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Like Clinton, Dubya is lucky in his enemies |
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By Byron York
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Posted: 11/04/04 12:00 AM [ET] |
Remember when it was said of Bill Clinton that he was lucky in his enemies?
In some cases, that was true. And now, we have another two-term president who is just as lucky — perhaps even luckier — in his enemies. After all, what politician, simply by relying on his own wit and resourcefulness, could have collected a crowd of antagonists that included Michael Moore, George Soros, Al Franken, Dan Rather and the usual roster of Hollywood activists? For a candidate looking for votes in the South, the Midwest and the West, having those people against you is the kind of endorsement that money just can’t buy.
George W. Bush pulled it off. And boy, did it work for him. Just look at some of the highlights — or lowlights — of the Bush bashers’ campaign against the president.
There was “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which Moore hoped would prove a decisive blow against Bush, as well as a way make Moore very wealthy.
One out of two wasn’t bad.
There was Soros’s nearly $30 million “investment” against Bush, which the billionaire financier hoped would convince Americans that their president was a disaster.
There was Franken’s radio program, originally titled “The O’Franken Factor” but which might more accurately have been called the “Bush is Going Down” show.
There was Rather’s phony National Guard documents scoop.
And there was the impassioned opposition of Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Sean Penn and, well, the whole “Team America” team.
Did any of it work? Not in the way that Moore, Soros, Franken et al. hoped.
It was only natural that the press paid so much attention to the Bush antagonists.
After all, they were talented, high-profile people engaged in high-profile political attacks on the president. That was news.
But it was just as natural that the voters, when Election Day came around, paid little attention to the Bush-bashing crowd.
Because in the end, those high-profile political attacks simply didn’t amount to much.
Just look at Moore’s protect-the-vote campaign. On Election Day, the filmmaker was in Florida, boasting that he had video crews in place around the state, ready to catch voter fraud, intimidation and disenfranchisement in the act.
Only he couldn’t find any. So by 6 p.m., Moore had flown to Cleveland, taking his crew to the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, looking for voter fraud, intimidation and disenfranchisement.
He couldn’t find any there either. He’s still out there, somewhere, watching and hoping.
And what about Soros? Last week, he came to Washington to finish his get-rid-of-Bush tour.
He told an audience at the National Press Club, “Frankly, if President Bush is reelected, I shall go into some kind of monastery to reflect.”
It got a laugh. But then Soros said what he would be reflecting on.
“I will be asking what’s wrong with us,” he said. “I mean, I’ve been blaming the Bush administration for the policies followed by this administration, which really took America off the rails. ... But if we now endorse him, then my next question will be: What’s wrong with us?”
Today, Soros is no doubt reflecting — just not on himself.
And Franken? At parties and news conferences last spring to launch Air America,
the liberal talk-radio network, the anti-Bush comedian announced, over and over, that “Bush is going down. Bush is going down.”
From that day forward, his program was an extended, continuous, high-volume rant against the president.
There’s nothing wrong with that — Franken even began to attract some listeners and a few new station affiliates — but it wasn’t the kind of thing that wins votes.
In the end, all Bush’s enemies could do was bash, bash, bash. And now they have to ask themselves why all that bashing didn’t work.
The morning after Bush’s victory, a writer on the left-wing dailykos.com website, after reading thousands of comments from disappointed Kerry supporters, described the content of those reactions as follows:
“What I found in my reading was a plethora of bashing Christians, bashing Kerry, bashing gays, bashing Edwards, bashing Kos, bashing America and bashing each other. As well as a lot of people saying they’re abandoning the Democrats, abandoning politics, abandoning the country. This descent into despair and irrationality and surrender puts icing on the Republican victory cake.”
The writer chose to attribute the anger to “adrenaline crashes, too much rage and reefer and booze.” But many of his correspondents will undoubtedly say much the same thing when they sober up.
Reefer and booze aside, all the Bush-bashing was no doubt intoxicating to the president’s enemies.
But now, as they go into their own personal monasteries, they have to ask themselves: What did we do that so turned off so many Americans in so many states?
Now that’s something to reflect upon.
Byron York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail:
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