How Bush Tapped
Into A Well Of Faith
By Paul Harris
07 November, 2004
The
Observer
For
a brief moment President George W. Bush thought he might have lost.
As Air Force One was touching down in Washington on election-day afternoon,
his political adviser, Karl Rove, was hunched over an onboard phone
getting the first exit poll data from the battleground states.
It was not good news. When Rove relayed the tidings that Kerry could
be heading for a win, Bush was steadfast but disappointed. 'I am surprised,'
he confessed to senior adviser Karen Hughes, and then added: 'But it
is what it is.'
That last phrase
echoed the words the Pope used about Mel Gibson's blockbuster Christian
film The Passion of the Christ. It showed how easily religious mannerisms
fall from Bush's lips and how central his faith is to his view of politics.
A few hours later, however, the real voting tallies were showing the
first signs of Bush's victory. It was clear the religious right was
in fact turning out in droves for the man whose faith matched its own.
It was what it was. The Republicans had won.
Many in America
now believe there has been a revolution in American politics. At a time
of war in Iraq and facing the first net loss of jobs since the Great
Depression, it was instead the issue of cultural values that decided
the greatest amount of votes. For John Kerry's campaign, which saw the
Iraq war or the economy as the deciding factors, it was a huge slap
in the face.
'The turnout of
the religious right was key to Bush's victory. The new slogan should
be: "It's the culture, stupid",' said Mark Rozell, politics
professor at George Mason University.
There has been
a new dawn in America's politics and it is shining on a political landscape
shaped - not by war or jobs or healthcare - but by the role of faith
in government and so-called cultural values on abortion and gay marriage.
It is this landscape, many believe, that will shape the United States
in the next four years.
Karl Rove knows
that. It was Rove, the political guru who has masterminded Bush's rise
to power, who hit upon the winning strategy of 2004. As soon as the
knife-edge election of 2000 was over, it was Rove who predicted that
four million evangelical Christians had stayed at home. All the Republicans
had to do to win next time, he said, was persuade them to get out and
vote.
Now last Tuesday's
result has cemented Rove's position as a rare political genius. Right
up until the results were announced, the conventional wisdom held that
a big turnout would help John Kerry. The sight of huge queues to vote,
and polling stations staying open for extra hours, all fed the idea
that Kerry would win. But the results instead proved Rove correct. It
was the religious right, not just Bush-bashing Democrats, who were flocking
to vote.
That was especially
true in Ohio, the crucial state on which the whole election hinged.
Some polls suggest about a quarter of voters in Ohio described themselves
as evangelical Christians. They voted overwhelmingly for Bush. If they
had not - and Kerry only lost Ohio by some 130,000 votes - it would
now be a Democratic White House. 'That is breath-taking numbers for
Ohio. The religious fundamentalists turned out in enormous numbers,'
said Ken Warren, who is a political scientist at St Louis University.
Rove began to believe
victory was in sight at 11.35pm on Tuesday night. At that time enough
results were coming in from Ohio and Florida to indicate they had won
both crucial states. Rove was in his second-floor office in the White
House while below him Bush and the senior members of the Bush family
hosted an intimate seafood buffet of crab cakes, salmon and shrimp.
As the major TV networks began to call Florida for Bush in the next
hour, the party began.
Rove's strategy
was based on twin pillars. The first one was religion, which often translated
into a set of traditional cultural values around gay marriage, abortion
and a simple style of faith-based leadership. It was not just evangelical
Christians that this appealed to. Bush's support among Catholics jumped
to 52 per cent from 47 per cent, despite the fact that Kerry is himself
a Catholic. Bush's support among Jewish voters also jumped, as did his
support among Hispanics. The only socially conservative group that largely
shrugged off Bush's appeal was black Americans - the most loyal Democratic
voting bloc.
The second pillar
was Rove's devastatingly effective organisation that blitzed the end
of the campaign in a frenzied final 72 hours of hitting the phones,
stumping the pavements and getting to the polls. Run on a tightly disciplined
pyramid design, Rove commanded an army of 1.2 million volunteers with
branches in every one of America's counties. It was also almost entirely
staffed by committed volunteers. That was in stark contrast to the Democrat
organisation which used paid outside organisations to recruit and register
voters. Such dedication by the Republican core supporters is the envy
of Democrat organisers. 'They are more robotic than we are, and I mean
that as a compliment,' said former Clinton White House aide Larry Haas.
'They decide what they need to do in order to win and they don't let
anything interfere with that.'
That was true inside
the Bush campaign itself. It was a tightly run affair, always focused
on putting out simple lines and rarely wavered even in the face of a
tide of bad news from Iraq and the economy. Steering it all was Rove,
but he had able and ruthless deputies. One of them was Steven Schmidt,
head of the Republican 'war room' geared to attacking Kerry. Schmidt,
dubbed 'the general' by his staff, was fond of walking the corridors
of his headquarters urging people to 'kill, kill, kill'. It was Schmidt
who was responsible for identifying and rapidly spreading the most lethal
attack on Kerry of the campaign - when Kerry defended his stance on
funding the Iraq war by saying: 'I actually did vote for the $87 billion
before I voted against it.'.
