DON'T BE A LOSER, GEORGE

Mark Steyn says the Democrats are making

a hash of the election campaign, but Bush is squandering his opportunities

New Hampshire ASIDE from the anniversary and the big UN speech, last week also saw Primary Day up here and in 11 other states, which means the parties candidates have now been selected and we're into the election campaign proper. How's it going to go? To be honest, I haven't a clue. So I consulted the experts.

From the New York Times of 1 September: 'Domestic Concerns Take Center Stage In Congress Races, by Adam Nagourney'. But, then again, from the New York Times of 6 September: 'With Focus Shifting To Iraq, Domestic Issues Fade, by Adam Nagourney'.

On the one hand, as Adam Nagourney September model) argues, 'The fight for control of Congress is revolving this Labor Day more around domestic than foreign concerns, with candidates battling over corporate abuses, prescription drug costs and Social Security rather than the threat of terrorism or the prospect of a war against Iraq. The emphasis on these domestic issues at what is traditionally the start of the general election season would seem to give an advantage to the Democratic party. . .

On the other, as Adam Nagourney (6 September model) counters, 'Events abroad, rather than the domestic issues pushed by Democrats this summer, could dominate the nation's political discussion for easily half of the general election campaign this fall. Several Republicans said today that the focus on Iraq would serve the political needs of their party going into the close Congressional elections. .

What happened between 1 and 6 September is that the Democratic party woke up and realised it had been suckered. Ever since the Afghan campaign wound down the best part of a year ago, President Bush has been talking about 'regime change' in Iraq. Or, to be more accurate, he's talked about how he has 'no plans' for regime change in Iraq 'on my desk'. This may well be true. They could be on the sideboard, or in the filing cabinet, or stashed behind the coffee percolator. My own hunch is that they're rolled up in the umbrella-stand. At first, in the absence of anything exciting on the war front, all those poll-tested, focus-grouped Democratic issues — prescription-drug plans for seniors, mandatory federal bicycling-helmet regulations. whatever — seemed likely to fill the gap, as the first Mr Nagourney so persuasively argued.

But, instead, as Bush carried on insisting that his desk remained free of war plans, Democrats were unable to rosist piling on and started huffing that he'd jolly well better not think about invading Iraq without getting congressional approval and going to the UN and answering a number of 'troubling questions' party bigwigs claimed to have about the whole business. By this time, the President had gone off to play golf, leaving Democratic senators to hog the airwaves week in week out with their various 'concerns' about the administration's policy on Iraq. With Mr Bush temperamentally disinclined to use the bully pulpit. the Dems seized the pulpit and started bullying him.

And then, round about Labor Day, they wised up: they'd spent so much time yakking about Saddam that all their issues had dropped off the front page.

Now, as readers may recall, I wanted Bush to invade Iraq by 11 September, Or even on 11 September. Instead of all that soft-focus moping, it would have been a lot better to see Don Rumsfeld and General Franks in a Pentagon ops room moving flags around the sandbox. I know the Iraq war's under way unofficially — the `no-fly zone' seems to have been extended to any facility the USAF and RAF have a yen to bomb — but, like a Broadway show in previews, it's the official opening that counts, at least in political terms. So ten months after the liberation of Kabul we're still sitting around discussing what to do for an encore. Mark Helprin, the novelist and sometime Republican speechwriter, wrote in Monday's Wall Street Journal that 'the President has failed the test of September 11'. His analysis touched on some themes familiar to these pages (Bush's inability to be honest about the enemy, his continued coddling of the Saudis) and came to pretty much the same conclusion as your correspondent — that the President has squandered his opportunity and lost the momentum.

It's fair to say that, among those of us on the Right, this is still a minority view. Take Andrew Sullivan, for example. 'It seems clear to me in retrospect.' he wrote the other day, 'that Bush's summer strategy has been really, really smart.' Bush's summer strategy was to take the summer off. If I follow the argument correctly, it's that, by doing so, he allowed the Dems to overplay their hand, as the wily old fox knew they would. It is not necessary to agree with this theory to appreciate nevertheless that, up against the current Democratic leadership, even Bush's lethargy is a potentially lethal weapon.

So now, instead of fighting Saddam, Bush and the Democrats are fighting over the calendar. It's not so much that the Democrats are opposed to the war but that they're opposed to talking about the war, at least before election day in November. 'People are going to vote on the kitchentable issues we've talked about for 18 months,' maintains Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, War, terrorism, national security, nukes are all very well but it's simply too late to pencil 'em in for this season: the programme's already been drawn up and we're frightfully sorry but there's no room for Iraq. 'We can't let it replace the domestic agenda,' says Ted Kennedy, whose political priority right now is 'subsidising outpatient drug coverage for Medicare beneficiaries'.

Out on the hustings, Democratic candidates glide past the war question like the Queen passing one of those mooning Maoris: keep smiling and pretend nothing's happening. in this, they have the considerable assistance of the press. The American Prospect gave Minnesota leftie Senator Paul Wellstone the full Monica the other day in a drooling campaign profile broken up by sub-headings such as 'The Draw of Conscience'. "I believe in Paul's conscience," says Karen Jeffords, a mental-health worker.' The senator, in return, 'pledges' his 'commitment' to federal funds for light-rail transportation. Paul's conscience on the controversial light-rail issue seems to be in cracking form, but where does it stand on the war? Whoops, gotta run.

