Before he lost his voice, Kerry lost his hold on reality and suggested that Bush has a secret plan to re-establish the draft. This has been an internet rumor for several months but it is unlikely. The only push to re-establish the draft has been from Democrats and Bush is against it for some of the same reason that the Democrats are for it. The reasoning is that it will be harder to go to war if rich people's kids might be drafted and sent out. Assuming that this is true, this would be a good reason for Bush to avoid holding a draft.
A better reason for keeping the current professional army is that we have better troops. When the soldiers volunteer they stay in longer allowing the military to give them better training. The top brass are against the draft because the quality of soldier would drop.
The Washington Post examines the Democrats' attempts to depict Bush as the real flip-flopper. This is a losing proposition for them for a couple of reasons. Kerry was first labeled a flip-flopper by his rival Democrats during the primary. There was something to it so Bush built on it. Kerry seldom gives a straight answer on an issue. More often it comes out as, "Actually I voted for it before I voted against it."
Back when Bush first started the flip-flop campaign, Kerry objected that Bush was too dumb or stubborn to change his mind. Now his campaign lists examples where Bush has changed his mind. It all averages out as a leader with strong convictions who will re-examine his policies when he needs to. This is the last thing the Democrats want to say about Bush.
Of course, all polititians change their minds on issues. Conviction meets reality and something has to give. The question is how easily will a polititian change his mind? Will he try to stay true to his campaign promises or does he have a different agenda? When Kerry gives the impression that he will say anything to get elected he loses support.
Jonathan Alter says that Kerry should have spent the Summer being negative. He thinks that Kerry and campaign advisor Bob Shrum went wrong by counting on anti-Bush sentient.
Shrum's grand plan wasn't complicated. He figured that with most voters believing the country is on the "wrong track," all that Kerry had to do was establish his credibility as a potential commander in chief and he would win—hence the "bio" convention. No need to respond directly to Bush ads sliming him for wanting to cut the same weapons systems that Bush's father cut. No need to explain how the Iraq war had been botched. No need to discredit Bush at all, because he was already thoroughly discredited.
Oh, well. The Shrum strategy was the product of short-term thinking (the assumption that Bush's unpopularity in the period of the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal would last until fall) and was reinforced by the sealed and often smug world of Democratic politics, where it was taken for granted that Bush was bad, bad, bad, and any reasonable person already knew why. Shrum correctly realized that a Michael Moore-style sledgehammer would do little to sway undecided voters who don't loathe Bush. But Shrum wrongly extrapolated from that point that Kerry had no need to indict Bush in easy-to-remember phrases that would stick. He once told me as much, and that name-calling wouldn't work in post-9/11 presidential politics.
But Alter is ignoring the 527s and their attack ads. They tried to chew up Bush all Summer and they had more money than Kerry did. It's just that none of the attacks really stuck.
This ties into what I have said about Kerry before, though. He didn't win the primaries because people wanted to see him as President. He won because the voters thought that other people would vote for him. Shrum's strategy was to parade Kerry's war hero qualifications and let anti-Bush sentiment take it from there. They've never offered up a vision. Even Kerry's new Iraq policy boils down to "It will be better because I will be in charge." That's not much reason to turn out a war president.
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