I just can’t envision a major victory for Kerry. It doesn’t look to me like the numbers are there.

The Kerry Administration would come into power with an angry Republican opposition still in control of the House and in all likelihood in control of the Senate. The divisions within his own party suggest a situation not unlike herding cats, likely to turn on him as they did on Carter under similar circumstances.

Now presidents seek power. They want to hold onto their office and get re-elected. If they didn’t they wouldn’t seek the office to begin with.

So what would he do—under those circumstances—if another crisis materializes? If he refuses to react or dithers in Hamlet-like indecision, he would confirm the worst fears of his political opponents and of his moderate supporters as well. No one would cut him any slack. How strong would arguments that politics stopped at the water’s edge or that you shouldn’t change horses in midstream be? Kerry has campaigned against both of those propositions so they won’t be available to him. There would be an immediate movement to remove him.

So what would Kerry do? I think he’d be likely to over-react in self defense. He doesn’t really have any other option.

Bush doesn’t have anything to prove. But Kerry does. “

Well said, Mr. Schuyler ! A fine discernment of the political realities that will govern the electoral outcomes.

On the other side of the question is Tom Barnett, whose analytical prowess I respect a great deal as well as his ability as a DoD strategist to separate the nation’s interests from purely partisan ones. Dr. Barnett is the rare breed, a Democratic Hawk and his professional life has been given over to musing on the implications for American foreign, defense and national security policies when really, really, bad things happen. Here is his rationale for choosing Mr. Kerry ( slightly truncated by me):

“I have compared George Bush to Harry Truman. I liked his certainty at an uncertain time. I admired his courage in forging new rule sets at a time when they were desperately needed. He knew he was starting something for the long haul, and he was committed to seeing it begun and set on its irrevocable path.

Like Truman, Bush is facing a very difficult election, with his Dewey being John Kerry. People wonder about Kerry like they did about Dewey: Will he follow through on what’s been started? Can he stay the course while somehow making it better? Can we risk the change in leadership at this dangerous time?…..

…Bush is beat up. He’s looking like Carter near the end. He sees what he sees and he knows what he knows–and neither are good enough for the tasks that we face over the next four years.

America will need to listen more in the future than speak. We will need to lead more by example of change than by example of continuity. We will need to make deals all over the dial that draw the rest of the Core into the long-term struggle which we have so correctly begun in the Middle East. We will need to revamp an international security architecture much like the Clinton team did with the international financial architecture in the 1990s. In short, we need a Clinton on national security. Not the Clinton we had on national security in the 1990s, but the one we had on the economic side of globalization in the 1990s. We need that sort of visionary deal-making applied to the security side of the house now, and Bush is not by nature nor current outlook that leader.

Nor are those around him ready to lead in that manner. When you think of the key foreign policy players (Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Wolfowitz), all seems used up and bereft of new ideas. They seem past their prime. Like a General Manager looking over his NFL team roster for the next season, I scan this list and can’t spot anyone who’s likely to improve the next time around. In fact, all seem on a downward slope, meaning we are extremely unlikely to do better if we keep them on the roster–no matter how they get switched around (all of those ideas being complete losers in my mind). If they were to be replaced, it’s hard to see Bush picking the GOP talent (e.g., McCain, Lugar) that could really reverse this downward slope, simply because these individuals would not be attracted to his certitude and faith. In other words, they would want to wheel and deal and they’d know their hands would be tied in a second Bush administration–if not by Bush then by Cheney.

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