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Published on Friday, November 5, 2004 by the Baltimore Sun
by Larry Beinhart
Senator John Kerry's loss of this election is a disaster for the country, but it could be the salvation of the Democratic Party.
If Mr. Kerry had won, he would have had to deal with the mess that President Bush has created. The war in Iraq. The coming implosion of the economy.
Mr. Kerry would have had to face a Republican Senate and a Republican House and a Republican judiciary. All eager to oppose, undermine and, in particular, blame him. Just as they did in the campaign. Don't think that a spirit of bipartisanship would have arisen. Just remember how they went after the Clintons.
Still, this was Mr. Kerry's race to lose.
Mr. Bush was not running against Mr. Kerry. He was running against reality.
The reality was that Mr. Bush was asleep at the wheel on 9/11. But he ran as the man to make us safer. Instead of taking the helm or rushing to the scene of the disaster, he fled. To Nebraska. Then took three days to get to Ground Zero. But he ran as the hero of New York.
He took a surplus and turned it into a deficit. He was the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a loss of jobs. But he ran on his economic policies and claimed they were working.
Mr. Bush ran against reality and won.
This is fairly astounding. It demands respect. There is something to be learned from it.
Mr. Bush was, as he claimed, steadfast. You knew where he stood and you knew he wouldn't change. Mr. Bush also had a knack for identifying things that disturb people and promising clear, bold solutions to them:
Terrorism - War on terror.
Education - No Child Left Behind.
Taxes - It's our money, we should have it back. And now, let's simplify the tax code.
Social Security - Save it by giving you more control over your own money and taking it away from the government.
Astounding cost of medicine - Add a benefit to Medicare.
Each of these is, without doubt, a real problem. Mr. Bush's solutions - not as phrased, but as practiced - are terrible.
But Mr. Kerry was not able to articulate that. Nor was he able to articulate, clearly, simply and boldly, his alternatives. He couldn't articulate a program because he didn't have much of one. He didn't have much of one because we don't have
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