CAMPAIGN 2004
Shades of '44
It's time for the president to rally his "natural majority."
The Republican convention that opens in New York today will be unusual. Its chief purpose is the re-election of President Bush--nothing out of the ordinary about that. But it won't remind anyone of the 1972 or 1984 Republican conventions that propelled President Nixon and President Reagan, respectively, to second terms. The Nixon convention was devoted largely to demonizing his Democratic opponent, George McGovern. The message at Reagan's convention was stay the course and good as things are, they'll get even better if Reagan is re-elected.
Amazingly enough, the 2004 convention aims to achieve what the 1944 Democratic convention did. At the time, President Franklin Roosevelt was a commander in chief whose popularity had been worn down by nine years of economic downturn and three of world war. He was politically vulnerable. But he rallied the natural Democratic majority in the country with a convention speech vigorously defending his war record and presenting an attractive vision of a new term. He won going away, 54% to 46%.
George Bush would like to do the same. His political adviser, Karl Rove, an admirer of FDR's 1944 speech, believes there's a natural Republican majority waiting to be gathered together. An appealing convention with a strong message climaxed by an engaging speech by Mr. Bush could set the stage for his re-election this fall--and more. The creation of a stable Republican majority is a potential side-effect.
Republicans have been struggling toward majority status for decades. In the 1970s and 1980s, they had a near-lock on the presidency. That ended in the 1990s. A Bush loss in 2004 would mark the fourth straight presidential election in which the Republican candidate failed to win a plurality, much less a majority.
With their hold on the presidency disappearing, however, Republicans won the U.S. House and Senate in 1994, plus a majority of governorships and plurality of state legislatures. And except for a Senate interlude in 2001-2002, Republicans have maintained control of both houses of Congress. So the missing link now is a re-elected president.
Voters haven't re-elected a Republican president and Congress in the same year since 1900. The president was William McKinley, and that was during an era of Republican hegemony nationally. What would it take to match that in 2004? The Republican recipe is not to bother with outreach among liberals and liberal-leaning moderates, but to concentrate on turning out conservatives and moderate conservatives, a center-right coalition. Whenever Republicans have won major nationwide landslides in recent years--1980, 1994 and, to a lesser extent, 2002--they've done so by dramatically increasing turnout of their voters.
Mr. Bush's speech is crucial in this regard. Sure, he might defeat John Kerry in the fall even if he delivers a drab speech. But that would not produce the kind of victory that Republicans need to govern effectively. His task is to give a speech that not only pleases conservatives and moderates but inspires them to vote in large numbers. His speech, and indeed the whole convention, must be a catalyst.
In particular, the president needs to pull Republican Senate candidates into office with him. Republican control of the House is safe, but the narrow Senate majority is in jeopardy. And it's not an operational majority anyway. A strong Bush campaign would help preserve Republican seats in Alaska, Colorado and Oklahoma. And it would aid Republicans in winning open Democratic seats in North Carolina, Florida and Louisiana. Republicans are likely to replace Democratic senators in Georgia and South Carolina no matter how well Mr. Bush does.
Imagine what a successful Republican convention would look like. Republican luminaries from former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani to Democratic Senator Zell Miller to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would give attention-grabbing speeches. So would Arizona Senator John McCain and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Then Bush would conclude the convention with an address that does three things: defend the war on terror and regime change in Iraq effectively; draw a sharp contrast with Mr. Kerry; and provide a solid rationale for a second term. There is a rationale after all and it's not more of the same. It's the unfulfilled conservative agenda of less government intervention and more personal choice in health care, savings, pensions and investments. It's an agenda that would allow Mr. Bush to echo Reagan and say, "We are the change."
The impact of such a convention would be seen immediately in an uptick in poll numbers for Mr. Bush and other Republicans. In 1992, Bill Clinton got a strong bump and came out of the Democratic convention with a six to eight point lead over the first President Bush, a lead he never relinquished. If all goes well at the convention--and that's surely a big if--the same could happen with Bush.
Mr. Kerry is already reeling from his ill-advised emphasis on his brief Navy service in Vietnam. Should he fall behind Mr. Bush by a half-dozen points, Democratic candidates in many parts of the country would start to shun him. His only hope of recovery would be bad news in the economy or Iraq and a commanding performance in his three debates with Mr. Bush. The race would be Mr. Bush's to win.
In 1944, President Roosevelt didn't have to worry about debates with Republican Tom Dewey, a New York prosecutor with a stiff presence and dry speaking style. And he had another advantage. Rather than attend the Democratic convention, Roosevelt spoke from the deck of a Navy vessel in San Diego on its way to Pearl Harbor. He stoutly defended the war effort and talked about his vision for "postwar reconversion." Mr. Bush can't match the setting. But offering a persuasive vision is well within his grasp.
Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard.
