Karl Rove and the Bush campaign are big believers in the idea of “if you say you’re going to win, you’re going to win.” The aura of inevitability is, in their minds, self-fulfilling. It empowers your supporters and disheartens your opponents. And in Bush’s case, it almost cost him the presidency.
In 2000, late-October polls showed the presidential race was still up-for-grabs. Bush, Rove, and the rest of the BC00 team acted like the campaign was already over. So confident in victory, Bush actually took a day off from the campaign trail during the last week of the race to demonstrate how sure he was.
As if that weren’t cocky enough, Rove had Bush campaigning in California — where Gore was clearly ahead — in the race’s final days, instead of a battleground state, to confirm their confidence. This proved to be an almost-fatal mistake; Bush would have been a lot better off campaigning in a competitive state as time wound down.
Conspiracy theorists might argue that Bush acted with such confidence because he knew the fix was in — his brother would “ensure” success in Florida and the Supreme Court would lend him a hand if necessary. Nevertheless, the “inevitability strategy” has become a standard part of the GOP playbook, even when it doesn’t make any sense.
Slate’s Chris Suellentrop noted yesterday, for example, that BC04 is embracing the approach now, despite the evidence that Kerry is closing the gap, not the other way around.
It’s well-known that Karl Rove believes that swing voters like to vote for the winner. Therefore, one of the central political strategies for Bush has been to create an “aura of inevitability” that, theoretically, will bring people to his side. If everyone believes you’re a political juggernaut, the theory goes, then you will become a political juggernaut.
The worse things get for Bush, the more likely his aides are to declare that he is invincible. The Bushies are starting to sound like Baghdad Bob, trumpeting a decisive victory for Saddam Hussein as the American military zooms into Iraq’s capital city. Whenever Bush is in trouble, someone — usually Rove — declares that things are going just swimmingly.
I mention this for a couple of reasons. First, don’t let this foolishness discourage you. Rove wants to create a dynamic in which Republicans are seen as happy and relaxed to make Dems even more nervous and confused. It’s the elementary school equivalent of yelling “psyche!” before a game of basketball.
Second, it’ll be fun to see how (and if) this strategy changes if post-debate polls actually show Kerry pulling ahead. If the media starts asking how and why Bush lost his huge post-convention bounce, it may seem odd to have Bush acting like he’s a shoo-in. Worse, it’d reinforce Kerry’s message that Bush has trouble noticing problems, better yet fixing them. Would Rove change strategies late in the game if he thought the race was slipping away?
And finally, we can only hope BC04 is foolish enough to repeat the 2000 strategy in the closing weeks this year. Instead of investing the time in Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin, let’s watch to see if Rove is willing to show off his “inevitability” by sticking Bush in, say, New York in late October. It seems ridiculous, but then again, so was the idea of putting Bush in California the first week in November four years ago.