I have been back in the US for just two weeks, but it is already evident that people here expect Senator John Kerry to lose. My Democrat friends don't want to believe it, but they know it none the less. To be sure, the opinion polls are in flux. At the end of last week, Gallup had President George W. Bush leading by 13 percentage points; the Pew Research Center by only one point. But such results suggest uncertainty about the likely scale of Kerry's defeat, scarcely a burgeoning grassroots conviction that the White House is his to win.
Surveys of the swing states tell the same sad story. Bush is currently ahead in Missouri by seven points, in New Hampshire by nine points, and in Arizona by 11 points. Everyday now, pro-Democrat columnists in The New York Times bombard Kerry with advice, and assure each other, as if in comfort, that he is always at his best with his back to the wall.
ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE
Some of the reasons why his campaign has conspicuously not caught fire -- despite the war going badly and the sluggishness of the US economy -- are clear enough. The Democrats' electoral strategy has often seemed introspective and at times almost perversely maladroit.
Thus the Republicans gambled profitably and staged their convention in liberal but post-Sept. 11 New York. The Democrats played safe and went for Boston, and also played too into the hands of those wanting to represent them as quintessentially east coast and out of touch. The Republicans have nurtured their natural supporters while also reaching out.
Hence Bush's advocacy of an amendment to the constitution forbidding same-sex marriage. This was never going to be passed, but it reassured the Christian Right that he was one of them.
The Democrats, though, often seem strangely negligent of their core voters. Kerry has been almost silent during the campaign on abortion rights, for instance, and it is Bush, not he, who is currently enjoying a surge in female support.
But the problem, crucially, is Kerry himself. He is intelligent, experienced, thoughtful, brave and very rich -- but (thus far) an unconvincing candidate. When caught off guard on camera, Bush's eyes can look vacant or perplexed, but his body is usually at ease.
In the same position, Kerry often appears contorted and worried, as well he might. And because he lacks physical ease and charisma, and his voice does not soar, even his most searching speeches have only a limited impact.
As the historian Richard Hofstadter observed, there is a long, disreputable tradition of anti-intellectualism in American politics, and Bush's studiously plain, sometimes stumbling language resonates with this very successfully. Kerry's speaking style, by contrast, is clever enough to alienate, without being so powerful as to compel attention anyway.
This matters because historically it has always been difficult for challengers to defeat US presidents who have completed a full term and who are seeking another. On the very few occasions that the challenger has won, the incumbent has usually been visibly a failure in some way while the challenger has been manifestly first class and formidable.
Thus Woodrow Wilson was able to make short work of the hapless Taft in 1912; Franklin Roosevelt demolished Hoover in 1932, before going on to win the presidency a record three times more; and a youthful Bill Clinton trounced George Bush in 1992 by making him look stiff and old by comparison.
This year, however, the incumbent president is not yet so damaged, nor is his opponent yet so remarkable as to make a political upset of this sort appear very likely.
But it could happen if Kerry and the Democrats came up with an alternative political narrative. In the US -- and elsewhere -- successful parties need a storyline that voters can relate to, an intelligible plot of some sort, especially now that so many older, formal ideologies have lost force.
For proof of this, one has only to look at former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher's career and ideas. She won successive elections in large part because she and her advisers contrived, quite consciously, a more effective British story than her opponents. True, it was a highly selective and deeply divisive story. But it cohered, and for a decade or more it worked.
In speeches over the years and ultimately in her autobiography, she argued that Britain had won World War II but had lost the peace; that Labour and old-style Conservatives had been complicit in this post-1945 failure which reached its nadir in the 1960s and that sexual promiscuity, improvidence, declining respect for institutions, runaway inflation and state expenditure and over-mighty trade unions were all symptoms of the rot. But she would transform things. It would be tough. There would be sacrifices. But Britain would shine again.
If some of this bald summary still sounds familiar today, this is not surprising. There is a degree to which New Labour has deliberately spatchcocked its own reform agenda with sections of this Thatcherite national narrative. Not for nothing do British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his ministers go on in their turn about the laxity of the 1960s. They are stealing chapters from a story that has proved its political worth.
Conversely, the current Conservative party in Britain, like the Democrats in the US, suffers at present from its failure to invent a distinctive and cogent new political narrative. Neither party yet has a story of its own that sticks together.
President Bush, however, does have a story, though a rudimentary one. It goes like this: America is the greatest, most exceptional nation in history; beacon and leader of the free world. But it is threatened from without by terrorists, insurgents, the French and cheap exports, while higher taxes and too much questioning of traditional values would corrode it from within. But he will keep Americans safe and strong. And he will keep them free. This is the storyline Democrats need to challenge and replace, while being careful to preserve their patriotic credentials.
The task is hard but not impossible. To a degree that Europeans do not always understand, very many Americans, and not just Democrats, are troubled at present. For all their fierce nationalism, many dislike appearing as an invading empire.
For all their traditional isolationism, many are appalled by the level of anti-Americanism that now exists around the world. For all their natural, post Sept. 11 fears, many believe that the Patriot Act has eroded too many American liberties, and provoked too much pessimism and paranoia. Millions in the US dislike Bush intensely, and many millions more would be open to persuasion by a plausible challenger.
But the Democrats need to be seen to be offering a different, more generous, more hopeful and more open political narrative. The materials are there. It is just time that's short.
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