One particularly upsetting trend I've noticed (at least among us Democrats) is to view Bush (and the GOP in general) as a bunch of political masters, capable of insane feats of Macheavellian political jujitsu...
People to be feared and approached only with caution. But that's not even remotely the case...
They're not political geniuses. They're often amoral, dedicated to winning, and rarely have anything resembling scruples.
But what they've really got is fearless lies. They lie, distort, spin, and manipulate the truth because they believe no one will call them on it.
And when their lies are challenged, they muddy the water as much as possible so that no casual bystander can determine true from false.
Then they come back and do it again.
But they're not political geniuses. If they were, Bush wouldn't be losing. Karl Rove and George Bush have screwed up his re-election six ways from Sunday. He's going into the polls on the worst job market since Hoover, with falling consumer confidance, a growing deficit, a strained and increasinly unhappy military, an increasingly unpopular foreign war, high gas prices, a stagnant economy and more real scandals hovering over his head than Kenneth Starr ever dreamed of pinning on Clinton.
The disconnect comes because we believe, in the face of that, that he should be losing so badly the GOP would be angling to replace him on the ticket. And he's not, because of the politics of fear.
I honestly believe -- though I have never been much of a Kerry fan -- that Kerry (or his campaign) firmly understand this.
All you have to do is look at Howard Dean's latest charges, and look at the insane vitriol coming from the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth".
Because Kerry is trying -- and might succeed -- to turn Bush's own storyline against him. To use Bush's terror, and Bush's partisanship, and Bush's own lies against him.
Bush pushes the "Terror" button because he thinks -- with a lot of evidence -- that the American public responds to fear by hewing to him. Dean's trying to poison that well (and in a way that can't be connected to Kerry), by turning that story upside down. (Dean's in a unique place, BTW. The media will cover him, his remarks come out heavily amplified, yet he is not part of the Kerry campaign...and his --undeserved -- reputation as "Gaffe-prone" and a "loose cannon" shields Kerry. Dean's "just being Dean"....to respond, Bush has to send out Cheney or a Cabinet official....someone VERY closely tied to him.)
The idea here is to poison the terror well (and by Cheney's furious reaction, it might be working) so that the American public responds to terrorism warnings and captured terrorists with skepticism over the timing, and open questions about why it took so long.
In the end, terrorism and "strong on foreign policy" (IE, the military) is all Bush has. And Kerry's Vietnam service, and his attacks (by proxy) on Bush's "convienent" use of terrorism alerts is undermining the only two things propping Bush up.
Bush has made the American public afraid, and his whole campaign is based on making the American public believe Kerry can't keep them safe.
Kerry's trying to invert that. He's trying to shift the question into: "Why hasn't Bush made you safe?". The obvious answer is: "Because if you were safe, Bush wouldn't be reelected".
The political jujitsu is Kerry's...and he's got a real chance of pulling this off.