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Why a Jeb Bush presidential run would be hard on the GOP

by www.cbsnews.com Leave a Comment

This article originally appeared on Slate.

Jeb Bush is having a moment. For two months or so, as Chris Christie’s presidential fortunes have appeared abridged, people who have supported the New Jersey governor (or at least are predisposed to support him) have started mentioning the former two-term Florida governor as a possible 2016 candidate. Should the federal investigation into the George Washington Bridge lane closures become a full-blown calamity, several have said, perhaps Bush could be lured into the race. Now the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Robert Costa report that the whispers have grown into a draft-Bush movement.

The argument for a Bush run is that he has a governor’s executive skills, can forge a relationship with crucial Hispanic voters (particularly in a key swing state), and has a fundraising base founded, in part, on a reservoir of goodwill toward the Bush family. Republicans are sick of being out of the White House and want a winner. Perhaps, but Bush is also the perfect candidate if your goal is driving simultaneous wedges into as many fault lines in the Republican Party as possible.

The first problem is his heritage. On domestic issues, the Bush family is synonymous among some conservatives with tax increases and federal spending. Perhaps the greatest sin in the modern conservative movement is George H. W. Bush’s 1990 budget deal where he traded tax increases for budget savings. Jeb Bush, on the other hand, has cited his father’s compromise as the epitome of presidential leadership. George W. Bush is criticized for his lack of spending restraint as well as his support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (which some might count as the second greatest sin).

In his positions on fiscal policy, Jeb Bush has given comfort to the suspicious. When asked about the hypothetical trade-off posited during a 2012 GOP debate, where no GOP candidate would accept a dollar of tax increases in exchange for 10 dollars in spending reductions, Jeb Bush took a different view. “If you could bring to me a majority of people to say that we’re going to have $10 in spending cuts for $1 of revenue enhancement–put me in, coach,” he said at the time . He has also criticized Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge that few GOP lawmakers refuse to sign. Bush even joked during a budget hearing two years ago that these positions “will prove I’m not running for anything.”

The GOP is having a robust debate about foreign policy that is likely to continue into the primaries in 2016. If Bush runs, he will have to field a greater share of questions about the war in Iraq than anyone else. He is appealingly loyal to his brother and father, but managing their legacies will lead to distracting fights, or at the very least increased stress as his opponents, Twitter, and the media bait him time and again.

The second problem for Bush is the people backing the draft movement. He isn’t being called from the counter in coffee shops or Tuesday Tips club meetings. The support is coming from what one GOP veteran referred to as “the donor class.” This group is also variously referred to as the establishment, Country Club Republicans, and the moderate wing of the party. These Republicans are tired of being defined by the unpopular Tea Party wing of the party. Meanwhile, movement conservatives are sick of elites using their money to arrange things without the interference of pesky voters. This, they believe, has led to support for squishy candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney who wind up losing anyway. Bush would enter the campaign wearing the establishment tattoo and carrying the burden of its past mistakes.

The final problem is that Bush has taken policy stances against his party’s grass roots on the hot button issues of immigration and education. Bush is an advocate for pathways to citizenship and residency for illegal immigrants, positions that House Republican leaders didn’t even want to debate in this election year for fear they would cause too big a rift in the ranks. Bush is also an advocate for Common Core education standards, which advocates like Bill Gates say are designed to make the United States more competitive in the world. Grass-roots conservatives are passionately opposed to the standards, arguing that they remove local control of education and dumb down teaching of crucial subjects like math. In Indiana, activists have just convinced GOP Gov. Mike Pence to withdraw the state from Common Core .

The tensions that a Bush candidacy would exacerbate have existed within the GOP since the New Deal as members have wrestled with whether to pick a candidate with the best perceived chance of victory or the one who best reflected the philosophy of the conservative movement. Even in 1952, war hero Dwight Eisenhower, the darling of the GOP middle, had to fight off a close battle with Sen. Robert Taft. The Ohio senator was considered a better conservative, but party wizards worried he couldn’t win because of his dour personality.

