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Column: Dems in 2004 Should Run on Bush's 2000 Theme: It's Time to Restore Honor and Integrity to the White House

by P.M. Carpenter

Mr. Carpenter is a historian and syndicated columnist.

Democratic strategists and their presidentially hopeful candidates are of two minds on how best to get out the vote in the coming electoral blood fest. Briefly put, one camp believes in promoting “new ideas” while the other prefers to exploit hardcore anger. This strategic divide may come across as irreconcilable, but the two camps are, or at least could be, much closer in message than usually thought.

In proposing new policies to replace the gazillion destructive ones Bush has huckstered with deceptive rhetoric, or in merely denouncing his record and leaving it at that, both camps, in effect, are playing a variation on the same campaign theme: a determination to restore honor and integrity to the White House. Bush made a mockery of those qualities as he campaigned on them four years ago and, as can so easily be shown, has maintained a perfect record of mockery since. In vowing – with jackhammer repetition – to restore presidential integrity and in surveying – again with jackhammer repetition – how Bush has forsaken it, the challenger sets the agenda. By sticking to it, he throws the incumbent on the defensive.

At minimum, a glance at your local bookstore's current events section testifies to the prevailing integrity gap. Well-researched volumes laced with indisputable titles and subtitles such as Lies Bush Told Us…, Big Lies , Weapons of Mass Deception , … Mastering the Politics of Deception and … the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush seem to appear almost daily. Bush's political trail by now is so littered with falsehoods and fraud, muckraking authors can expose its obscenities with little effort and in half the time. The book on this guy is literally on the street.

The problem, of course – the reason George W. continues to hover in the approval-plus column – is that the informed, reading public dwells in the minority. The greater number is too preoccupied with sweating out health care coverage or getting “outsourced” to adequately appreciate all of W's wonders. Political scribes on the left and even clear-eyed Republican apostates such as Kevin Phillips can expose in print the president's debasements till the cows come home, thus further invigorating an already motivated but minority opposition, but the more important job of enlightening the majority necessarily lies on the campaign stump and in the television ads of the Democratic Party's chosen standard bearer.

It is in this realm that a synthesis of the party's seemingly divergent strategies can come into play. The challenger can vent with all due anger that after four years of presidential lies, the idea of commanding a White House instilled with integrity is indeed a radically new one. With this as the only new idea urgently needed, new and complex policy ideas could be put aside for the time being. They're simply not what a challenger wants as a political centerpiece anyway. Complexity is a loser. Democrats have always had a hard time understanding that concept; but however unfortunate, it's true. The electorate prefers hearing and tends to vote for broad swaths of principle, not pinpoints of policy debates. Hence only one, exquisitely simple cry should be heard from the Democratic hustings in 2004: W's very own 2000 mantra about restoring honor and integrity to the White House. Only this time the pledge will actually mean something.

Obviously the candidate needs something to say in between repeated vows to reinstate presidential integrity, and this is where venting anger over recent history comes in. Here, the territory is so rich in blood-curdling reality the candidate never need be tempted to bend the truth or stretch it one iota. Do Americans really want a president who lies to them about foreign policy? One who lies about environmental policy? Education? Energy? Fiscal policy? Trade? Foreign threats? Corporate reform? Intelligence findings? Give all the examples you want.

The script has already been written by George W. Bush. The script is his record. The challenger just needs to read it to the public as comic relief to the fundamental campaign theme of what W. promised four years ago and delivered not – honor and integrity. Let that be the simple, clear message with which battle is engaged.

Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.