WASHINGTON — Many Democrats hope the 2004 election will unfold along the lines of the 1992 election, when their party regained the White House -- despite then-President Bush's Persian Gulf War success -- by focusing on domestic affairs. It's an appealing notion. It's also wrong.
The home-front-over-war-front approach didn't work in the 2002 midterm elections, and it won't work next year. The ripple effect of Sept. 11 -- the airport screenings, duct-tape advisories, Code Orange alerts, terror attacks overseas and U.S.-based terrorist sleeper cells -- has focused Americans on personal security to an extent not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. And today, personal security means national security.
In 2004, Democratic candidates will be successful only if they can convince Americans to entrust them with their safety.
The record to date isn't great. Loud opposition to the war by some Democratic presidential candidates, congressional leaders and party activists has alienated many voters, a majority of whom supported the war and believe that removing Saddam Hussein was in the U.S. interest. Asked which party will best keep them safe, Americans overwhelmingly say Republicans will. Unless feelings change, or the Bush administration implodes from ineptitude or scandal, that perception alone could propel the GOP to victory in 2004.
To compete next election year, Democrats must articulate their own national security doctrine. They must understand that this is a new era, and that they'll have to explain the opposition of many in the party to war in Iraq, while reassuring swing voters that Democrats take national security seriously. They must articulate the party's stand on three key issues:
First, they must outline their approach to national security in today's world. For half a century, through Democratic and Republican administrations, the U.S. relied on the strategy of containment in a bipolar competition with the Soviet Union. Academics developed the concept theoretically, and politicians applied it in proxy wars and tense, eye-to-eye confrontations. Now, the Bush administration has replaced the policy of containment with one of preemption -- the theory that the nation should use military force not in response to actual hostilities but in anticipation of them. If preemption makes sense in a world of terrorist networks operating independently of nation-states and with growing access to chemical, biological and radiological weapons, we need to develop standards by which to apply it. Why Iraq? Why not Syria, or Iran, or North Korea? If, by contrast, Democrats reject preemption, the party and its candidates must explain how containment can work in the new world of cross-national terror -- or provide an alternative.
