By now voters across the country have been barraged by endless attack ads that try to attribute all kinds of idiocy and evil to our state and local candidates. They're running smear ads. They're trying to brag about all the local pork they've sloshed around. They're pulling out all their tried and true themes - "they'll tax you!" "gay marriage!" "They'll take your guns!"
They're trying to change the subject.
My fear is that we might lose focus - that we might indulge a willingness to lob smears back at a bunch of pipsqueaks or engage on a whole range of complicated issues.
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This happens in campaigns. To help keep staff focused in 1992, the Clinton campaign famously tacked a sign to the wall to constantly remind themselves of the issue that would propel them to victory:
"It's the economy stupid!"
I think the message we need to focus on is comparably simple:
"It's George W. Bush"
Sure Democrats have a lot of good policy ideas. (It would have been great if these ideas had been rolled out in some refined, coordinated way many months ago.) What has made this election competitive, however, has been the implosion of the Republicans, which can all be traced back to their leadership.
The fundamental issue is that the Bush administration, along with the Congressional leaders they control, is -- brazenly -- misguided, corrupt, and incompetent.
Their ideology has failed, and they refuse to recognize it. They have no ability to analyze problems and propose solutions. Confronted by hard, worsening problems -- especially problems of their own making -- they are paralyzed.
They have no clue what to do next -- and you can see it in Bush's eyes.
It is this intellectual vaccuum and lack of ethics that has allowed lobbyists to run amok on domestic policy -- the official numbers of lobbyists has increased more than four-fold since 2000, and they are effectively writing all the rules and legislation that governs our country.
With respect to foreign policy, there seems to be nobody steering the ship.
(In foreign policy, the lobbyists just ensure more money down the rat-hole into Duke Cunningham's black-budget kleptocracy.)
The list of transgressions -- from ignoring 9/11 warnings, to plunging us into Iraq, to letting bin Laden escape, to Abu Ghraib, to botching Iraq, to Katrina, to illegal wire-tapping, to the current amateur-hour on display in vis North Korea and Iran -- is well-known and widely recognized.
And it is beyond any debate that -- with our bobblehead Congress -- there has been no accountability. At all. Ever.
And no one should think for a second that it can't get worse -- it consistently has, month, after month, after month, from the first day of the Bush Presidency.
So if you're knocking on doors and a nice old lady says to you:
"Well, sure Republicans have screwed up a bit, but my Republican Congressman isn't so bad (the grand jury has returned no indictments so far), and he has a lot of seniority..."
The response is: "No."
A vote for any Republican for any federal office is a vote to continue handing George W. Bush a blank check, a free pass, a wink and a nudge, to continue on his wreckless, ignorant, corrupt, slapdash path that is undermining our security, eroding our liberty, sacrificing our troops, alienating our allies and mortgaging our future.
It is simple: a Republican legislator will vote for the Republican caucus to continue running the House and Senate.
Things have gotten worse for the last 5 years. Everybody knows it. Since it is the Bush agenda driving our decline, what chance is there that a Republican Congress will do anything to fix misguided policies -- most critically in Iraq? What chance is there that, say, Dennis Hastert will suddenly wake up and demand accountability?
Our democracy is amazingly resilient. But we have tested the limits in a dangerous way. When that little old lady votes, she should be focused squarely on the failures of the Bush Administration, and of those who have let him get away with it, time after time, after time.
And the recognition that things really can continue getting worse. And worse. And worse.
So what's the over-riding issue in this election?
It's the president, stupid.