The Bush campaign
was helped by Kerry's frequent mis-steps. A picture is now emerging
from inside the Democrat campaign of a petulant candidate who frequently
complained that things were going wrong. Kerry was often indecisive,
hesitating to make decisions. It also reveals how outsiders, like his
wife Teresa Heinz Kerry and other family members, had too much influence.
Finally, and in utter contrast to Rove's operation, the Kerry campaign
consisted of bickering tribes of staffers, often vying with each other
rather than working in unison.
Kerry, who hails
from traditionally liberal Massachusetts, also presented an easy target
for Republicans. 'Who thought it was a good idea to run a Massachusetts
liberal who has married two rich women and now owns five mansions?'
said David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter who coined the phrase 'Axis
of Evil'.
Certainly the ad
attacks against Kerry were brutal. Nothing else should be expected of
Rove, who is a master of the darker arts of campaigning. Yet Kerry often
gave as good as he got. After winning the Democrat nomination as a more
moderate voice than the anti-war Howard Dean, Kerry ended up taking
a very Dean line by the campaign's end. Kerry's attacks on Iraq, the
Patriot Act and the influence of the Halliburton defence company were
all straight from Dean's playbook.
Kerry was also backed
up by a 'ground operation' that succeeded in turning out record numbers
of voters. But it was not enough. The Democrats simply missed the main
issues of the day: religion and values. That this was central to the
result is seen in the views of Anthony Falzarano, who runs an antique
shop in Ohio's Jefferson County. Falzarano, who lives in an area of
the state dominated by closed steel mills and hit by job losses, has
not been able to afford healthcare for seven years. Nor have his wife
or his children. But that did not dictate his vote. He is an evangelical
Christian. 'I support Bush,' he said 'We are closet Republicans and
there are a lot of us around here.' The polls showed that it was Falzarano
and Rove, not the Democratic pundits, who were proved right.
Every 10 years the
US Census Bureau has a bit of harmless fun and calculates the demographic
centre of America's shifting population. It is an imaginary spot on
the map where America would balance perfectly if placed on a pivot.
The spot is moving south and west by several miles a year: straight
into the Republican heartland.
With the re-election
of President George W. Bush the political map of America has now finally
caught up with its population map. The last census in 2000 put America's
centre in Phelps County, Missouri. Last week Phelps County voted for
Bush by a margin of 63 per cent to 36 per cent for Kerry. Missouri itself
is a sea of red around isolated patches of blue in its two big cities
of St Louis and Kansas City. And the trend line of the spot spells even
more future gloom for Democrats. By now, four years after the last census,
it has probably already left Phelps County. It is moving straight for
redder than red Kansas.
The Democrats are
now coming to terms with the fact that America - albeit by a narrow
margin - has become a Republican country. They face a Republican President
and Republican control of both Houses of Congress. 'We have to contend
with that reality. We are a minority party,' said Will Marshall, head
of the Progressive Policy Institute, an influential Democratic thinktank.
The party now faces
a bitter fight between those who believe the Democrats should return
to liberal values and those who feel that they should fight the Republicans
on the cultural issues. 'The Democrats just have to take a long, hard
look in the mirror. They are in deep trouble. They face the wilderness
years,' said Shawn Bowler, a political scientist at the University of
California.
Meanwhile, the Republicans
will have four years to implement their agenda. That is likely to involve
appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court and a possible ban
on abortion in many states. It will also see Bush's tax cuts made permanent
and further reforms of the tax code amid a move to privatise social
security. Bush is also committed to seeking a constitutional amendment
to ban gay marriage.
All of this is music
to the ears of people like Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family
Association, one of America's most influential religious right pressure
groups. 'We have got great momentum now. The test is whether President
Bush will deliver for us,' he said.
Certainly the religious
right is going to benefit from an influx of new Republican blood into
the Senate. Tim Coburn, newly elected from Oklahoma, has warned of a
'gay agenda' in America and advocated the death penalty for doctors
who perform abortions. Jim DeMint, from South Carolina, wants to ban
gay people from teaching in public schools. Bush called DeMint last
Wednesday morning to congratulate him on his victory and said he would
now press ahead with a fresh Republican agenda in a second term.
'Now is the time
to get it done,'the President said. If Bush does not, he will risk angering
the people to whom he owes his victory. Wildmon certainly intends to
ensure that does not happen. 'We are going to hold their feet to the
fire for the next few years. We see our job as a watchdog,' he said.
Bush and his administration
are unlikely to be shy in pressing ahead with their advantage. In 2000,
fresh from losing the popular ballot by half a million votes and winning
with a controversial decision in the Supreme Court, the Bush administration
was expected by many to strike a moderate tone. 'From the very day we
walked in the building,' Vice-President Dick Cheney once said privately,
'(there was) a notion of sort of a restrained presidency because it
was such a close election. That lasted maybe 30 seconds.'
Now Bush is resuming
office as the first President to be re-elected while gaining seats in
both houses of Congress since 1936. He is the first Republican to do
so since 1924. He has won a higher percentage of the popular vote than
any Democrat since 1964. 'If that isn't a mandate, then what is?' asked
Frum. This time, in an America still bitterly divided, any notion of
a restrained second Bush presidency will likely not last even 30 seconds.