For a Democratic Win: Just Make Bush the Issue : Strategy: Seven steps to a Democratic victory--but it all boils down to putting the President on the defensive.

It was just a year ago that war in the Persian Gulf ended and George Bush’s popularity ratings soared like a jet fighter over Iraq. Pundits pontificated about another landslide reelection simply by riding the status quo and carrying the flag of Desert Storm.

Ah, how things have changed. Bush has gone from the heights of Desert Storm to the lap of the Japanese prime minister. The unthinkable has become reality-- Bush can be beaten. Here is a road map to victory for the Democratic nominee.

First, keep Bush on the defensive; in other words: Keep George Domestic. Make him explain why he has the slowest economic growth of any President since World War II; make him explain breaking his “no new taxes” pledge; make him explain why the 15 million new jobs he promised are 14.7 million short. George never had to play defense--make him.

Second, do not let Bush distance himself from a dozen years of GOP rule. Remind voters that this is not just a referendum on Bush’s first term. Reelection will mean 16 years of Republican rule. Voters are hungry for change. The Republican cycle, around since 1968, is coming to a close. Bush is the waiter delivering the bill for the Reagan-era gluttony. The recessionary ‘90s are a result of the spend-now, pay-later philosophy of the ‘80s.

This brings up that old question: Are you better off now than when Bush became President? If you are, it’s probably because you were pretty well off to start with.

Third, continue to make the point that Bush is out of touch. All the pork rinds and country music in the world can’t cover up an obvious fact: Bush is a pampered, country-club, prep-school, upper-class WASP who knows as much about the problems facing working people as Ed Rollins does about women’s issues. Those ethnic blue-collar Democrats who went Republican on their belief in Ronald Reagan are getting wise to George Herbert Walker Bush: He’s no Ronald Reagan. Anyone who is willing to spend billions to defend Kuwaiti sheiks and then turns around to oppose an extension of unemployment benefits to help jobless Americans just doesn’t get it. Blue-collar voters have had it. They will come home.

Fourth, make the point that Bush doesn’t play it straight with voters. Character is key to why people vote for a President. They want their President to tell the truth. Jimmy Carter understood that in 1976, and his pledge never to lie helped get him into the White House. Patrick J. Buchanan’s reminder that Bush broke his no-tax pledge is not just an economic issue solely for the use of conservatives. It is an issue of trust. Can you trust a man who pledged to be the Education President, the Crime President and the Environment President--and hasn’t delivered on any of them?

Fifth, Bush is a man of the past. He was our last Cold War President but the Cold War is over. And Poor George doesn’t know how to come in from the cold. The Democrats will be nominating a younger man. They will be the fresh, young party looking toward the future, seeking new direction to bring back the prosperity the GOP has let slip through its fingers.

This means that Democrats should not concede the foreign-policy card to Bush. The Japanese trip makes Bush’s weakness clear. He was pushed around by the Japanese on trade. He was pushed around by China on human rights. All this makes me suspect that, when Bush was chief U.S. liaison officer to Beijing, they put something in his water that makes him constitutionally incapable of arguing with an Asian.

Raising the level of the debate a bit, the Democrats can recast their foreign policy as an attempt to meet the economic confrontations of the present, not the military threats of the past. We are far more likely to be defeated in the international marketplace than on a battlefield. This shift enables Democrats to play to their traditionally strong economic issues in an arena--national security--where voters have long seen them as weak.

Sixth, make pro-choice a central part of the campaign. The Republican Supreme Court, demonstrating the political judgment of the former Soviet Politburo, has turned on its creators. Its decision to review Pennsylvania’s restrictive abortion law has handed the Democrats a golden political opportunity. Young, middle-class women, many Republican, are not prepared to see conservative males in government take away their right to choose. They have never been as closely tied to Bush as they were to Reagan, and they will leave him fast when they hear him mouth platitudes over their bodies.

Finally, avoid wedge issues--homosexual rights, street crime, welfare mothers, pledges of allegiance, all the cultural issues that Republicans have used so effectively. Democrats can dodge these GOP bullets by nominating a candidate who favors capital punishment, who emphasizes middle-class issues and values and who isn’t afraid to distance himself from the loud special-interest groups that have burdened every Democratic nominee of the last 20 years with their checklists of Politically Correct Behavior. And this time, if Bush tries to use the flag, call him on it. Say, simply, that the flag stands for something more than your reelection. How dare you trample on it. Keep the focus on this year’s favorite bumper sticker: Saddam Hussein Still Has a Job, Do You?

Even with all the accumulated wisdom in this column, can the Democrats still blow it? You bet. They can’t just depend on Bush’s flaws to get them to the White House. They need their own program. More on that later.