"Guesses" the reason they may be trying to get out of that first debate that will focus on Iraq? That's assuming the cancellation rumors aren't another Rovian move of course. :shrug:
I posted this other article, but it was moved by the moderator.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6100354/site/newsweek/snip>
Bush's central problem is with the third factor: the path to success. His goals are clear and effectively stated. But he appears unaware of the situation on the ground in Iraq. He says he is "pleased with the progress" so far and speaks of a "handful of terrorists" disrupting democracy in Iraq. Contrast this picture with the one painted two weeks ago by a team from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a hawkish think tank, that conducted an extensive survey of Iraq. They concluded that in every dimension, from security to reconstruction to economics, Iraq was slipping backward. This is also the view of the CIA and almost all journalists in Iraq. Bush risks coming across not as visionary but as someone disconnected from reality.
Great wartime leaders know that they owe their public bad news as well as good. Such honesty maintains a leader's credibility and reassures the public that it is not being manipulated. Churchill and Roosevelt routinely acknowledged the difficult times during World War II. Describing the disaster of Dunkirk, when British troops fled France, abandoning most of their equipment, Churchill said, "Wars are not won by evacuations."
Bush's refusal to acknowledge mistakes is not simply an image problem. The administration made its gravest mistakes in Iraq because it did not want to accept that the reality on the ground was different from its theories. It refused to recognize the need for a larger force, which was obvious within days of the fall of Baghdad and the collapse of order in Iraq. ("Freedom is messy," Donald Rumsfeld explained, dismissing the matter.) It did not want to see that a nakedly American occupation was generating anti-Americanism. It did not want to accept that its plans were not working.
John Kerry faces two challenges on this front. The first is to tie the failures of the Iraq war to Bush and his leadership traits.
He will need to demonstrate that Bush's confidence does not equal competence. His second challenge is to provide a sense of his own plans and display his own competence on these issues. This has not always been necessary for presidential challengers. During the Korean War, Eisenhower could campaign on ending the conflict by saying in effect, "Trust me. I will go to Korea and figure out what to do." But Ike had directed the invasion of Europe, the largest and most successful military operation in the history of humankind. He had credibility on that subject that no one else will ever have. Bush and Kerry need to be more specific.
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