It's Not What You Say About the Issues...

I can't disagree with Michael Tomasky's "unified theory of everything," which is basically that Republicans win elections by emphasizing character, whereas Democrats lose because they emphasize issues instead, because they believe that issues should be the ground on which elections are contested and also that the public supports them on issues.

As much of a liberal policy wonk as I am, I don't believe that issues should be the basis on which people base their votes. To rank character very high is not just a tactical necessity for candidates, it's perfectly legitimate for voters. First, this is not a parliamentary system, and rational voters know that they are not really choosing a platform along with a president, but rather are choosing a particular stance or attitude in relation to the other centers of power in the political system. And, second, in a basically affluent and tranquil society -- despite income inequality, despite 45 million uninsured, despite all that -- the problems we don't know about are still a bigger deal than the ones we do. To use Donald Rumsfeld's great taxonomy, the "unknown unkowns" are more worrisome than the "known unkowns" or the "known knowns." I don't mean to endorse the "9/11 changed everything" nonsense, but 9/11 was a vivid demonstration that how a president reacts to that, or any other, crisis is of far greater concern than the exact legislative specifics of his health care plan. (Bush ranks equally poorly by either standard.)

If I were running the issues department of the Kerry campaign, or any campaign, the sign above my desk would not be James Carville's "It's the Economy Stupid": my sign would say, "It's not what you say about the issues, it's what the issues say about you." That is, as a candidate, you must choose to emphasize issues not because they poll well or are objectively our biggest problems, but because they best show the kind of person you are, and not just how you would deal with that particular issue, but others yet to rear their heads. The best illustration of that is John McCain. The most admired political figure achieved his status in large part by his crusade for campaign finance reform. I've seen all the polls on this for seven or eight years, and "campaign finance reform," as an issue, is of interest to at most 5% of the public. I'd like for it to be otherwise, but it's not. And yet, for McCain, campaign finance reform is the perfect issue. It's tells a story about his independence, and his persistence, and it gives him a populist message without having to embrace more liberal economic policies. Clinton's much-derided "micro-initiatives" of the mid-1990s likewise sent a message about who he was: responsible, not extreme, neither a lover of government for its own sake nor a nihilist like Newt Gingrich. The insignificance of his gestures was a potent message in itself, and saved his presidency.

I don't think the problem with Kerry is that he talks about issues when he should be talking about character. That was Al Gore's problem. I think the problem is that the Kerry brain has split into an issues half, and a character half, and the two sides aren't communicating. The character half controlled the convention, and focused on Vietnam. Fine, but what did that say about how he would deal with Iraq? And the issues half has plans -- entirely good ones, even for Iraq. But those proposals don't reinforce any sense of the kind of person Kerry is, and how he would cope in a crisis.

I don't know enough about the internal politics of the Kerry world (in which I know almost no one) to speculate whether one side is represented by Bob Shrum or Michael Whouley or John Sasso or whoever. But whatever the factions are, they have to get it together. The issues and scheduling side of the campaign has to stop picking an issue of the day, based on the polls. It has to start trying to choose some issues that really emphasize whatever it is that they want to say about Kerry as a person that contrasts him to Bush (honest, brave, forward-seeing, smart, common-sense, independent, cares-about-ordinary-people -- pick one and reinforce it) and then use those issues to tell that story over a period of a week or more. And where they want to attack Bush on either character or issues, pick a point that best emphasizes a single point that they want to emphasize to draw the contrast with Kerry. That means, among other things, saying no to all the issue-advocacy groups that are besieging the campaign, brandishing polls and begging Kerry to devote a day to their cause.

To a voter paying modest attention, the Bush campaign would not seem less issue-oriented than Kerry's, and Bush can probably argue that he spends more time talking about issues than character. Bush is astonishingly unembarassed to march headfirst into issues that, to a knowledgeable observer, don't reflect well on his own leadership, such as Iraq, the Medicare bill, or further tax cuts. Bush understands, as Kerry does not, that what matters about those choices is not whether the public wants more tax cuts or whether the Iraq war is going well, but what those issues say about Bush as a person: resolute, unfazed, reliable. Kerry and his campaign need a little dose of that insight.