the parties. About half of all Americans go to church or other religious services regularly. Those that do, according to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, vote Republican by 2:1. Those who don't, vote Democrat by a similar margin.

Bush has Dean cornered on this issue and will move in for the kill as the election continues.

The second issue on which Dean has great vulnerability is taxes. Pledged to repeal the entire Bush tax cut, the president can portray him as favoring increases in taxes. Especially with the tax cuts scheduled to "sunset" (automatically lapse) in 2006, Bush can make taxes a key issue in the election.

Dean is also suspect on the Israel issue, having criticized the Administration in the past for not being more "even handed" in dealing with Israel and the Palestinians. Americans are likely not to want a candidate who wants to deal with terrorists and democracies even handedly. Dean's position could hurt him in New York, California, Arizona, and Florida where strong concentrations of Jews can influence the vote.

WHAT IS HILLARY UP TO?

Hillary Clinton has been kicking up a fuss, visiting Iraq during Thanksgiving and going on all the talk shows to criticize Bush's Iraq policy.

Some have wondered if she is planning to run for president in 2004. ItÕs not very likely. Delegates to the convention are legally bound to vote the way their state primaries voted on the first ballot. Since Hillary is not entering any of the primaries because she insists she is not running, one of the candidates, most likely Dean, will enjoy a majority on the first ballot, precluding a run by Hillary.

So why is she so vocal?

First because she craves the attention. After so many years in her husband's shadow, she loves being her own person and speaking for herself. She can't help herself.

Second, she recognizes a definite leftward drift in the Democratic Party. As Dean has gained momentum and books by the likes of Al Franken and Michael Moore have topped the bestseller lists, it is evident that the Democratic Leadership Council style of moderation that her husband rode to victory is no longer in fashion. She is anxious to ride the new wave and stay ahead of the current, so she is speaking out against the war to preserve her stature as the favorite candidate of the left.

Third, perversely, she does not want Bush to lose. She wants no Democrat in the White House from 2004-2008 so she can run in 08 without having to primary her own party's president. Otherwise, she will have to wait until 2012.

Finally, she does not want Bush to get too far ahead. If he wins in a landslide, he will likely get enough Senators so that he could break a Democratic filibuster. So she is working to hold Bush's feet to the fire on Iraq, criticizing Bush for failing to send in enough troops and attacking the possible withdrawal of US forces as politically motivated.

Hillary is also quietly building a huge campaign fund to use to solidify her influence in the party. Unable to raise enough hard money (regulated donations of $2,000 or less) to compete with the Republicans, liberals have set up Americans Coming Together, a front group. The organization will raise $94 million in soft money, $20 million of it already pledged by billionaires George Sores and Peter Lewis. It will be Hillary's own personal vehicle, richer than the Democratic National Committee, and able to fund anyone of whom she approves.

PREDICTIONS

Dean will likely win Iowa and knock Gephardt out of the race. The momentum from that victory will propel him to a big win in New Hampshire, which will knock out Kerry.

Then Democrats will try to regroup around General Wesley Clark or Senator Joe Lieberman for a last ditch attempt to keep Dean from the nomination on February 3rd when Arizona, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Delaware vote.

But Dean is ahead in South Carolina and will probably win Arizona, Delaware, and Oklahoma as well. Gephardt will carry his home state of Missouri, but who cares?

Then it wills all be over and Dean will surge onto wrap up the nomination by early March.