These fights are robust, though they do not doom a candidacy. Sometimes they are the necessary clarifying battles that lead to victory. But they are exhausting. Bush has never run at the national level, which Texas Gov. Rick Perry discovered can be very different from having the hot hand at home. Bush has also not run in a race since 2002, an age before Twitter, Facebook, and the towering and repetitive pettiness of the modern presidential campaign. He has a shorter supply of inner sunshine than his brother that would get exhausted by lunchtime on most campaign days.

It would be in keeping with Bush’s description of himself as an “eat your vegetables” politician if he challenged the orthodoxy of part of his party in his campaign instead of trying to skirt his challenges. If he replaces Christie and becomes the new establishment front-runner then a battle is coming.

John Dickerson

John Dickerson reports for 60 Minutes as a correspondent and contributes to CBS News election specials. Prior to that, he was the co-host of “CBS This Morning” and served as CBS News’ chief Washington correspondent and anchor of “Face The Nation.” Dickerson is also a contributor to Slate’s “Political Gabfest” , a contributing editor to The Atlantic, and the author of “On Her Trail” and “Whistlestop: My Favorite Stories from Presidential Campaign History.”

A call to arms: Poland’s military and civilian defenses rethink the future

by www.chron.com Leave a Comment

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WARSAW – A few days after Russian troops stormed into Ukraine in February, Eryk Klossowski issued an unusual request to senior staff at the Polish utilities company he headed. War was raging across the border. It was time, he reasoned, for his team to expand its corporate training. Everyone should learn how to shoot a gun.

“Russia can still take more military steps and can trigger asymmetrical threats, like terrorist assaults,” said Klossowski, 46, who now is planning weapons training for hundreds of rank-and-file employees in after-work sessions this fall. “Everybody needs to be prepared.”

The war in Ukraine has marked a new era of Russian aggression, rekindling the threat of nuclear war and unleashing global food and energy crises that have sent prices soaring worldwide. But for neighboring countries, long familiar with the Russian threat, the war is provoking something more: a national call to arms.

Across eastern and northern Europe, polls show strong support for the NATO alliance and faith in the United States to honor mutual defense treaties if the Kremlin – still facing a far more difficult fight than it bargained for in Ukraine – threatens others in the years ahead. But countries living in Russia’s shadow remain unwilling to leave their fortunes to chance. They are moving to rapidly build up domestic military might, while also witnessing a renaissance in civilian readiness that harks back to the darkest days of the Cold War.

Poland, a Warsaw Pact nation under the Soviet Union’s boot for more than four decades, is today Moscow’s harshest critic in Europe. To face down a belligerent Russia, officials here are vowing to double the size of their armed forces to 300,000 troops, even as some politicians seek to loosen strict gun laws to put more weapons in civilian hands.

About 94% of Poles see Russia as a “major threat,” up from 65% in 2018, according to a new Pew Research survey. And 14 years after doing away with the draft, a plurality of Poles favors bringing back some form of army conscription.

As they step up to be counted, the country with the lowest rate of gun ownership in Europe is witnessing a surge of enrollment in its Territorial Defense Force, akin to America’s National Guard, as well as sharp interest in combat and survivalist courses and slots for training at gun ranges.

“Society has stepped out of its glass bubble,” said Krzysztof Wojcik, the 29-year-old founder of a nonprofit that provides survivalist and weapons instruction to civilians and has seen a dramatic jump in interest since the war in Ukraine began.

“People have long thought they are completely safe, that nothing will happen and the army is not needed,” said Wojcik, standing under a hot summer sun at a training center 87 miles from Warsaw, where 40 civilians were taking military-style courses paid for by the government. “It is no longer the case.”

Ukrainian success in deploying armed civilians to augment regular forces appears to have inspired Poland and other nearby nations to see a winning model in the “civilian soldier.” Here, the call to arms is extending beyond the traditional military, into boardrooms and even Polish schools. As soon as September, children as young as 13 are slated to begin limited weapons training.

“This is clearly the effect of war,” Education Minister Przemyslaw Czarnek said in an interview. “Ten years ago, if a minister in office had proposed that elementary school students have these kinds of classes, he would have been laughed off. However, what we have witnessed [in Ukraine], and the way this war was waged with such atrocities, showed us that the danger is real.”

“These are needed skills,” he added. “It’s not about the militarization of children, it’s about skills that would be useful for safety and security if the conflict escalates.”

