Bush Camp Welcomes Showdown on Security

With the intense assault on President Bush’s national security record during the Democratic convention’s first two nights, Sen. John F. Kerry’s campaign is taking the risk of highlighting a debate in which his opponent now holds the upper hand in almost all polls.

Bush campaign strategists, surprised by the fervor of the criticism, signaled Tuesday that they intend to strike back hard and fast.

“Is there a willingness to accept the gauntlet thrown down and make the campaign about national security issues?” asked one senior GOP strategist familiar with Bush’s campaign planning. “You bet.”

One response will come today when the Republican National Committee releases in Boston an 11-minute video detailing what it calls shifts in Kerry’s position on the war in Iraq.

On Tuesday, RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie also suggested to reporters that the Democratic evocation of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks at the convention’s opening session Monday should remove any question about whether it will be appropriate for Republicans to use similar imagery at their gathering in New York City late next month.

And Bush aides quickly insisted that Kerry’s military service in Vietnam, however laudable, was less relevant to his qualifications as commander in chief than his Senate voting record on national security issues -- which the Bush campaign has tried to portray as soft on defense.

“Every American, including the president ... believes John Kerry’s service in Vietnam was admirable,” said Steve Schmidt, the Bush campaign’s deputy communications director. “But what’s most striking is that in order to talk about John Kerry’s accomplishments, they’ve had to go back for 35 years. There is no mention of what John Kerry has done in the Senate the past 20 years.”

The dueling arguments over the relevance of Kerry’s Vietnam experience illustrate a key way the convention is sharpening and advancing the debate between the two contenders. In effect, the two sides are competing to define the frame that swing voters could use to assess Kerry’s fitness to be president.

The Democratic argument -- delivered heavily this week by Kerry’s crewmates on his Swift boat in Vietnam -- focuses mostly on his experience in combat. In unison, they have argued that under fire in Vietnam, Kerry demonstrated the toughness and judgment Americans expect in a commander in chief.

Jim Wasser, who served as a radarman on one of the boats Kerry commanded, presented the argument succinctly at a veterans rally Monday. “The times we were with him, John Kerry never gave one bad command decision,” Wasser said.

To underscore the point, Democrats this week have escalated their efforts to contrast Kerry’s Vietnam record with Bush’s decisions during the same era. Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard, but did not enlist for Vietnam, as Kerry did.

Fanning an issue that has smoldered all year, prominent Democrats have suggested Bush’s lack of combat experience leaves him less prepared, and with less moral standing, to lead the nation in war.

Former Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.), who lost three limbs in Vietnam and will introduce Kerry before his acceptance speech Thursday, pressed that case in stark terms at the veterans rally. Speaking of Bush, Cleland said, “You don’t avoid by any means necessary the war of your generation and get to be commander in chief and send another generation to theirs.”

These attacks have thrust the parties into a role reversal. In the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton’s efforts to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War were fodder for frequent GOP attacks. At the time, Kerry joined other top Democrats in arguing that the issue was irrelevant to Clinton’s fitness to be commander in chief.

“We do not need to divide America over who served and how,” Kerry said in early 1992. “I have personally always believed that many served in many different ways.”

This week, it’s Republicans who want voters to judge the presidential contenders not on the personal decisions they made during the Vietnam conflict, but on the policy decisions they have made since.

Bush’s campaign has bombarded battleground states with ads accusing Kerry of repeatedly voting to cut spending on intelligence and defense and of waffling on the Iraq war by voting to authorize the use of force and then opposing Bush’s request for $87 billion, primarily to fund the occupation.

Today’s RNC video charges that Kerry equivocated on the war in response to growing hostility toward the invasion among rank-and-file Democrats.

“If you don’t think we are going to have fun all fall long on this issue, you’re kidding yourself,” the senior GOP strategist said. “We are going to chop him up on this.”

Republicans also are preparing to challenge the repeated Democratic argument that Bush has endangered America’s security by alienating allies and isolating the U.S. in the world. While Kerry is playing on the public’s desire for America to attract international support, Republicans hope to tap the public’s reluctance to accept international direction.

“Nobody wants to go it completely alone in the world,” said Keith Appell, a public relations consultant for conservative groups. “But most people would rather we take action than trust France and Russia and Germany to protect us.”

During the 2000 campaign, Bush’s lack of experience in foreign affairs was a hurdle he had to overcome in making his case to voters. But the 2001 terrorist attacks and Bush’s initial direction in his war on terrorism firmly established his national security credentials in the eyes of many voters.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, Republicans have assumed Bush’s national security record would be his strongest asset in the campaign. Polls show that Bush is still generally well regarded on this front, but that disillusionment with the war in Iraq has raised some doubts among voters.

Bush still leads Kerry handily in almost all surveys when voters are asked which is better equipped to handle the war against terrorism. And most polls show Bush leading when voters are asked which is a stronger leader.

With such numbers in mind, senior Bush aides assert that Kerry’s campaign has made a significant miscalculation by spotlighting national security so heavily at the convention.

“It is difficult to take a weakness and continually talk about it

But with surveys showing about half of Americans now think the war in Iraq was a mistake, Kerry has drawn close to Bush in some polls on his ability to handle foreign policy in general, and the Iraq situation in particular. Kerry advisors point to these numbers in insisting Bush is vulnerable on national security issues.

It’s too early to say who will win this argument. But the concentrated focus on national security at the Democratic convention reinforces the conviction of those who believe the issue could decide the election.

“The Democrats understand that the great barrier to Kerry replacing Bush is voters deciding that in the end, Democrats just aren’t strong enough to govern in the post-9/11 world,” said William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, a leading conservative magazine.