The Kay report gives the Democrats an opening against Bush, but we could easily misplay it. Given the public's short attention span, we don't want our campaign to get stuck in the past. And given the number of people who like Bush, we don't want to get into a shrill did-Bush-lie debate that we might lose.
Instead, we need to fold the WMD issue into a larger discussion of Bush's credibility and reliability: When this guy tells you something, why should you believe it?
A future-focused voter without prior animus towards President Bush -- the swing voters, in other words -- might be persuaded to see the following as part of a pattern:
- Bush told us Iraq had WMD; they didn't.
- Bush told us Saddam was allied with al Qaeda; he wasn't.
- He told us that his tax cuts wouldn't create a deficit; they did.
- He told us the tax cuts would create jobs; they didn't.
- Bush's people implied that the Iraqi's would welcome us with open arms; they didn't.
Seen in this context, the WMD issue is not just water under the bridge, because the President continues to tell us things every day. He tells us that his economic plan is working, that Iraq is on the road to democracy, that the deficit will be cut in half in five years, that the Patriot Act needs to be extended, and so on. A voter who believes Bush's claims will very likely vote to re-elect him. If I believed them, I'd probably vote for Bush myself.
At some point President Bush is going to start telling us things about the Democratic nominee: that he can't be trusted to keep us safe from terrorism, for example. And he's going to deny charges against himself: He'll say that his National Guard service was honorable, and that he never participated in insider trading.
Every day voters see the President Bush on TV and have to decide: Should I believe any of this? The election hangs on making sure that swing voters answer this question: No. President Bush is not a reliable source of information.
We will get into trouble, however, if we try to push our case too far. Many people, for whatever reason, feel personal affection for Bush or think that he is basically a good person. If we try to convince them that the President is a scheming liar (which may be true, but never mind that), they'll tune us out.
In truth, there are a lot of possible explanations for the size and frequency of the falsehoods that slip out of the President's mouth. Maybe ideological blinders prevent him from seeing the world the way it is. Maybe he trusts the wrong people. Maybe he's just really bad at predicting where events are headed.
Reasonable people can disagree about the explanation for his unreliability, but that's OK, because we don't need them to accept any particular explanation. We just need them to accept the fact: George Bush frequently says things that turn out not to be true. You can't trust what he tells you.
If the country becomes convinced of that fact, they'll vote him out.