The invasion has prompted a similar rethinking in Sweden and Finland, which broke decades-long taboos and applied for NATO membership this year; both have witnessed a huge surge in recruits signing up for voluntary defense forces. Lithuania – a Baltic nation and former Soviet state – is also witnessing a spike in personal weapon sales, including handguns and semiautomatics.

Interest in both personal combat training and private gun ownership has skyrocketed in the Czech Republic, the site of the Prague Spring, which was violently put down by the Soviet Union in 1968. There, the number of volunteers signing up for active army reserves is so high that officials say they are unable to process all the applications. Czech weapon sellers and firing ranges have also been besieged by citizens eager to buy guns and learn or improve shooting skills.

“People don’t believe the state would be able to protect them,” said Martin Fiser, owner of a shooting school in Prague where skyrocketing demand has filled spots for new students until September. “Our army is tiny.”

Perhaps nowhere is the response more startling than in Poland.

In a country dominated by hard-right politics, the tough gun laws stood as a rare exception to the agenda of the ruling Law and Justice party. Per capita, Poland’s population of 38 million sees relatively few guns in civilian hands – with 2.51 firearms per 100,000 people, compared with 19.61 in France and a whopping 120 per 100,000 in the United States.

Observers here say that is largely a product of the communist era, when Poland’s Soviet masters frowned on private gun ownership to the point of discouraging even hunting. For better or worse, Russia’s attacks in Ukraine are giving lift to efforts to change and liberalize those laws.

“Right now, we are the most unarmed society in Europe,” said Jaroslaw Sachajko, a national lawmaker from the Kukiz’15 party and co-author of legislation that would make it easier for Poles to obtain guns – a process that now requires psychological assessments, written tests and extensive police reviews.

“All of our neighbors have a larger number of guns per capita. The Czechs. The Germans. Why should it be the case that they have easier access to weapons?” he said. He added: “We can see in Ukraine the way that weapons and weapons training has helped their effort” against the Russians.

At a shooting range in an old car factory on the outskirts of Warsaw, Artur Kwiecinski, a 47-year-old pharmaceutical executive, spoke over the din of live fire. One of a local gun club’s 400 new members since February, he described his motivation as “obvious.”

“It’s the war,” Kwiecinski said. “It’s made personal safety more important. I have a wife. I have son. I need to learn this.”

Civil defense classes, common in Polish schools during the communist era, largely disappeared in recent decades as the fall of the Berlin Wall and then Poland’s accession to NATO and the European Union seemed to make the notion of war obsolete.

As the threat roars back to life, Poland is tentatively moving to reintroduce weapons training in schools – including theoretical training in eighth grade and tactical, hands-on training in ninth grade. The instruction will combine virtual-reality technology and in-person shooting at gun ranges.

“If Russia should ever think to attack Poland, Russia must know, the Kremlin must know, that in Poland, 40 million Poles are ready to stand up, arms in hand, to defend their homeland,” Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in June while inaugurating a high school shooting range in the southern town of Myszkow. “There is no going back under the foot of Russia.”

Mixing guns and schools might shock some Americans, given the wave of horrific mass shootings in the United States. But the measure has met mostly muted opposition here, with the loudest criticism being that it’s class time wasted or a ploy by the ruling party to curry favor with its base.

“It is strange. We had weapons training when I was at school 30 years ago, and we didn’t think it would ever come back,” said Dorota Loboda, a parental activist and member of the Warsaw City Council’s education committee. “We are not so happy with this. We need more psychologists, more therapists, at school. Not weapons.”

The shift in threat has been most jarring for younger Poles, who largely grew up in an era of peace punctuated by Russia’s aggression in Georgia in 2008 and its forced annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in 2014. Both paled in comparison with the full-on invasion of Ukraine, which shattered many Poles’ illusion of safer times.

Justyna Muszynska, a 17-year-old high school student, was among those spending a full day last month at the training center northwest of Warsaw – practicing how to build a shelter, put on a gas mask, fire a gun.

“After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I realized I know absolutely nothing and have no idea how to protect myself and my loved ones,” she said, taking a break after a lesson in battlefield first aid. “I wanted to learn basic skills.”

