The news services are abuzz with the rumor that terrorist godfather Osama bin Laden may have initialized biodegradation thanks to typhoid. If this is the case (and who knows what to make of a French intelligence [insert joke] leak of a Saudi intelligence report?), and if it can be to any degree confirmed in the next seven weeks, we hereby prognosticate the political fallout.
This will hurt the Ds on November 7 with their lukewarm strategy of nationalizing the congressional elections. Rs will say with some justification that their policy of dogged, unrelenting pursuit of terrorism continues to show incremental progress.
Ds will be forced to say something like: (a) the Rs didn't kill him; (b) the Rs made him an iconic martyr; (c) the Rs created a thousand Osamas before the first one died.
But this rhetoric will have little short-term effect because (a) dead is dead, and dying of typhoid in a filthy cave because one is not safe to travel and can't get even the most basic medical care is among the genuinely bad ways to die; (b) Osama is no less iconic dead than alive, and many more Muslims seem to be put off by the effects of Osama-style bloodletting these days; (c) the Ds drumbeat of defeatism takes awhile to root itself in the public consciousness by means of unrelenting repetition--longer than the time left before the election--and tends to be set back by any additional good news.
So while Republican and Bush administration strategy is to be unrelenting in the pursuit of terrorists, Democrat opposition strategy is to be unrelenting in interpreting every event as negative for US interests. Both strategies require considerable time to take effect. But the Rs have the advantage of being able to show tangible effects occasionally, while the Ds can only show passing effects in public opinion polls.
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