WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush cut it fine, but he made it in the end.
The president owed his re-election victory Tuesday night to the bonds he forged with the U.S. people in the terrible days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, to massive deficit spending that cushioned unemployment losses that would otherwise have been far more severe, but most of all to a tactically superb nationwide organization that was at its most formidable in the Republican-controlled vital swing states of Ohio and Florida, both of which eventually tilted crucially into the GOP column, just as they did four years ago.
At the end of the day, the enormous pro-Democratic Party voter-registration drive failed to provide any magic margin to tilt Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee, over the top. As we predicted in these columns, many of the newly registered voters, especially the young among them, appear to have broken for President Bush.
Billionaire investor George Soros got his money's worth by seeing millions of new voters turn out at the polls as he wanted. The only problem was that they did not vote the way he expected them to. Democracy is full of little surprises like that.
Kerry ultimately failed to establish himself as a credible alternative to Bush on defending against future mega-terrorist attacks, even though the president was hit with a sequence of embarrassing news on those fronts in the last weeks of the campaign.
Despite an impressive performance in the three presidential debates, Kerry ultimately paid for his long record of flip-flops on national-security issues and on Iraq. He regained a lot of ground on Bush by attacking him on Iraq starting mid-September. Had he taken that stand six months earlier, he might have won the campaign in a walk. But as it was, he turned to the crucial national-security and war issues too late in the day to firmly establish himself in the eyes of the U.S. electorate.
Bush probably also benefited from significant gains in the African-American vote by hammering cultural-religious issues like abortion and gay marriage. This approach also kept him in good stead with working-class voters who might have regressed economically over the past four years but still felt a much more visceral connection to the president than to his elite and aloof challenger.
At the end of the day Kerry, supposedly the great closer, failed to close. While he finally rolled up his sleeves and got down and dirty with the president, giving as good as he got in the debates, he did so too late in the day to firmly cement his own presidential credibility and leadership persona with the U.S. people.
Kerry failed to establish himself as a credible, charismatic candidate whom Joe and Jane Six-Pack could connect with. He also listened far too long to his favored political guru Robert Shrum, who played the same doomed and disastrous role as a failed and bungling Svengali to Vice President Al Gore four years ago.
For it was Shrum who counseled Kerry to ignore the wave of ad hominem attacks discrediting him personally and not hit back at Bush's personal credibility the same way. It was Shrum who convinced Kerry to focus on domestic bread-and-butter issues, thereby preventing him from establishing himself as a credible and consistent voice on Iraq and other national-security issues until it was too late.
At the end of the day, and with the benefit of hindsight, the Democrats might well have been better off running with former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean after all. He might scream and whoop in public, but on Iraq and other national-security issues -- and also on the loss of jobs -- he had a far more courageous and consistent record than Kerry ever did.
Also, during his meteoric rise and before his even faster fall in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary at the beginning of the year, Dean proved an eloquent and even charismatic, fearless figure in attacking Bush and his policies. Kerry was never able to even get to first base on doing that.
Kerry alienated too many people from groups that should have been his rock-solid key bases. A lifelong Roman Catholic who regularly attends mass, he attracted the ire of church bishops because of his liberal stand on abortion rights. A wounded and decorated Vietnam vet, he had alienated many Vietnam vets because of his criticisms of the Vietnam War all those years ago. He could not even arouse passion in the African-American community that should have been rock-solid for him.
Whenever Kerry appeared in public alongside former President Bill Clinton in the closing days of the campaign, the contrast between them was striking. Clinton's personal warmth, wit and silver tongue delighted every audience he faced. Whenever Kerry rose to speak afterward, the warm, energized glow he inherited from Clinton cooled and died as soon as he opened his mouth.
Kerry certainly rallied the political legions of "blue" America, the middle-class suburbs that have gone Democrat now four elections in a row. But they did so not out of any special enthusiasm for him but only because he was ABB -- Anybody But Bush.
Where the senator from Massachusetts failed entirely was to make any significant inroads into "red" America, the vast swathes of the South and West combined with key states in the industrialized Midwest that stuck with the president. Whatever he said, he did not register with them as a man who meant any of it.
At the end of the day, Kerry lost because he failed to heed the old adage of St. Paul in the 14th chapter of his First Epistle to the Corinthians: "If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"
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