Poland is moving to augment its defense might through its Territorial Defense Force. Minted by the Law and Justice party in 2017, its ranks of professional and part-time volunteer soldiers have been derided as the government’s “personal army.” Since spring, it has seen a sevenfold rise in recruitment.

Last Sunday, in forests a few hours outside Warsaw, a wave of new recruits ran through basic weapons training as their instructors barked orders.

“They want to defend themselves, their families and their homeland,” said Lt. Pawel Pinkowski, 40, a company commander and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The situation in Ukraine has shown that, indeed, it is better to be prepared.”

– – –

Dariusz Kalan in Wloclawek, Poland, and Ladka Bauerova in Prague contributed to this report.

WVa nonprofit seeks to educate people about bullying

by www.sfchronicle.com Leave a Comment

FAIRMONT, W.Va. (AP) — A Marion County, West Virginia, nonprofit wants to empower others about how to identify and stand up against bullying.

Communities of Shalom Certified Prevention Specialist Renee Verbanic presented the workshop “Bullying Prevention: Empowering Bystanders to be Upstanders” at a meeting of the Fairmont Human Rights Commission recently. The interactive presentation focused on how to identify bullying and how to be a better ally.

“This affects us commissioners because there are residents within Marion County that are being treated unfairly and there are students within the Marion County school system that do not feel safe attending school. Also, there are students and parents within Marion County that feel there is no justice for the wrongs that are being done to them,” Human Rights Commission member Tiffany Walker Samuels said.

Verbanic started by breaking down myths associated with bullies and bullying. For example, hitting your bully to make them stop, which is something that people have often considered effective, can actually just cause a bully to become worse, she said.

“One of the myths we have about bullies — whether they’re an adult or a kid — is that they have low self esteem. … That’s a myth. Bullying behavior is about intentional power — either emotional, physical or social power,” Verbanic said.

She covered how bullies can become bullies — which includes risk factors from family and peers, demographics, cyberbullying — and reasons people report being bullied, the top reason being the way they look or their body size.

Participants looked at a list of eight options on what to do to help assist someone who is being bullied and were asked to pick their first and last option. Verbanic had participants share their answers.

The options included, tell an adult, ask the bully a question, tell the bully to stop, support the target privately, support the target publicly, don’t stand around and watch. Move, talk your concerns out with a friend and don’t laugh with or empower the bullying behavior.

“I’m going to support the target publicly. Having been in a situation similar, I want other people to know that I’m supporting that individual,” participant Cathy Reed said.

Then, Verbanic discussed with participants the characteristics of passive, proactive and bullying behaviors and that often the proactive person can be blamed for being the bully. She touched on implicit bias or ‘knee jerks’ and how to be aware of harassing behavior by acknowledging times participants had been bullies or bystanders, which is also known as the “Window Activity.”

She also explained the importance of doing something productive, regardless of whether people may think you are being a “snitch.”

“Remember, in the war in Iraq, one brave American soldier came forward and said atrocities are happening there by American soldiers, they investigated and a whole outcry against that one soldier — not only by veterans, but by other American citizens — calling him a snitch,” Verbanic said.

Some of the participants expressed that it’s important to keep the conversation going and that having workshops like this one is something they look forward to do in the future, as they get back into the swing of things as the COVID-19 pandemic lessens.

“It’s not, to me, a one-time event tonight; it needs to be a continued conversation because that’s how that practice becomes permanent,” participant Jim Norton said.

Kerry Fights Back

by www.rollingstone.com Leave a Comment

“I’m going straight to the White House,” John Kerry says. “I’m thrilled with where the campaign is right now.” Just 90 minutes earlier, on this warm afternoon in late September, he stood on an outdoor stage at the University of Pennsylvania campus in downtown Philadelphia and gazed out onto a sea of 20,000 supporters. The school had hosted only one other rally this big in recent memory – when Bill Clinton came through on his re-election tour in 1996. It’s heady stuff when a first-time presidential candidate draws crowds comparable in size to those of a popular sitting president.

