2004 presidential election offers voters real choice, not an echo

By Steven Thomma
Knight Ridder Newspapers

The 2004 presidential election gives Americans the most dramatic choice of leaders and directions in at least a quarter of a century.

So different are President Bush and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry - in everything from personal style to their approaches to major international, domestic and cultural issues facing the country - that voters have, in effect, a choice between ratifying America's current path and charting a new one.

Like other historic elections, in 1980, 1964 and 1932, the outcome of this year's vote could usher in a radically different way of governing. It's worth noting that the three earlier elections produced landslides. But whoever wins, and by whatever margin, the outcome will have important consequences for Americans' prosperity and safety and for their country's role in the world.

"The difference couldn't be more stark," said Susan Dunn, a presidential historian and co-author of a new book on George Washington.

Bush, 57, is a plainspoken, backslapping, peanut-butter-and-jelly loving Texan who enjoys watching baseball but prefers the solitude of running for his exercise. He launched a pre-emptive war in Iraq, favors suspending some legal rights for suspected terrorists, presided over soaring federal budget deficits, wants to extend tax cuts, backs free trade as an engine of growth regardless of short-term job losses, wants to partly privatize Social Security and wants a constitutional ban on marriage for gays and lesbians.

Kerry, 60, is sometimes aloof and long-winded, patrician, a French chocolate-eating New Englander who unwinds with the team sport of ice hockey. A Yale University graduate like Bush, Kerry served in combat in Vietnam while Bush served at home in the Texas Air National Guard. Kerry, a liberal, now criticizes the Iraq war he voted to authorize. He'd raise taxes on those who make more than $200,000 a year, expand health care to the uninsured, restrict trade to protect jobs regardless of higher prices for imported goods and leave it to states to ban or allow gay marriage.

[...]

Bush, the incumbent, is largely defined by his record. His new television ads this week notwithstanding, all that can change his image are events, such as a terrorist attack, developments in Iraq and the economy. His standing is "mostly based on things outside his control," said Joe Lockhart, who was press secretary to President Clinton.

Kerry remains largely unknown to most Americans. He'll spend the spring trying to introduce himself to voters as a decorated Vietnam War veteran with a plan to defend the country from terrorists, restore international alliances and expand the economy.

Bush will try to cast Kerry as an out-of-the-mainstream liberal who's weak on defense and wants to increase taxes. Bush's campaign strategists say their model is Clinton, who used a springtime ad campaign in 1996 to paint Republican rival Bob Dole as a reactionary conservative.

"No one really knows John Kerry," said Scott Reed, a Republican strategist who managed Dole's campaign. "He's literally an unpainted picture."

The sharp differences between Kerry and Bush make it unlikely that Ralph Nader will be able to tout himself as the real alternative to two parties that he claims are mirror images of each other.

In addition, the major candidates' differences on national security, the changing economy, the future of Social Security - even the definition of marriage - make it unlikely that they'll be able to meet and compete in the political center.

"There's no possibility of centrism here," historian Dunn said.

Overall this appears to be a fairly even-handed article, but when one looks a little more closely, there are some hitches:

• More space is devoted to Bush's assessment of Kerry than is to Kerry's take on Bush



• Bush is "plainspoken" -- is that code for "tongue-tied" or "unable to put together a coherent sentence"? If so, I'd prefer a more forthright description instead of a coded reference which can be read as a positive.



• Kerry, on the other hand, is "aloof" and "long-winded". One has to wonder if Thomma thought up those descriptors all by himself?



• What makes Kerry "French"? Aside, that is, from an anonymous White Horse souse saying that he "looks French"?



• Is there any authority that can be quoted to the effect that the job losses under Bush's tax regime are "short term"? That implies that the jobs picture will improve, something that Bush has been promising for a long time now, but things don't ever seem to get better. It seems clear that we're sorta past the point where these losses are "short term".



• Kerry is called a "liberal", but Bush is never called a "conservative," instead (in a section I don't quote above) -- read the entire article here), Thomma says that the attacks of 9/11 "coaxed" out a "conservative philosophy" out of Bush.



• Kerry is cited as changing his mind about Iraq (that old "flip-flop" thing, this year's first official Goring of Kerry by the right), but no specific mention is made of Bush's promise for "compassionate conservatism", his supposed commitment to a foreign policy of "humility", his fervent dislike of "nation building" and so on, all the tropes of his 2000 campaign that he has completely ignored and done completely the opposite.

I don't think that Thomma distorted anything deliberately or consciously skewed his article in Bush's favor. I can't say that I think he's an ideologue and not an "objective" journalist. Rather, I'd say that his article provides a good example of how reporters can absorb ideas that are floating around in the air without even being much aware of it. With all three branches of the government controlled by the GOP, and the media owned to a large extent by conservatives, it would be difficult for the tropes of the right not to permeate the very environment that a political reporter in Washington inhabits, and in that way to skew the reporting.

From what I've seen, when this is pointed out to reporters, they angrily reject the notion of unconscious bias (journalists are surprisingly thin-skinned about this stuff, considering the kind of poking and flaying they do to politicians as part of their work), which, of course, makes it difficult for them to counter it if they were inclined to do so.

Update: If "Kerry remains largely unknown to most Americans," why is he polling even with or above Bush in national preference polls? Could it be that Bush is known to most Americans, and that's his problem?

And what's with "chocolate-eating?" Isn't that uncomfortably reminiscent of the description of the French as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"? Or to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher's description of Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg as "chocolate makers" when they proposed a European military command autonomous from NATO?

Perhaps I was too quick to absolve Thomma of ideologically-based bias.