Assessing the presidential race

By MIKE KOTLARCZYK

A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed an odd contradiction in current American thought. According to the poll, if the November election were held today, 43% of the respondents would vote for President Bush and 45% would vote for the Democratic contender, whomever that may be. In spite of that fact, when asked whom they expect to win in November, 55% said President Bush, and only 31% said the Democratic nominee. Thus even though a slender majority would favor voting for a Democrat, many of them do not even think that the Democrat stands a chance.

To their credit, 14% of respondents said either "I don’t know" or "It depends." This, of course, is the only reasonable answer to a silly question. Even a cursory glance at history shows that elections cannot be accurately predicted the day before the election (or, in the case of 2000, the day of the election), let alone eight months beforehand. But this data shows the aura of invincibility that has been built up around the president since 9/11. If one only begins to prod, however, the armor is shown to have a fair number of chinks.

Bush’s most obvious vulnerability is the economy. We are undoubtedly in the midst of an economic recovery, yet this is heartening to few people outside of stock traders. The job market continues to underperform, and many analysts suspect that recent decreases in the unemployment rate is as much a result of people leaving the labor market as it is of people being hired into new jobs.

Related to the weak economy is Bush’s latest budget. Americans, as well as the media, are beginning to realize how the administration has pulled the wool over their eyes in the past and are questioning this year’s budget. No Child Left Behind continues to be an unfunded mandate, something the President will no doubt portray as a major victory this year, but also something that he has never given the support he promised when he signed it. The huge Medicare revamp represents an increase in expenditure as well. There is also a notable absence on the budget: Afghanistan and Iraq. Expenditures for our military operations are not even included in the budget, and they will certainly cost us tens of billions of more dollars. So Bush can claim that the deficit is not increasing significantly as a result of this year’s budget, but that might be related to the fact that one of the largest expenditures is not even included.

Bush is weak in other areas. As the weapons of mass destruction search remains unfruitful in Iraq, doubts will continue to surface about the administration’s truthfulness. The American people are beginning to suspect that there are other ways to spell "dishonest" than "C-l-i-n-t-o-n." Bush can say that the world is a safer place without Saddam Hussein as much as he wants (and he is right), but that does not change the fact that he told us, his public, that we were going to war to counter a grave and immediate threat to our national security. This is looking like a more and more preposterous statement every day.

His social agenda may end up hurting him as well. The Republicans have already started to portray Sen. John Kerry, the likely Democratic nominee, as an out-of-touch Massachusetts liberal, but many of Bush’s policies could be characterized the same way, perhaps even more so. Having to walk the fine line between pleasing his conservative base and appealing to mainstream voters is a difficult task and voters may end up deciding that his conservatism is more intolerant than compassionate.

Yet Bush remains strong in other areas, notably national security and defense. The poll cited above also showed that 68% of Americans approve of the way President Bush is handling the campaign against terrorism. The results of the 2004 election are hardly a foregone conclusion. But Bush’s impenetrable body armor certainly seems less impressive today than it did a couple of years ago.