One of the things that makes following political campaigns interesting but also frustrating is that it's often hard to distinguish between the real analytical projections of commentators and their own assumption that their favorite issue is the decisive one. This comment from Bob Dreyfuss looks like it falls into the latter category:
Democrats: Keep your eye on the ball. The ball is Iraq, not terrorism. The impact of 9/11 is fading into memory, and Iraq is careening toward civil war by summer. Want to blame Bush for something? Try blaming him for unleashing the Iraqi Shiites from Hell.
Dreyfuss has his own perspective, which includes the idea that the threat of terrorism is being wildly exaggerated by the Bush Administration and that focusing on terrorism at all is a losing proposition for Kerry and the Democrats this year.
Phil Trounstine of San Jose State University certainly has his own partisan perspective. But I think he's combining it with a more realistic analysis than Dreyfuss' in this article: Bush's press slaves Salon.com 03/29/04.
The question now is whether political writers covering the race will choose to continue to frame the election as the Bush-Cheney campaign has -- as a battle between the "war president" and an "unsteady" senator -- or whether they will shift their focus to what has finally emerged as the actual crux of the election.
This is not to say that the economy, taxes, medical care, education and the environment are unimportant issues. Of course they're important. But in the light of 9/11, with U.S. troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and with a president who has defined his status as commander in chief as his overriding quality, it's time for political writers to place accountability of him on that measure at the center of their reporting.
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