My guess is he's opposed to it, but his party would rather he didn't say. If Senator Conscience comes out against it, he's likely to lose to the Republicans. If he comes out in favour, enough of his 'progressive' base will defect to the Green party to throw the election to the Republicans anyway.

Back when Bush had his feet up back at the ranch watching Austin Powers, the Democrats were telling anyone who'd listen that the President needed congressional approval in order to go to war with Iraq. This is, as it happens, nonsense. But it never occurred to them that, after a couple of weeks of their whining, Bush would go, 'Yeah, sure, why not? I'll swing by Congress in the next couple of days and see whether you're ready to approve or not.' Most Democratic senators voted against the last Gulf war. A majority would like to vote against this one, but preferably not just before they have to face the electorate. So now the party's frantically backpedalling: good heavens, we know we said you need congressional approval, but what's the hurry? How about if we leave it till December or the New Year? The new line is that, by bringing it to the legislature as they demanded, Bush is now 'politicising' the war.

The concerns we have about the politicisation of this whole issue are ones that still exist,' frets Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader and putative Democratic presidential candidate. His colleague Joe Biden is equally concerned. 'Some issues are so serious, so important to the United States, that they should be taken as far out of the realm of politics as possible,' he intones portentously. 'This is one of those issues.'

You'd have to have a heart of stone not to be howling with laughter at this. Usually, when they call for something to be 'taken out of politics', they're demanding that the Democrat line on, say, abortion or racial quotas be accepted as one of life's eternal verities and the very subject retired from political contention. But in this instance what Biden means is that the Democrats should not be forced to take a line at all: the President should protect them from the political consequences of having to reveal their views. 'Some issues are so serious, so important to the United States that they can't be discussed in the national legislature, mainly because they might reveal the yawning chasm between me and the American people. The eve of an election campaign is no time to start forcing politicians to make our views on major issues known to voters. An election ought to be about light-rail subsidies and which Senate candidate has the more stylish toupee.'

Hang on, say the Dems, Bush only wants a war because it's an election year. As Dick Cheney pointed out, 'Every other year is an election year and you can't take half the calendar and put it off-limits.' But I'm sure even now the New York Times is commissioning Arthur Schlesinger Jr or some other venerable Ivy League Democrat flack to pen a learned essay arguing that the precedents of America's entries into the first and second world wars suggest that it would be grossly unconstitutional to go into battle in an even-numbered year.

But, if that doesn't stick, some congressional Democrats are saying they won't be able to make a decision about Iraq until they hear what the United Nations thinks. The President had fun with that one: 'It seems to me that if you're representing the United States, you ought to be making a decision on what's best for the United States.' he said last Friday. 'If I were running for office, I'm not sure how I'd

explain to the American people saying, "Vote for me. and, oh, by the way, on a matter of national security, I think I'm going to wait for somebody else to act."'

Okay, if delegating your responsibilities to Kofi Annan won't fly, it's time to fall back on a sure-fire favourite. 'There was nothing new in President Bush's speech today to the United Nations General Assembly,' wrote William Saletan in Slate. 'There was no compelling new evidence.' wrote Maureen Dowd in the New York Times. Where have I heard that before? Oh, right: 1998/1999, the standard Clintonite's defence of the impeachment era. 'There's nothing new here. We've heard it all before' works well enough when it's interns, cigars and semen, but it doesn't play quite so well with chemical weapons facilities and nuclear capability. It's true that much of what Bush says could have been said four years ago. In fact, President Clinton did say it four years ago. The difference is he didn't want to do anything about it.

Meanwhile, every ten minutes or so, the funereal Senator Daschle pops up on TV and announces gloomily that he still has 'a number of questions' about Iraq that the President needs to answer. It must be quite a number, because, no matter how many answers the President gives, for Daschle there are always 'a number of questions that still remain'. Actually, the only remaining question is how much longer the Democrats' most visible spokesman can afford to go on making himself look like a total idiot. What question does he still need answered? 'What's the capital of Iraq?'? Daschle fancies himself presidential material. If so, he's supposed to have answers, not just endless unspecified questions.

The Democrat line on Iraq boils down to We urgently need a debate but not for the next few months'. The longer you stick to that, the more obvious it is what you really believe. And, even taken at face value, it's preposterous: if Democrats really have no views on the defence of the Republic, why exactly are they running for national office anyway?

But Dems don't need to be smart, just lucky. If Bush is planning to be at war by 5 November. the GOP could do surprisingly well. But, if we have another two months of unending drumbeat but no actual fighting, who's to say a bored public won't drift back to Kennedy and Welistone's issues? November 2002 still seems most likely to preserve the 50/50 split in the American electorate.

That's why the laughable cowardice of the Democrat position makes Bush's inertia, faintheartedness or (as Helprin sees it) 'irresoluteness' all the more frustrating. The party is vulnerable in this new world. If Bush were to use the bully pulpit, he could change the dynamics of American politics. Instead, over these last six months, he's allowed the culture to slip back into its default mode — which is to say fuzzily Democratic. The Dems may not benefit from that this November, but, if Bush doesn't get serious about this war, time is on their side.