Beyond the spin - the 2004 US elections

President Bush is aiming to capture the entire “Republican L” which is the west, centre and the south of the US, plus a few more states with enough Electoral College votes to bring him to the “magic number” of 270, the required majority of the 538 Electoral College votes.

If he is successful, it will be for a number of different reasons.

The Republicans over the last decade have successfully appealed to voters as the party of non-intervention on the economy - but intervention on moral questions like abortion and same-sex marriage.

Kerry labours under the disadvantage of his career in the Senate. Senators running for president have been remarkably unsuccessful: think of Goldwater (1964), McGovern (1972), Dole (1996). In the past 40 years, 49 sitting Members of Congress have sought the presidency: all have lost. The role of a Member of Congress is a deliberative one. Voters are hard to convince that this background equips Senators for the agenda-driving and firm decision-making that is the hallmark of effective executive leadership.

Kerry’s record as a Senator is undistinguished, a judgement which even his friends would accept, and his voting record is to the left: the National Journal named him the most liberal member of the Senate. This is not an advantage in the US. Kerry’s approach to foreign policy is similar to that of George Bush, George W’s father, stressing nuance and coalition building. And Kerry can be seen as Clinton Lite: the policy wonk without Clinton’s unbeatable charm.

Bush’s strength is decisiveness: he is the first MBA president and he approaches the job as a CEO. He concentrates on a few policies and sticks to them. Political scientist George Edwards has defined Bush as a revolutionary - not just in terms of foreign policy but domestic policy too, where his aim is to reduce the demand for government services. His goals have been tax cuts, reform of education, prescription drug benefits, the ban on partial birth abortions, and aid to church providers of social support.

Interestingly some of Bush’s program may be revolutionary in the US context, but not in the rest of the world, including Australia. In social security reform for instance, Bush’s controversial proposal is to allow holders to invest 5 per cent of social security funds in the market rather than the present requirement for 100 per cent of funds to be in government securities. Those of us in Australia who have all our superannuation at the mercy of the market can only marvel that this proposal meets any opposition at all.

Bush’s foreign policy is not the humble and isolationist path he promised, but it is a coherent program.

About 40 per cent of voters cast their vote according to policy. Personality, however, attracts many more and Bush’s attributes are that he is approachable, likeable and accessible. Kerry is none of these.

Voters who believe in ideology made their minds up early: the remainder have had some difficulty deciding.

For poll-watchers, the incumbent’s approval rating is one to watch. All previous incumbent presidents with approval ratings above 50 per cent have won. But Bush is hovering just above and just below that “magic number”.

Another factor is the “ground war” - the push to get out people registered and to get registered voters to the polls. Karl Rove , the “evil genius of the Republican Party”, has been concentrating on getting the evangelicals out to vote, estimating that some 4 million evangelicals did not vote in the 2000 election. The Republican Party has mobilised its faithful with an elaborate and traditional grassroots campaign of house visits. In contrast, the Democrats have outsourced much of their drive to get out the vote to www.MoveOn.org.

Much remains to be seen and while few observers give the Democrats much of a chance of recapturing the US House of Representatives or the US Senate, the presidential result is far from certain for either candidate. The polls there an narrowing as the election approaches, just as happened a few weeks ago in Australia. Perhaps in the end, another great similarity of Australian and American politics will be revealed. Just maybe the candidate “demonised” by the media and the public airways (read the ABC here and the New York Times there) will find, in the secrecy of the voting booth, a level of popular support kept, for exactly this reason of public demonisation, from the pollsters.