http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6314388/site/newsweek/

The Science of Scare Tactics
The shorthand Bush is relying on is that he will protect America and Kerry
won't. Does anyone really believe Kerry wouldn't fight Al Qaeda?By Jonathan
Alter

NewsweekNov. 1 issue - It's fright night in the 2004 presidential campaign—
Halloween come early. President Bush says you'll be taxed into poverty,
then blown up by a terrorist if you vote for John Kerry, while Kerry says
that voting for Bush means retiring on cat food, if you survive a back-
alley abortion and being drafted to fight in the Middle East. To me, it's
all fair game. There's no use wringing your hands over attack politics.
This is what politicians were put on earth to do—raise the stakes and
stigmatize the other guy. But it's the job of the news media and what one
Bush aide dismissively calls the "reality-based community" to parse the
claims and connect them to how each man might actually govern. Just
repeating that "both sides are using scare tactics" doesn't tell us which
ones are closer to the mark.

All year long, the president's campaign has revolved around Scary Kerry.
For starters, Bush says average Americans would get hit with tax increases
if Kerry wins. Fat chance. During the second debate, Kerry looked spookily
into the camera and offered what amounted to a read-my-lips pledge not to
raise taxes on the middle class (a moment he may come to regret). Even the
rich are probably safe. Kerry's plan to pay for his health-care program by
repealing the tax cuts for those earning more than $200,000 is likely to
have problems in a Republican Congress that remains under the thumb of
wealthy interests.

Bush's major assault is on Kerry's ability to defend us from terrorism. On
this score, the president is—how to put this delicately?—lying. He keeps
saying on the stump that Kerry won't hit terrorists until they hit us and
would apply a "global test" before intervening. This is a clear and
deliberate misrepresentation of what Kerry actually said. Bush goes on to
argue that Kerry voted to disarm the military. In fact, both CIA Director
Porter Goss and Vice President Dick Cheney supported even deeper cuts in
intelligence and weapons systems at the end of the cold war. The irony of
Bush's "wolf ad" (featuring pictures of scary wolves as the announcer talks
about Kerry's weakness on defense) is that it's the president who has a
wolf problem. The greatest single consequence of the botched war in Iraq is
that the next time trouble arises somewhere in the world, our allies won't
believe U.S. intelligence about an "imminent threat." With a toxic
combination of arrogance and incompetence, Bush has become the boy who
cried wolf.

The shorthand Bush is relying on is that he will protect America and Kerry
won't. Does anyone really believe Kerry wouldn't fight Al Qaeda?

Kerry's scare tactics against Bush are more justified but less effective.
For 40 years, Democrats have raised fears about Social Security at election
time. The claims were so bogus (Republicans mostly wanted sensible reforms)
that even straight news reporters began referring to
Democrats' "demagoguing" Social Security. This year Kerry is actually right
that Bush's plan to privatize a portion of Social Security would eventually
lead to at least a trillion-dollar shortfall and huge benefit cuts. But
fewer people are listening, which means that Democrats, too, are paying the
price for crying wolf. Fortunately, Bush probably wouldn't be able to do
much to Social Security. Once the public recognizes that letting younger
workers invest their retirement benefits in the stock market means hurting
Grandma and Grandpa (under the system, today's workers fund today's
elderly), the Bush plan will die.

The stakes are higher on abortion, where the staleness of the Democrats'
argument is also hurting them. After years of dire warnings by women's
groups, the right to choose is truly on the line this time. With at least
three Supreme Court justices expected to retire in the next four years, Roe
v. Wade could well be reversed if Bush is re-elected (depending, in part,
on the Senate elections). If Roe goes down, more than 30 states are
expected to outlaw abortion.

As for the prospect of a military draft, Bush is correct when he says he
has no plans for conscription; it is unnecessary for Iraq. But he has yet
to explain what he'll do about an Army that is by all accounts
overstretched and putting severe strains on the guard and Reserves. And the
world could change abruptly (by, say, a single assassin's bullet in
Pakistan); a second war of the same size would require a draft.

The shorthand that Bush is relying on to win is that he will protect
America and Kerry won't. This may work politically, but it is simply
untrue. Does anyone seriously believe Kerry wouldn't fight Al Qaeda? As for
Homeland Security, Kerry could hardly do worse. Bush sold out to the
chemical industry—so chemical plants are largely unprotected. He failed to
follow through on cargo security—so ports are unsecured. Compare Bush to a
real wartime leader like Franklin D. Roosevelt. When FDR ordered that
50,000 combat aircraft be built in five months, he was told it was
impossible. He made it happen. When Bush, by contrast, was told it would
take five years after 9/11 to consolidate terrorist watch lists and replace
the FBI's primitive computers, he shrugged and sat on his hands. The job
remains undone. Now that's frightening.

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