If the First Lady were the candidate, the Bush campaign might have a better shot at arguing it stands for compassionate conservatism. Laura Bush is so muted and so reserved, that she’s a welcome antidote to Bush’s guns-blazing style. Still, she’s got an impossible task when it comes to selling her husband’s education and health policies.
Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation is so unpopular around the country that state legislatures are voting to reject its provisions. It imposes higher standards without the promised funding, and the result is a lot of schools labeled as failures and the overcrowding of schools that have worked hard at being a success.
Bush’s prescription-drug program for seniors is both a public-policy and a political disaster. Senior women are most skeptical. They’re experts on the cost of drugs and they know it’s a scam when consumers get to choose a discount card once a year while the drug companies get to raise prices whenever they want.
Women are the crown jewel of the electorate. It’s their vote margin that could elect John Kerry just as it did Bill Clinton. In 1996, Republican Bob Dole beat Clinton among men by a single percentage point; women voted overwhelmingly for Clinton. The wave of prison-abuse photos made public over the last two weeks confirms the doubts women have about Bush’s policy in Iraq. But Bush was falling behind among women even before the graphic images hit the airwaves.
Surveys taken in March showed women disapproving of Bush’s job performance by 47 percent to 39 percent, while men approved 54 percent to 38 percent. The numbers in battleground states mirror the national scene. In Ohio, Bush’s job approval among men in March was 53 to 45 percent while women disapproved 56 to 40 percent. In Wisconsin, one poll has Kerry leading Bush 50 to 42 percent with a wider margin of 54 versus 35 percent among women. In Oregon, a 1-point Kerry lead expands to 9 points when women are polled.
Ann Lewis runs the women’s vote project at the Democratic National Committee. A longtime political operative, she was communications director in the Clinton White House and a key player in Hillary Clinton’s Senate race in New York. She says of the Bush team, “I didn’t think they would do education well, or health care, but I thought they would make war well. It’s stunning that they have messed this up.” Increasingly, women know someone who is in the Reserves or Guard, and they’re getting first-hand information, which is mostly negative and contributes to the sense of unease.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers filed into a secure room in the Capitol to view X-rated pictures and videos of prisoner abuse. It was reminiscent of the Starr Report but with much more serious ramifications. The president’s more hawkish supporters are furious that the so-called namby-pamby do-gooders on the left and in the media are making such a big deal over the photos. A Republican on the Senate side predicted that the debate here at home would take a nastier turn as a backlash builds among the right. “The right is red hot in going after the traitors among us who are weakening our resolve to win the war.”
Conservatives are gearing up for an election-year contest over who’s losing Iraq. Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe led the charge Tuesday when he announced at a Senate panel looking into the Iraqi prisoner abuse that, “I’m probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment,” he said.
Inhofe called the prisoners “murderers, terrorists and insurgents,” many of which have “American blood on their hands.” He and other conservatives will say that we need these techniques to win and accuse weak-kneed defenders of human rights of tying the hands of the military and aiding and abetting the enemy.
Some women commentators on the right blamed the increased presence of women in the military for the breakdown in discipline. “While some advocates of women in the military have argued that women’s presence would improve behavior, in fact, there is much evidence to suggest it has had the opposite effect,” says conservative columnist Linda Chavez. This is “exactly what feminists have dreamed of for years,” says Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, which opposes women in the military.
These women claiming to speak for the silent majority will further deepen the divide between themselves and most women. Bush is losing the hearts and minds of American women over his handling of the war, just as he has lost the confidence of the Iraqi people. Polls show 82 percent of Iraqis have a negative view of Americans. What’s next in the Bush-Chaney campaign arsenal–a Laura Bush mission to Baghdad?
