PHILIP TERZIAN GOP made the most out of its convention

If George W. Bush is re-elected two months from now, it will be safe to say that the wheels began turning in his direction in New York.
Two months ago such a sequence of events would have seemed unlikely, even impossible. The culture, it appeared, had swung decisively against the 43rd president: The news from Iraq was uninspiring, the bookstores were swollen with anti-Bush screeds, the candidates for the Democratic nomination were united in disdain. The most celebrated American in Europe was the conspiracy-minded filmmaker, Michael Moore.
Now, the landscape is effectively transformed -- and only partly due to Bush. The Democratic nominee, John Kerry, has proved to be a less-than-dynamic campaigner, simultaneously touchy about criticism and tedious on the stump. A happy warrior he is not. Moreover, Kerry seems to have believed that he possessed the ideal credentials -- Vietnam veteran, hero of the anti-Vietnam War left -- to satisfy Democrats, seduce independents and nullify Bush's strength on national security.
Kerry's mistakes
He was mistaken. He and his advisers failed to realize that, by transforming the Democratic convention into a sustained tribute to Kerry's Vietnam service, he violated two cardinal rules of modern politics: He declined to offer any vision of the future, and he reawakened the ghosts of the Vietnam War. No doubt, wavering voters were prepared to cast ballots against President Bush, but Sen. Kerry gave them little reason to embrace his candidacy. And if Kerry, or anyone else, believes that the passions of the Vietnam era have largely subsided, they need only watch the pointed, and singularly effective, commercials of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Bush, by contrast, revealed his latent political skills. While Kerry was issuing indignant responses to the Swift Boat Veterans, and day by day growing more dolorous in manner, Bush began to present himself, especially in the so-called battleground states, as the candidate of achievement, decisiveness and optimism. Journalists admire politicians who deal in ambiguity -- Adlai Stevenson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, etc. -- but voters prefer candidates who know what they think, and whose actions are telegraphed well in advance. While poor John Kerry was debating about whether or not his swift boat was in Cambodian waters during Christmas 1968, George W. Bush was successfully repackaging himself as Mr. 21st Century.
The New York convention accelerated the process. It is the received wisdom that national political conventions are civic dinosaurs: Since the primary system has eliminated any element of suspense, conventions merely ratify what everyone already knows. This is true. This does not mean, however, that conventions are without significance. They may have no practical political function, but they certainly reveal the character of parties.
The Republicans embraced the New York setting without apology: Reminding Americans of the larger significance of 9/11, and boosting their status as the party of ideas. ... Bush's proposals for tax reform, education, health care and job training may or may not be translated into reality, but they constitute a serious set of principles -- the "ownership society" -- and look to the future, not the past.
Have to wait to see
How successful was the Republican convention? We won't know until Election Day, of course, and because the number of undecided voters is so small, any "bounce" Bush obtains in the polls will be modest. Better, in the short run, to judge its success on the basis of the media. During the festivities frustrated reporters scurried about the floor searching for Republicans, any Republicans, who dissent from the party platform, or collared prime-time speakers -- Rudolph Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain, George Pataki -- to ask how they could associate themselves with their own party.
The answer, of course, is simple. This is a nation of nearly 300 million people and there are, in effect, two political parties. No one is likely to subscribe to every plank in any party platform, and no party can successfully recruit every voter. The fact that the modern Republican Party appeals to John McCain and Tom Delay is no more mysterious than the New Deal coalition of Eastern labor unionists, Southern segregationists, rural Protestants and urban Catholics.
XTerzian writes a column from Washington for The Providence Journal. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.