Reply #20: Disagree.

[maha]

In every presidential election in my memory, which goes back to Eisenhower, voters go for the candidate who scares them the least. Voters will go with an incumbent they are not crazy about if the challenger is too alarming.

An example is Bush-Dukakis 1988. The voters didn't like Bush all that much, but the Bush campaign was able to smear Dukakis (a perfectly respectable candidate, IMO) enough that voters were frightened into voting for Bush.

It is not true that the election will turn entirely on Bush's failures. What we're really fighting is his phony image as a leader. That's why we have to give the voters a candidate whose leadership qualities are so unmistakable Karl Rove can't spin them away.