Badmouthing Bush's Chances
By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer
George W. Bush is about to head south.
Hit a rough streak.
Take a beating.
Tumble in the polls.
How do we know? His own pollster says so.
In writing.
This, friends, is a classic moment in the game of managing expectations.
The Republicans were so brazen that they didn't even get sneaky and leak the story. They just put out the memo from GOP pollster Matthew Dowd to Republican Chairman Marc Racicot.
Dowd is right, of course. Bush has gotten a bump from the Iraq war, just as he did after the rumble in Afghanistan. It stands to reason that he'll be subjected to the forces of gravity sooner or later.
At the same time, the Democrats' 2004 crowd will be getting more attention in the coming months, and some of them will start building a national following. Their Bush-bashing will fill the vacuum that the opposition party has allowed to develop. The ailing economy will take center stage, and the president will find that he can't use military force against a recalcitrant Congress - especially one controlled by his own party.
The Republican spin-control artists are worried about a spate of Bush-in-trouble stories down the road. So they hope to defuse the prospect by trumpeting in advance that Bush will appear to be in trouble - but that only political morons will believe that he's actually in trouble.
In other words, they're knocking down a future negative story before it materializes. Now that's taking spin to a whole new level.
The heading on Dowd's memo:
RE: Prediction: Some Will Say The "Sky is Falling" - Again.
"President Bush sustained a significantly elevated approval rating in the aftermath of his handling of the tragedy surrounding 9/11. Today his approval ratings are again elevated in the aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"Just as we counseled last spring in the aftermath of 9/11 that the President's approval numbers would begin to settle out in the months leading up to election day 2002, expect the current high approval numbers to drop to a more realistic level.
"After 9/11, the President's approval rating settled at a slower rate over several months with some pundits and Democrats predicting the "sky is falling" each step of the way. The current approval number should settle out beginning fairly soon and happen much faster this time but you can expect a chorus of the "sky is falling" again.
"The main difference between then and now is the Democratic base is solidly against the War in Iraq and therefore the approval rise was never going to be as high as the numbers after 9/11 or as long lasting. Our two most recent Presidents to win re-election provide some historical perspective for the relationship between approval ratings and electoral success. Presidents Clinton and Reagan were both re-elected by large margins with each having approval ratings in the 50s. As we get closer to the start of the 2004 Presidential election campaign, the Democratic base vote will continue to solidify. And as President Bush is tested in media polls on head to head ballot questions, it will not be surprising to see the President behind in some polls against potential Democratic candidates and generic Democratic opposition. Every incumbent President in the last 25 years has been behind the opposition in the latter part of his first term - the sky is not falling."
We don't care what they say - if an incumbent president who benefited from two wars and is raising about a zillion dollars more than his opponents falls behind in any poll, that will be a seismic event and Dowd's memo will be forgotten.
Nevertheless, he argues that Reagan trailed Mondale at one point (that lasted about an hour). And Poppy Bush trailed Dukakis before the GOP convention (true). And Clinton trailed Dole at one point (for about an hour and a half). Ergo, no cakewalk.
We'll see.