“I feel as if we have finally gotten the American people and the press simultaneously focused on the real issues,” he says. “Things I’ve been talking about for two years. George Bush has made catastrophic mistakes in Iraq, catastrophic mistakes in foreign policy. He’s shown bad judgment, made bad choices about how to proceed in a war on terror. I think he’s also out of touch with the American people on what their day-to-day lives are like. The cost of health care skyrockets; he has no plan to reduce it. School is expensive; he’s made it worse. He has a string of broken promises about not hurting Social Security as he dips into it every day. This is the most say-one-thing-and-do-another administration in history.”

Dressed in a gray suit, with a blue shirt and blue tie, Kerry sits in a classroom in the law school building near the quad where the rally was held. He’s been fighting off a cold that has caused him to lose his voice, but earlier he was especially spirited as he launched the latest blistering attack on Bush: that he’s living in a fantasy world.

“It’s the truth of what I think is happening,” Kerry says. “When you sit there and say your CIA is guessing [about conditions in Iraq], when you talk about the right-way/wrong-way polls being better in Iraq than in America, when you ignore what the Iraqi prime minister visiting you says about thousands of terrorists crossing the border and say there are only a handful – you’re living in a world of spin. You’re in fantasyland.” He pauses. “When you don’t understand what’s happening to the American family and talk about tax cuts they’ve received, when you celebrate jobs going overseas, when you talk about job numbers that are less than what your own targets were – you’re not telling the truth to the American people.”

On Iraq – now the central issue on which he is attacking Bush – Kerry is harsh, claiming Bush has been guilty of “misleading, miscalculating, misjudgment, mismanagement.” The consequences may be “very serious” for the United States, but already the price has been immense. “Two hundred billion dollars spent and a thousand lives laid down,” Kerry says, “because [the Bush administration] miscalculated in every respect and because they pursued a rigid, ideological goal rather than an honest assessment of America’s security.”

Kerry straightens up in his chair. “I believe we are going to win,” he says. “And we are going to win because, I think, America wants a change in the right direction.” Then he adds, “I’m fired up and ready to go.”

O nly a few weeks ago, if Kerry had promised victory like this, it would have sounded like he was the one living in a fantasy world. Even campaign spokesman David Wade admits it: “August was a hard month for us.” By the end of that month, Kerry found himself down by double digits in some national polls, blown out of the water by a Bush-backed assault on his Vietnam War record, which was supposed to have been the cornerstone of his presidential campaign. When the Republican National Convention ended on September 2 nd , the press had all but written Kerry off. He was criticized for being overly cautious and too controlled by his political handlers – in short, a stiff, distant candidate who appeared unable to explain why he should be president. He also seemed to hide from reporters, refusing to hold press conferences and, because he had yet to refute the attacks on his war record, he gave the impression that he had something to hide.

“We knew we were going to be at a disadvantage in August because they had one more month of private money than we did,” Wade says. “But they resorted to a smear so criminal that it makes what they did to John McCain” – during the 2000 presidential primaries – “and Max Cleland” – in the 2002 midterm elections – “look like small-time theft. Millions upon millions of dollars were spent on ads lying about a service record of a decorated veteran.”

Kerry’s downward spiral began on August 4 th , when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth unleashed its attack using well-orchestrated advertising and free-media publicity campaigns. Day after day, you couldn’t turn on a news program without hearing something about the SBVT – and how Kerry had distorted his war record. What you didn’t hear was Kerry fighting back. Media advisers Robert Shrum and Tad Devine and campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill felt that if Kerry hit back too aggressively he could turn off swing voters. On August 19 th , Kerry – finally – categorically denied the SBVT’s allegations and charged that the group was a front for Bush, who “wants them to do his dirty work.” When they ran their second ad the next day, Kerry filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission arguing the Bush campaign had illegally coordinated efforts with the SBVT.

To refashion his struggling campaign, Kerry began adding a cadre of slash-and-burn Clinton hands – Joel Johnson, Joe Lockhart, Mike McCurry – plus one non-Clintonista, John Sasso. From Washington, Lockhart would shape message and Johnson would handle rapid response, while Sasso would travel with Kerry to keep him focused. They unleashed a startlingly aggressive new candidate. “With these new people onboard,” one Kerry aide says, “we’ve now put ourselves in a position where we can win. I don’t care what anybody says: Either guy can still win this election.”

