Now I remember why I liked Howard Dean so much.

When will Democrats learn? The Grand Old Party of respectable mainstream conservatives like Gerry Ford or Howard Baker has now morphed completely and irretrievably into the Greasy Oily Party of Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and Bushes I and II.

Apparently John Kerry didn't get the memo. He should have a little chat with the remains of Messrs. Dukakis, McCain, Gore and Cleland.

How Kerry failed to see the events of the last week coming is as unfathomable as it is inexcusable. How he allowed two Vietnam dodgers turn a war hero into a question mark with hardly a rebuttal suggests that he may be in way over his head in this campaign.

For anyone who hasn't figured it out yet, the Republican Party has become nothing short of a kleptocracy, which will now do anything to gain and keep power. That may include stealing an election, or impeaching a sitting president for a minor sex scandal. It certainly includes using racism, religious prejudice, national security scares and outrageous distortions to smear opposing candidates.

How is it that Kerry didn't see this coming, especially after the four Bush League victims above were so notoriously thrashed by this ugly cartel? The events of the last week suggest an ineptness at grand strategy perhaps rivaled only by Bush's invasion of Iraq while America is at war with al Qaeda.

This year, however, Kerry carries a heavy burden on his shoulders. It is not too much to say that the fate of the planet will be determined by the vote of November 2nd. Maybe Kerry goes off to join Dukakis and Gore in the unhappy pasture lands of public policy graduate seminars if he loses, but the rest of us are stuck with his failures. More is arguably at stake for the country and the planet now than in any election in American history.

It's not too late, but the Kerry campaign must act now to anticipate Bush assaults and turn them against the G.O.Creeps. And, above all, he must take off the kid gloves and start knocking on the defensive an administration with the most indefensible record imaginable. It is time for Democrats to start defining Republicans, rather than vice-versa.

The alternative will be repeated iterations of what has just transpired: the Bush camp makes the most outrageous assertions against Kerry, who lamely, tardily and ineffectively responds with indignation, whereupon the Bush camp insinuates that Kerry is psychologically unbalanced, while the false accusations meanwhile stick in the minds of at least some of the public and Kerry loses votes.

This will require some serious strategic thinking on the part of the Kerry campaign, which so far seems frighteningly absent. In the meantime, the following (all of which should have occurred long ago, and may now be too late to be effective) may provide a helpful starting place:

* Like modern wars, modern campaigns are won by gaining air supremacy. In politics, this means framing the debate and defining yourself and your opponent on your terms. If you can get people to call them tax cuts rather than the tax transfers (from rich to poor, and from this generation to the next) they really are, you've won the battle before it starts and the other team might as well go home. If you can make it a war on terror (which, after all, is a weapon not an enemy), as opposed to al Qaeda, then you can justify a pre-planned war on Iraq which has nothing whatever to do with its pretext.

* Bush has a proven record as a dirty candidate. Kerry and his surrogates need to make this point over and over, citing the cases of Dukakis, McCain and Cleland, until it becomes part of the public's conventional wisdom, and is handled as such by the media. In addition to diminishing Bush's personal appeal (which, for some inexplicable reason, is his strongest selling point), this will also make it extremely difficult for the Bush camp to sleaze Kerry for the duration of the campaign. Besides, it happens to be completely true that Bush is the scummiest politician of his generation. That the public does not have this perception of him already represents an utter failure in the air war by the Kerry forces, and a remarkable marketing achievement on the part of Karl Rove.

* Likewise, Kerry should establish in the public mind, through repetition, that Bush is running a negative campaign. There are plenty of factual data and media reports to substantiate that the vast majority of Bush ads are attacks on Kerry. Kerry ads should establish this point and then ask the simple but profound question, why is an incumbent president not running on his record? Why doesn't the president tout his success at creating new American jobs? Um, well, oops, he is the only president since Herbert Hoover to lose jobs on his watch. Why doesn't the president talk about how he has paid down the national debt? Uh, well there's a little problem there. This could be a series of ads, highlighting a long list of Bush failures, including environmental issues, No Child Left Behind, the Patriot Act, the prescription drug bill, nuclear Iran and North Korea, alienation of traditional American allies, trade deficits, gasoline prices, etc., etc. The list is endless - why isn't Kerry attacking the target rich zone of Bush's record?

* The most urgent task is to inoculate Kerry against the damage looming directly around corner at the Republican convention. It is completely transparent that Rove put the convention in New York in part to replicate Chicago 1968, and the Left is obligingly preparing to do its part assisting in the further destruction of the Kerry campaign. Kerry must urgently and frequently broadcast his opposition to violent protest, disassociate himself from the same, blame Bush for dividing America, and do all this now.

* The other crucial bit of inoculation concerns the prospect of an October Surprise. In 1980, the Reagan camp lived in deathly fear that Jimmy Carter would use a foreign policy ploy in the last days of the election to rally support around the flag and pull out a win. Carter, of course, was far too moral a man to have gamed national security policy for his own political benefit. Bush and Rove, of course, would not hesitate in the least. Cubans, Syrians and Democrats, are you listening? The Reagan camp expertly preempted any such possibility by talking about it loudly, frequently and early, so that had Carter in fact done this, the ground would have been pre-paved to make it appear a cynical political ploy. The Kerry people must do the same, starting yesterday.

* Next, Kerry must turn the tables on this Vietnam thing. Everybody has missed the central fact about Bush's record. It's abysmal that somebody who has sent a thousand Americans to their death on the basis of lies used his father's connections to avoid his generation's war, then didn't even show up for cushy Guard duty, and continues to this day to block access to his records while lying (yet again!) in promising to release them all. Nevertheless, Bush continues to effectively play hide and seek over these issues. The point that should be pressed, around which the White House will perhaps never be able to dance, concerns the induction form he filled out, where he explicitly declined to request overseas duty. Nothing could be clearer than that this coward sends other people's kids to fight wars for his political benefit, while neither he nor his running mate put themselves in harm's way when their country called. Nothing could be clearer than the contrast with John Kerry, who could have played the same game, but instead went and risked life and limb. It's time to say it.

* Bush has been the most controversial, and yet the most insulated, president in modern times. Not only has he held fewer (and more contrived) press conferences than any other presidents, even his staged Q-and-A events on the campaign trail exclude everyone but avid supporters, with the Secret Service ejecting Democrats and other unwanted creatures. Kerry should call Bush out, challenging him to repeated sessions in which he can defend his record before real Americans asking real questions of the candidates. Kerry should play the Bush game and taunt his manhood and courage to force pseudo-macho Bush's hand. Over and over he should ask, "What is the president afraid of?", until it also becomes part of the public's conventional wisdom and the media's implicit framing of Bush.

* Finally, the Kerry campaign should also borrow a page from Bush campaigns present and past, and start describing Bush using terms like unbalanced, desperate, unhinged, etc., when he and his campaign show any emotion at all reacting to Kerry's offensives. Reports coming out of the White House suggest that this is precisely true anyhow, and that the carefully crafted image of a cool and determined Bush as president is an absurd facade.

There is no excuse for the Kerry campaign to have been so ill-prepared for the Bush garbage machine. It is has now been previewed in multiple campaigns over the last two decades, and a devastating preemptive strategy should have been implemented months ago.

It is worth remembering that in 1988 Dukakis came out of the summer with a commanding lead over Bush Senior, who then proceeded to eat him for lunch, all while Dukakis looked on. It may not be too late for another Massachusetts liberal to avoid the same fate, but it certainly will be if he doesn't start swinging now.

David Michael Green (pscdmg@hofstra.edu) is assistant professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.

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