.
In politics, a wise man once told
me, there are only two important questions: (1) Who
should win? (2) Who will win? You don`t have to be very
wise to understand that the answers are not necessarily
(or indeed very often) the same.
As to the first question, my own
wisdom, such as it is, offers little help. George W.
Bush has led the country into an
unnecessary and potentially
disastrous war and shows no sign of recognizing that
we are having serious problems resolving, let alone
winning, it. There is no reason whatsoever to think he
deserves to be re-elected or that keeping him as
president will not lead to further war and further
disaster.
His main rival for the White House
is
no improvement, unable to offer a clear and
convincing answer as to what he would have done
differently or what he will do better. Given his
record and statements, it`s entirely possible that
John Kerry would engage us in
his own ill-conceived war in the same region, either
deliberately or through incompetence.
My advice, suggested earlier, is to
forget
both candidates. If you think it`s your duty to
vote, pick a
"third party" ideological candidate—any
one of them—and go for him. Otherwise, stay home and
read a book. That`s a perfectly honorable and sensible
choice, and it sends a message, if anyone wants to
receive it.
As to who will win, that`s not very
clear either, and that very fact may tell us something
about the answer to the first question. The reason it`s
not clear who will win is that an awful lot of Americans
are having problems answering who should win, and what
that means is that whoever does win will have little
"mandate" from anyone.
Recently
John Zogby, one of the
nation`s leading pollsters, spoke to a group in
Hong Kong about the election and who might win it,
and what he said tells us much the same. Mr. Zogby leans
to the Democrats, and that bias should be considered in
evaluating what he said, but what he said is mainly of
interest because of what he didn`t say.
Mr. Bush`s support in the polls,
Mr. Zogby is reported to have said, has never risen
above 48 percent, and approval of his performance as
president, belief that he deserves to be re-elected, and
belief that the country is going in the right direction
all are negative.
These indicators are significant
because of the "undecided vote," which in recent
weeks amounts to about 6 percent of the electorate. Mr.
Zogby says that undecided voters tend to wind up voting
for the challenger—as they did in 1980 for Ronald Reagan
against Jimmy Carter. Also, a higher turnout is expected
this year than previously, and that too is expected to
favor the Democrats. Then there`s the youth vote, which
is also heavily Democratic, and a high turnout of young
voters, driven by anti-war sentiment and concern over
jobs, would also help Mr. Kerry. On the whole, then, Mr.
Zogby believes that the election is Mr. Kerry`s to lose.
It is not my point that Mr. Zogby`s
analysis and prediction (if that`s what it is) are right
or wrong. My point is that the reasons he offers are
simply pollster`s reasons. They are essentially
policy-wonk reasons or technical, number-crunching,
inside-baseball reasons. There is virtually nothing in
what he tells us that suggests a strong pattern or
consensus as to who should win. And that is not a
criticism of him. It`s simply what the trends in this
election do tell us—not just Mr. Zogby but virtually
everybody.
George W. Bush has been president
now for four years, and he went into this race as the
incumbent and as a war president, with no scandal and no
economic disaster at hand. He should be winning by a
landslide, but the blunt truth is that he is barely if
at all edging his opponent and may still lose. And no
one, with the exception of die-hard Republican
partisans, seems to care very much whether he stays
president or not.
If there is a pattern in this
election, that`s it, and what it tells us is that Mr.
Bush has totally failed to convince the country that his
policies are the right policies or that he is the right
leader to carry them out. He may in fact win the
election, just as he won the last one, but if he is
unable to win it any more convincingly than he seems to
be doing, he will have lost it morally, and he will have
no legitimate claim that the country is behind him or
that what he wants to do abroad has enough popular
support to sustain it through another term.
COPYRIGHT
CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Sam Francis [email
him] is a nationally syndicated columnist. A selection
of his columns,
America Extinguished: Mass Immigration And The
Disintegration Of American Culture, is now available
from
Americans For Immigration Control.
Click here
for Sam Francis` website. Click
here to order his monograph,
Ethnopolitics: Immigration, Race, and the American
Political Future.