On the Friday before Labor Day weekend, Kerry returned a call to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. After they chatted, Clinton asked if Kerry wanted to speak to her husband – she was with him in his Manhattan hospital room as he awaited open-heart surgery. When Kerry spoke with the former president, the two men agreed to have a strategy session by phone. That 90-minute conference call – Lockhart was on the line too – took place on Saturday night. Clinton was unwavering in his critique: Kerry had to stop talking about Vietnam and prosecute his case against Bush in as hard-hitting a manner as possible.

Thirty-six hours or so later, Kerry began his Clinton-inspired assault, saying Bush was carrying on “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.” But Kerry leveled his most stinging criticism the following week in Las Vegas at the National Guard Association convention – a group Bush had addressed two days earlier only to offer up a glowing status report on the war in Iraq. Slamming Bush for misrepresenting the conditions there – “He did not tell you that with each passing day, we’re seeing more chaos, more violence, more indiscriminate killings” – Kerry said Bush was “living in a fantasy world of spin.”

I n late September, I spent a week on the Kerry plane. Unlike the 2000 Bush plane, which became notorious for its party atmosphere – margaritas flowed at the end of the day and affairs among the press corps were widely rumored – the feeling on the Kerry plane is professional and businesslike. It soon became apparent that many members of Kerry’s traveling press make no attempt to hide their open dislike of the candidate. The morning after Kerry had addressed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute gala on the evening of September 15 th , two members of the press corps were talking on a campaign bus. “That event was stupid,” one said, referring to the previous night’s occasion – one of the largest Hispanic galas of its type. “A waste of time,” the other said.

Other reporters were just as dismissive. Kerry had gotten a series of impassioned standing ovations during his speech. But when Elisabeth Bumiller described the event in The New York Times , she said, referring to a moment when Kerry spoke an entire paragraph in flawless Spanish, “Kerry’s audience… … listened in startled silence, then broke out into cheers and applause when he made his way through [the paragraph].”

But to report on these events accurately would mean you had to say something unqualified and positive about Kerry. This is something his traveling press corps has been – and still is – loath to do. On the evening of September 21 st , outside an auditorium in Orlando, where inside more than 7,500 people were screaming wildly as Kerry spoke, Candy Crowley stood next to the venue and reported on CNN that Kerry was “trying…… to rev up the crowd.” The implication was unmistakable: Kerry’s supporters in Florida were resistant, even standoffish. Just to make sure Crowley was able to get away with downplaying the event as she was, CNN never showed a wide shot of the large, cheering crowd.

As a result of the media bias against Kerry, there is an unmistakable disconnect between what you see on the trail when you travel with him and the way he is depicted in the media. On Mike McCurry’s first trips on the plane, the Thursday and Friday after Labor Day, he immediately identified the animosity that existed between Kerry and the press corps. Specifically, the traveling press were mad because Kerry had not given a press conference since August 9 th , five days into the SBVT controversy. McCurry realized he needed to fix the problem at once.

So, late on Friday night, well into a flight from Denver to Boston, McCurry made his way to the rear of the plane, where network cameramen, still photographers and reporters who do not work for A-list dailies – a group that includes both reporters from the newsweeklies, such as Time , and members of the press from states sure to go to Bush, such as Texas – are seated. One reporter not so jokingly referred to this section as “steerage.” McCurry approached Nedra Pickler, an Associated Press correspondent – a sturdy, unflinching woman who takes her job deadly seriously.

“Would you be willing to participate in a group interview on deep background,” McCurry asked her, “should Kerry come back to the reporters?”

“No,” Pickler said flatly over the roar of the jet engines. “It is the position of the Associated Press that if John Kerry were to meet with reporters, the interview should be on the record.”

“But it will give you an idea,” McCurry said, “of what his thinking is at the moment about the campaign. You can attribute what he says to someone close to the campaign. Then next week we will have an on-the-record press conference. This can help you prepare for that.”

Some reporters, such as Susannah Meadows of Newsweek and myself, were happy to meet with Kerry on background – a perfectly acceptable journalistic practice. But all of the reporters had to agree, McCurry said; otherwise, no deal. This, however, is what was strange. The reporters seemed to take a perverse pleasure in standing up to Kerry, in not giving him what he wanted. “He gets more out of this than we do,” one reporter said loudly. “He’s the one in trouble.”

