The Gallagher Effect : Cleveland IMC (((i)))

Ever been to a Gallagher performance? If you haven't, you probably know someone who has, or at least you've seen one on TV. You know how it goes: He warms up the crowd with some political humor, and then brings out the sledgehammer and the watermelons. The first ten or fifteen rows of the audience know they're going to get drenched in slime, so they come prepared. Umbrellas, raincoats and plastic sheeting (hold the duct tape, please) make for standard dress code at these shows.

With that mental backdrop, America bids farewell to the Democratic Party convention in Boston, and now turns toward the Big Apple, where the GOP convention will be held in a matter of days. Let the mudslide begin.

Incumbent George W. Bush may as well grow a moustache, don a striped shirt and paste a curly wig to his head as kickoff time approaches, for a splatter-fest extraordinaire is all he can offer as a rebuttal to John Kerry's campaign. Himself an impressive political contortionist, Bush will have to refrain from using the actual words "flip" and "flop" (wouldn't be prudent), but his delegates will be stepping on their own tongues as they try to portray Kerry as a Gemini legislator - as if single-minded simplicity were an admirable trait in a leader, an apparent and overriding conservative belief.

That's not going to be enough to win an election, not for any incumbent. Four years ago that would have sufficed, as Al Gore had only tepid support among Americans, thanks to the scarlet letter Bill Clinton had branded unto his administration (and, by proxy, all those attached thereto). Such tactics won't do at this juncture, as Americans are quite familiar with Dubya by now. That familiarity has bred quite a bit of contempt for the man; he possesses no unknown qualities. We know exactly what another Bush term will bring - more war, higher deficits and greater encroachment on our liberties. That's why you won't find him running on his record, but against Kerry's.

As so poignantly noted by E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post this morning, the Democrats have laid a nice little minefield for an already limping Bush to dance through. Not only have they rigorously stuck to the high road, with their optimism nearly cloying at times, they have painted their opposition as being divisive, corrosive, and caustic - and these are no false accusations.

As Karl Rove ponders his offensive strategy, he must realize he will be playing right into the Democrats' hands, setting them up for a spiking "I told you so" routine, which they'll be able to do without a loss of any sort of capital. But what other options are available to the Republicans? How can Bush stand there and wave our flag when it has been draped across nearly a thousand American coffins in Iraq? How can he tout his domestic policies when we have record deficits and a sluggish economy, long after the blemishes of blame have faded from the once red-faced Clinton legacy?

He can't, so he'll go down slinging. With barely three months to go, and a sub-fifty-percent approval rating, Bush is limited in what he can do. The support he received from moderates in the last election has eroded, but the clamshell of a world in which he operates, surrounded as he is by yes-men and opportunists with bigger designs, insulates him from that reality. For their part, Democrats have been champing at the bit for a long time now. The last election was impersonal; it signified the end of an era. This time will be much different, for a variety of reasons, nearly all of Bush's making.

Then there's the youth factor. Today there are an awful lot of voters who were pimple-faced kids when Clinton was in office. Those kids are in college now, young adults who have registered to vote en masse. By and large, they'll be voting for the Democrat, and not due to any particular fondness for John Kerry. They'll be voting to oust a president simply because he's there, a statue waiting to be torn down.

Vitriolic dislike for the man at the top is a fledgling phenomenon in politics, which used to interest only the informed or the very boring. Today's youth cut their teeth on presidential dislike, the sense of which pervaded their formative years. It's a trait they picked up from their parents, who honestly should have known better than to so vocally trash our nation's highest office they way they did throughout the '90s.

Little pitchers, after all, have big ears. Now they have big ideas to match.

Cleveland Indy Media Center