In light of the 9/11 Commission’s ongoing hearings, and the growing sense that the Bush administration was asleep at the wheel before the terrorist attacks, the White House’s political options have changed dramatically. Whereas 9/11 images were once in Bush’s campaign commercials, and Bush’s allegedly bold leadership after the tragedy was supposed to be reason alone to vote for him this year, suddenly the topic is taboo.
In at least one respect, it’s already a little too late for a change in strategy. The GOP chose New York to host this year’s Republican National Convention specifically so it could exploit 9/11 for all it’s worth. All of a sudden, though, the attacks aren’t quite as exploitable.
As the New York Times reported a year ago, even the RNC’s late-in-the-season date was selected so “the the event would flow into the commemorations of the third anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.”
The back-to-back events would complete the framework for a general election campaign that is being built around national security and Mr. Bush’s role in combating terrorism. Not incidentally, they said they hoped it would deprive the Democratic nominee of critical news coverage during the opening weeks of the general election campaign. The strategy, described by Republicans close to the White House, is intended to highlight what Mr. Bush’s advisers want to be the main issue of his campaign, national security.
There were even suggestions that Bush would give his acceptance speech at Ground Zero, pushing nauseating political manipulation to new depths.
And while that might have seemed like a good idea to Republicans a year ago, some in the GOP are suddenly wishing they had thought this through a little better.
Reuters ran a report yesterday noting some contention within the party about what to do at the RNC now that exploiting 9/11 seems to be a far less attractive option.
The Republican Party hoped its convention [would] show a nation healed from the September 11, 2001, attacks, but the New York location may only highlight voters’ fears President Bush mishandled the crisis and the war in Iraq, political strategists said Monday.
Bush’s re-election effort is plagued with questions on whether his administration could have prevented the attacks, and holding the convention just minutes away from the World Trade Center, where nearly 3,000 people were killed on September 11, 2001, could make matters worse, they said.
“It was the wrong place to go from the beginning,” veteran Republican political consultant Roger Stone said.
“They wanted to highlight the president’s strong leadership in the days after 9/11, which includes the conduct of the war, and now that is going to be a contentious, hard-fought issue,” he said, adding that, “The backdrop here has the potential to dominate the story.”
[…]
Republicans may pay for their miscalculation, said Joseph Mercurio, a consultant to both Republican and Democratic candidates.
“I think they thought that 9/11 and the war on terrorism were going to be winners for them, and I think increasingly there’s a problem,” he said. “That was a wild card gamble, and I think they may be on the wrong side of it.”
Oops.