Bush campaign slides towards desperation
Amy Morrison is noticeable at Saturday's rally in Michigan because of her red hair, and because she is shrieking and crying. Lately she's gone from worried that Bush might lose to terrified.
"I just want to touch him on the shoulder," she says, "I just need to see him in case I won't see him again. I'm so scared for him." She cries when she sees the first lady, she cries when she thinks the unthinkable -- "President Kerry." Now, instead of just the usual "Four more years," she pleads, "Four more years -- pleeease?"
Not that he'd ever betray any hint of nervousness. He feels "very at peace with this campaign," Bush told USA Today Friday. "I am incredibly optimistic not only about the campaign but about the country, and I hope people can see that in me. . . . You cannot fake optimism and you can't fake sincerity."
Still, gently, respectfully, the vultures seem to circle: It began with an interview that aired Monday on ABC in which "Good Morning America's" Charlie Gibson asked Bush whether in private moments he thinks about losing.
Reporters who travel regularly with Bush know the king is nearly unflappable in public, so look for signs from his court. Lately their ubiquity is somewhat suspicious: Dan Bartlett and Karen Hughes and Karl Rove are suddenly popping up at every rally, spinning hard. Friday night Bartlett called the Kerry campaign "desperate." He said the latest polls show Bush up in Ohio and Florida, and that the Kerry campaign could see it "slipping away." "It's close, but we're working very hard," Hughes says on Saturday.
Bush himself is careful not to show any signs of it, but his campaign and his fans are showing some signs of desperation. Enough of them know how to read the polls and Bush not have a lead and holding less then 50% popularity is a bad sign. Thus more events, more spinning by his crew and more direct attacks on Kerry.
But I think Bush is making a mistake here, because he isn't appealing to undecided voters. Bush's entire campaign seems to be focused on getting out the party base vote, and I don't think anything he does now is going to change that. He needs to be holding events that might sway some undecided voters his way.
But Young is not blinkered; she reads the newspapers, knows how hair-thin a margin Bush has in Ohio. Only this week she began to consider the impossible, that Bush could be right and still lose -- and put that together with her conviction that God knows what He's doing.
"If that happens, the Lord must want Kerry to be in there," she says. "If that happens, it must be the Lord is telling us we're living in the Last Days, and we'd better prepare."
People like that worry me.
Jay