According to Paul Waldman Kerry is defining Bush "Bush is living in a "fantasy world," that he's "in denial," and that he "can't tell the truth." This is a great article from the GadFlyer
A Theme! An Actual Theme!
Paul Waldman (11:31AM) link
For months, I (along with others) have been saying that the fundamental divide between the Bush campaign and the Kerry campaign is over thematic unity: anyone could tell you the one thing the Bush campaign wants you to think about both candidates, but nobody could tell you the one thing the Kerry campaign wants you to think about them.
But now we may actually see the emergence of a Kerry theme about Bush. It's not because of their new-found focus so much as it is the result of real-world events and Bush's reaction to them. Its only weakness is that it's gone by a few different names already. In the last week, Kerry has told us that Bush is living in a "fantasy world," that he's "in denial," and that he "can't tell the truth."
They need to pick one and stick with it, but this has what a good theme does - it can be applied to almost any issue, and it speaks not just to whether you agree with Bush about this or that, but to his character.
Of course, Kerry wouldn't be able to press this point were Bush and Cheney not dropping gifts in his lap on an almost daily basis. As the incumbent, Bush is all but required to argue that everything is going great. But the relentlessness with which he shuts his eyes to reality is truly remarkable. That they can argue that a report showing Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction is actually proof that invading was the right thing to do requires no small degree of chutzpah. And when even the war's supporters acknowledge that lots and lots of mistakes are made, they argue that there isn't a single thing they would have done differently. Today's poor job growth numbers - only 96,000 jobs created last month, when the economy needs to create 150,000 just to keep up with increases in population - will no doubt be cited as evidence that the economy is "strong and gettting stronger."
So the argument for Bush's re-election can be summed up as this: Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
The test for Kerry will be whether he has the discipline to stick to this message every single day for the next week. We'll see.