***

“We’re a little behind, but with plenty of opportunity to close the gap and win,” John Sasso says to me with candor uncharacteristic of a political adviser. It is nine o’clock on the evening of September 23 rd , and I’m walking with Sasso, who rarely talks to the press, on a sidewalk that runs alongside the Delaware River in Philadelphia. Sasso, a stocky, gray-haired man with a penchant for earth tones, puffs away on a cigar — the reason he’s decided to take a stroll.

“When you look,” he says, “at the persuadable voter that remains – 16 to 18 percent, truly undecided people or people who lean a little bit toward Kerry or a little bit toward Bush – these voters are concerned about the current situation in the country, the situation in the world, their own economic and personal security and national security. Seventy percent of them say the country is moving in the wrong direction – much more than the electorate as a whole. They are listening carefully to Kerry’s case for change.”

Sasso is a longtime Kerry friend and political ally from Boston who knows something about running against the Bush family, since he worked on the 1988 Michael Dukakis campaign. (This may not, however, be the best qualification, because Sasso’s candidate lost after squandering a huge lead in the polls.) “George Bush is a good campaigner,” Sasso says. “For certain people there is a reassurance in his simplicity. I don’t think for a majority, but a good number in this changing world get comfort in his very simple explanation of things.”

As we walk, I ask him about Kerry’s new line of attack on Bush: that he is living in a fantasy world. While Bush has been saying that democracy is taking hold in Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is admitting that as much as 20 percent of the nation is not secured enough to hold elections. But before I can finish, Sasso comes to an abrupt halt and looks at me directly. For the first time in our conversation, he has pure emotion in his voice.

“No, it’s worse than that,” Sasso says. “Rumsfeld said, ‘Now just pretend’ that there’s going to be chaos. Just pretend!… Pretend! …Pretend! “

When I ask Sasso who developed this line of attack, he avoids the question, but it’s obvious: He feels much too passionately about it. If this campaign is successful, it will be because people recognize the point Sasso believes Kerry should be making: that Bush is out of touch with reality.

On its surface, this seems to be a hard sell, since Bush, unvarnished and understated, appears to be so down-to-earth. Then again, a similar criticism – of being out of touch with the common man – brought down his father in 1992.

I t’s the night before, and Mike McCurry and I are sitting at a table in the bar of the Hyatt hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Since joining this campaign, he’s said his mission has been to explain to as many people as possible both why Kerry should win and how he can win. At present, McCurry talks about the rhythm of a presidential campaign, or at least this one.

“You introduce the challenger at the convention with heavy doses of biography,” McCurry says. “You then move to a phase of the race where you draw very clear distinctions and go negative on the incumbent president and draw the president into a debate and force him to respond, the risk being you wear all the negatives too. You get to the debates on an equal footing, so finally people are forced to choose between two people side by side. The final phase of the campaign is: Who is best to lead? The goal of the campaign is to have people start believing in your story of America.”

This sounds good, but I wonder if McCurry has located a fatal flaw with Bush – much like Sasso’s realization that Bush is living in a fantasy world of spin. “He is tremendously insecure,” McCurry says. “Any time any of his aides look like they have stature, he wants to suppress that, because it’s about him. When it’s not about him, he gets nervous that people will understand that he’s not as good as everyone thinks he is.”

“Is that his fatal weakness, then?” I ask.

“Yes, and you know who understands this better than anyone? John Kerry. The other day, Kerry said, ‘I need humor,’ which is why he did some of the late-night and morning shows. But the insight he had was, ‘I can get under this guy’s skin – if we have the right kind of humorous barb.’” McCurry pauses. “Last night, Kerry read aloud a Bush quote” – about how the CIA was guessing about conditions in Iraq – “and made fun of him, which made the news this morning. So I know – because I’ve been there – that Bush was sitting in his suite in the Waldorf-Astoria getting ready for his day at the United Nations General Assembly, and I’ll bet you any amount of money he watched that on TV and went nuts, because Kerry was making fun of his own words. If you saw the clip of the quote, Bush looked like his dad.” McCurry takes a short pause for effect. “It was devastating.”