Longtime readers know that I’m optimistic that John Kerry can reverse recent trends and improve the Dems’ standing with military voters. In fact, especially after the Dems’ convention, I think this is quietly becoming a key national trend.
The men and women of the military are assumed to be Republicans. They’re not. They’re assumed to be Bush supporters, but many are anxious for a new commander-in-chief. While I like the way the Kerry campaign has done a number of things, I’m particularly excited by the way it’s seizing this opportunity.
Kerry’s message to veterans has been consistent and persuasive throughout the campaign, reminding servicemen and women that Bush is too anxious to put troops in harm’s way and too hesitant to help them when they return.
In Boston, the campaign emphasized a pro-military message repeatedly. Fortunately, it’s a sentiment that is beginning to resonate.
A CBS News poll released over the weekend, for example, showed encouraging results in this area.
While President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney held a 47 percent to 41 percent lead among vets in mid-July, the tickets are now in a statistical tie: Kerry-Edwards with 48 percent, and Bush-Cheney with 47 percent.
There’s no reason this can’t get even better.
In fact, it appears the Dems are anxious to share its pro-military message as aggressively as it can, while reminding voters about Bush’s shortcomings. As part of the outreach, Dems are wisely putting former military leaders, who used to vote Republican, at the forefront.
A former Air Force chief of staff and one-time “Veteran for Bush” said Saturday that America’s foreign relations for the first three years of President Bush’s term have been “a national disaster” but that the president’s Democratic rival was “up to the task” of rebuilding.
Retired Gen. Tony McPeak, the Air Force chief of staff during the first Gulf War, delivered the Democratic radio address supporting implementation of the 9/11 commission’s recommendations for national security.
“As president, John Kerry will not waste a minute in bringing action on the reforms urged by the 9/11 commission,” McPeak said of the Massachusetts senator nominated by the Democrats this week. “And he will not rest until America’s defenses are strong.”
The president, on the other hand, “fought against the very formation of the commission and continues to the present moment to give it only grudging cooperation, no matter what he says,” the general said. “Why should we believe he will do anything to institute the needed change?”
[…]
[McPeak added], Bush has “alienated our friends, damaged our credibility around the world, reduced our influence to an all-time low in my lifetime, given hope to our enemies.”
This is a man who has not only voted GOP, but actively campaigned for Dole in ’96 and Bush four years ago. And now he can’t wait to see John Kerry as the commander-in-chief.
Of course, it’s not just McPeak.
More important than [Wesley Clark’s convention speech], some party leaders said, was a largely overlooked portion of Wednesday night’s podium action in which 12 retired generals and admirals endorsed Kerry shortly before retired Army Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, addressed the delegates. Although Republicans dismiss the notion, Democrats say the endorsements marked a dramatic spike in prominent military leaders’ embracement of a party that many voters see as dovish or wobbly on national security.
“The number of military people who are willing to stand on that stage, . . . that struck me last night as stunning,” Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a former Democratic Party chairman, told Washington Post reporters and editors Thursday. “I’ve never seen that.”
Neither have a lot of people. That’s why, I believe, it’s having an effect.
There was a video shown at the convention that most people didn’t see that showed Clark, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili, Adm. William Crowe, Ret. Gen. Joseph Hoar, Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy, and Ret. Gen. Johnnie Wilson, among others, express their strong support for Kerry’s campaign and (respectfully) rebuke Bush’s military leadership.
The video, which is not yet available online, included a remark from one of the former military leaders that can’t emphasized enough — that if it is was his son that had to go off to battle, he’d want John Kerry to be his commander-in-chief. That’s about the strongest complement a president, or in this case, a presidential candidate, can receive. It’s also the kind of message that can change a lot of voters’ minds this year.