Outlook:
The popular vote polls show that the early big lead by Sen. John Kerry was illusory and that President George W. Bush has recovered enough to force a virtual dead heat.
1) The massive anti-Kerry ads by Bush in the 16 key states and on cable networks shows once again that negative advertising works. Kerry's team had vowed that they would not let the Republicans define him, but that is what they have done-as a taxer and a spender.
2) That has been possible, because Kerry has been off the board in the past month-first taking vacation time in Idaho and then undergoing elective surgery. Most voters still do not know Kerry, and their image of him comes from the Bush ads.
3) Kerry currently also looks a lot like the ineffective mid-2003 figure when he was a single-digit candidate trailing badly in the primary. He is not an inspiring campaigner and committed a gaffe by saying he had voted for the $87 billion Iraq money bill before he voted against it (which was quickly turned into a Bush television ad). Kerry often sounds like a career senator-a '04 Democratic version of Bob Dole in '96.
4) The announcement of over 300,000 new jobs in March reflects the rising economy, which takes a lot of steam out of the Democratic talk machine. Democrats were reduced to complaining that about how many jobs had been lost and about the inaccuracies of the job estimates.
5) However, the war issue remains a potential political problem for Bush. The pitched battle in Baghdad inevitably returns to the question of whether the Pentagon badly underestimated the task at hand in Iraq.
Iraq:
The Shiite rebellion, following closely after the atrocities in Fallujah, marks the return of the war as a potential political headache for the President.
1) The problem for Bush is the potential need for additional troops in Iraq to put down the rebellion. That leads to speculation that there was gross underestimation of how many troops would be needed in the first place. No matter what Defense Department civilian takes the blame for that, is the President ultimately responsible?
2) Gen. John Abizaid, the commander-in-chief in Iraq, says he will try to fulfill the requests from his subordinate troops for additional troops. Abizaid clearly does not want to be the fall guy for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, because of their shortfall on their estimates of needed proof strength.
3) But where are the troops to come from? That is the puzzler and the quandary for Bush and Rumsfeld. There are no regular troops at hand, it is impossible to activate National Guard brigades in time and the only willing foreign troops are likely to be the Turks, who are bitterly opposed by the Kurdish friends of the U.S.
4) The political problem for the Democrats is to come over a shade too strident, attacking the Republicans instead of the Iraqi assassins. Kerry has been relatively careful but Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D.-Mass.) has gone over the line in blaming everything on Bush instead of the Mahdi Army.
NATO Expansion:
The addition this week of seven new members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has mixed discussion of Europe's defense infrastructure with U.S. relationships with the nations of Eastern and Western Europe.
1) The new members are all former Soviet states or satellites, increasing to 40% the number of NATO members that were once under Communist rule. The addition of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia irritates Russia.
2) By celebrating the prominence of the former Communist subjects, Secretary of State Colin Powell is exacerbating already strained relationships between the U.S. and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
3) The U.S. also continues its trend of moving closer to Eastern European nations while drifting further away from its traditional allies in Western Europe. This is the controversial distinction between "New Europe" and "Old Europe" made by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
4) For the most part, New Europe supported the U.S. in the Iraq war, while Old Europe mostly resisted. Americans cite the Eastern European's firsthand knowledge of tyranny and proximity to Muslim population centers as reasons for their support of President Bush.
5) As the U.S. drives this wedge through the middle of Europe, European Union officials are discussing how they can use the EU to defend the continent. Before the Iraq war, the U.S. had over 75,000 soldiers stationed in Germany, and thousands throughout the rest of Europe. Many Europeans would like the EU to be able to defend itself and not rely on the U.S. for protection.
