Mark Steyn from the London Sunday Telegraph seems to think so.
At the beginning of the year, Thomas Lifson, who was at Harvard Business School with George W Bush, made an interesting observation about the President. He notes that young George “was a very avid and skillful poker player” when he was a Business Administration student and that “one of the secrets of a successful poker player is to encourage your opponent to bet a lot of chips on a losing hand. This is a pattern of behavior one sees repeatedly in George W Bush’s political career”.
Indeed one does. In the months following Mr Lifson’s observation, the President sat back, as John Kerry’s consultants, the Iowa caucus voters, the Democratic Party at large, and the media convinced themselves that the one card that trumps Bush’s leadership in the war on terror was Kerry’s four months in Vietnam, and bet everything on it. They have just lost that hand.
Kerry is in seclusion, unable to expose himself to any but the most sycophantic interviewers, and getting whumped by hundreds upon hundreds of fellow Swift boat veterans, plus former POWs, plus retired admirals, over every aspect of his brief stay in the Mekong Delta.
The Senator put his money on the wrong war. After a couple of entertaining weeks of the aggrieved Swiftees driving down his poll numbers in battleground states, it seems a shame to interrupt the implosion of the Kerry campaign for the Republican convention. But I’m sure the seared Senator is grateful for the intermission, and for the rest of us the next week affords a rare opportunity in this election campaign to catch up with the issues of the current millennium before the inept Kerry resumes bogging us down in his personal Vietnam quagmire again.
While Steyn gives credit to the Swifties, he does not fall in lockstep with the Kerry campaign about their reasons.
My sense is that the Swiftvets have changed the dynamics of the race. With the candidate’s retro braggadocio on ice for the foreseeable future, the Kerry campaign late on Friday revived that old favourite, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, releasing a flow chart full of multi-coloured arrows showing that Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is a “close friend” of Merrie Spaeth, a public relations consultant to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Yawn.
The fact is, even if Kerry was a Republican, these Swift boat guys would be hounding him. In a culture where “ABB” is now media shorthand for “Anyone But Bush”, you would think the press would recognise these fellows for what they are: the ABK constituency.
Steyn then moves on to two key pillars of the Kerry (or more accurately anti-Bush) campaign — hatred and lies.
Meanwhile, “Bush hatred” – another losing hand the Democrats put too many chips on – has peaked, and any saggy nudists or trust-fund anarchists who succeed in pulling off some camera-worthy stunt in Manhattan this week will only be boosting the President.
“BUSH LIED!!!!!!” is likewise a bust, given generally non-damaging official reports on 9/11, Abu Ghraib, etc, and that it’s Kerry who’s having to modify his claims on an almost daily basis, whether over his secret Christmas mission to Cambodia (false) and the question of whether his first Purple Heart was improperly awarded for a self-inflicted wound (true). As for Iraq, ever since the transfer of sovereignty that’s all but off the radar.
So unlike the touchy Kerry – threatening lawsuits, calling for bans and smearing his fellow vets as “Republican liars” – just by staying cool the President has let his many detractors exhaust the political capital of their obsessions.
Steyn wraps up with a zinger for his London colleagues.
So the most likely outcome this November is an increased Republican majority in the House, a couple of extra Senate seats, and a second term for Bush. I might be wrong. Anything is possible. But the reluctance of the British press to admit the possibility that Bush isn’t a loser suggests that they too have over-invested in John Kerry’s very weak hand.
I don’t have the same confidence possessed by this opinion peice. While Steyn may be up to date with the facts, I don’t agree that the American public so surely is. Months of “Bush lied” followed by a few seconds of “Never mind.” Silence on the air and in newsprint about findings and facts behind the Swifties’ claims followed by attacks on their motives and support. I agree that Bush is holding aces, but even as he plays them, the mainstream media will still be focusing on the nuanced manner in which Kerry laid down his pair of threes.