Bush Says 'America Loses' Under Democrats

It's highly unusual for a President in war time to seek to portray his opponents as in some way aligned to the enemy, but desperate times appear to be calling for desperate measures.

At a time when former Presidents would have sought unity, Bush is seeking to divide:

"However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses," Bush told a raucous crowd of about 5,000 GOP partisans packed in an arena at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, one of his stops Monday. "That's what's at stake in this election. The Democrat goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in Iraq."

Cheney took the message even further by claiming that terrorists are attempting to influence the US election.

Cheney, meanwhile, said in an interview with Fox News that he thinks insurgents in Iraq are timing their attacks to influence the U.S. elections.

"It's my belief that they're very sensitive of the fact that we've got an election scheduled," he said. Cheney said the insurgents believe "they can break the will of the American people," and "that's what they're trying to do."

Cheney's message couldn't be any clearer, a vote for the Democrats is a vote for the terrorists.

This is highly unusual behaviour for an American President and Vice President and, in many ways, only highlights just how extreme these two men actually are.

Bush now routinely labels Democrats "the party of cut-and-run." At a recent Republican fundraiser, Bush went much further. "The Democrat Party … has evolved from one that was confident in its capacity to help deal with the problems of the world to one that … has an approach of doubt and defeat," he declared.

Bush has absorbed his share of body blows from Democrats criticizing his management of the war. But tagging his rivals as the party of "defeat" is nonetheless extraordinary language for a commander in chief to use in a political campaign.

Other wartime presidents have been much more reluctant to argue that only their party was committed to success. Consider the way President Johnson approached the 1966 elections as the Vietnam War was escalating. To begin with, Johnson spent most of that October away from the campaign, on a 17-day tour of Asia that included Vietnam.

Then, at a news conference just before election day, Johnson dismissed the idea that congressional losses for the Democratic Party would affect either the thinking of the North Vietnamese or America's support for the troops in the field. If Republicans gained seats, he continued, "They may talk, and argue, and fight, and criticize, and play politics from time to time, but when they call the vote on supporting the men … in the Senate it will be 83 to 2 and in the House it will be 410-5."

In 1942, the first election after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was even more emphatic about separating war and politics. Roosevelt spent much of that fall visiting defense facilities on a tour during which he barred press coverage and insisted on being accompanied by Republican as well as Democratic local officials. When the chairman of the Democratic National Committee suggested that a GOP takeover of the House would be bad for the country, Roosevelt publicly rebuked him.

Even President Nixon displayed more restraint during the 1970 midterm election. Nixon barnstormed the country asking voters to elect members of Congress who would support his war policy. But he took pains to avoid claiming that only his party wanted to win. "This is not a partisan issue," Nixon declared that October at a rally for a Texas Republican Senate candidate named George H.W. Bush.

Bush junior has cast all this precedence aside and decided to portray his party as the only one that can guarantee victory in Iraq, without I notice ever defining what that victory will look like.

We always knew that Bush and Cheney lacked the gravitas of the men the who filled that noble office before them, but with this scurrilous attack, it was never made quite as sickeningly obvious.

The man who claimed to be "a uniter not a divider" has now abandoned that pretence completely. He really is campaigning from the bottom of the barrel now.

tag: Iraq, withdrawal, pull-out, United, States, Bush, Republican, mid-term, elections, November, war on terror, terrorists, Democrats,