Politically Bush is NOT In A BAD PLACE

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Politically Bush is NOT In A BAD PLACE

By JOHN PODHORETZ

August 29, 2004 -- THOUSANDS of GOP dele gates, tens of thousands of media professionals and hundreds of thousands of protestors have flooded our fair city at a surprising moment in the presidential race. Assuming that the Republican National Convention isn't a public relations disaster that drags the candidate down, President Bush will emerge on Labor Day Weekend where he is now in the polls or somewhat better.

And he's not in a bad place. He's not in a great place, but he's not in a bad place.

The key number to note here is his overall job-approval rating. Three different polls out this week have it above 50 percent. The Gallup organization notes flatly that no president running for re-election has ever lost with an approval rating over 50 percent on Labor Day.

Factoids like that are only true until they're not true, and there will still be two months to go until Election Day when the convention comes to a close. A lot can and will happen.

But a lot has already happened. George W. Bush got nothing but bad news from January until July and was the subject of an unprecedented onslaught — a perfect storm of Democratic presidential candidates, disgruntled ex-employees, the angry liberal media and continued troubles in Iraq. It's hard to imagine that his troubles could get any worse in the remaining nine weeks than they were during those six horrible months.

But for John Kerry, this is a time of troubles — and by rights it shouldn't have been. August was supposed to belong to Kerry because the Democratic convention began the month and he should have had the policy and politics field to himself for a few weeks at least.

Just before Kerry's convention, Bush pollster Matthew Dowd suggested Bush would begin this week 15 points behind Kerry — which was spin, to be sure, but surely even Dowd didn't expect that Bush would begin his convention ahead among likely voters in three major polls.

Bush has even moved into the lead in many of the so-called "battleground states," and he was behind in almost every one of them at the end of July. In one poll released Friday, Bush is even leading in Pennsylvania, where Kerry has been leading by 5 to 10 percentage points for two months now.

True, Kerry is behind in Pennsylvania and nationally by the narrowest of margins — but he was ahead in all major polls, albeit by similarly tiny margins, at the end of July.

So Kerry has moved from first place to second place in the month all conventional political wisdom suggested he would dominate. How much does this matter? It's not conclusive by any means. Kerry can still win handily. But it's better to be ahead than behind.

At the very least, slippage in the polls depresses your supporters, a fact to which Bush fans can attest. And you don't want your supporters depressed. You want them upbeat, energized, full of fire and hope and fight.

Kerry's troubles, of course, are due in large measure to the attack on his military record launched by 250-plus fellow Swift-boat Vietnam veterans. But Kerry partisans are kidding themselves if they conclude that the attacks did the job on their own. Kerry's response to the attacks played a vital role — maybe the central role — in keeping the story alive.

Kerry has basically spent the last three weeks whining. He says he's being slandered, that the Swifties are doing George Bush's dirty work, that the TV ads made by the Swifties should be taken off the air and that Bush should insist they be taken off the air, that he is the subject of a "fear and smear" campaign, and the like.

It is fine for Kerry to feel righteous indignation at the way his record is being tarred. But it is politically stupid for him to be carrying on the way he has. It makes him look thin-skinned, and if there's one thing a president needs to survive the rigors of the job, it's a thick skin. You think Bush likes to be compared to Hitler? But when asked about it, he invariably says it's wonderful to live in a country where free speech rules.

One of the reasons Bush has survived his troubles is that he doesn't do things that increase those woes. He takes the blows, stays the course, tries to move on. To be a good president, you have to be a good politician — and Bush is that. Kerry hasn't shown that he is a good politician on the national stage as yet, and that is surely worrying to voters.

Bush's political skill will be tested yet again Thursday night, when he takes the stage to accept the nomination. Here's something to watch for, an opportunity Kerry missed in his convention speech: Bush will, I expect, speak a few sentences about his commitment to the state of Israel and how its standing as a democracy in the Middle East offers a path to a more positive future for the region.

This won't just be boilerplate. Bush is the most pro-Israel president in this nation's history.

And just think of it this way: If he gets 15,000 more Jewish votes in Florida than he did in 2000 (Florida has 620,000 Jewish voters), that could make all the difference. Or this: Bush lost New Mexico (6,500 Jews, mostly retirees) by 300 votes. Surely he could pull a few hundred on-the-fence Jews by reminding them in a very public forum of the seriousness of his commitment to the Jewish state.

Now that would be good convention-speech politics, as opposed to the "I am a Vietnam hero" politics Kerry practiced in his speech — and which appears to have backfired badly.

Bush's convention may or may not produce a "bounce" in the polls, but if the president handles his moment in the spotlight right, he could go a long way toward guaranteeing himself a second term.

NY POST