Bush's Strategery.

The latest Bush campaign strategy seems to be:

1) Claim that Kerry isn't being honest about his record, and either mischaracterize or flat lie about his record:

"Campaigning Saturday in Missouri, Iowa and Minnesota, Bush mocked Kerry's debate promise never to raise taxes on those earning less than $200,000 as unbelievable and ridiculed his rival's plan to increase the number of people with health insurance as a federal takeover of health care, a characterization Kerry says is false since his plan does not call for nationalized health care. Many of Kerry's statements, Bush now likes to say, "don't pass the credibility test."

2) Use the word "liberal" a lot.

"In chats with reporters, two Bush's closest advisers — Rove and Karen Hughes — together used the word "liberal" nearly a dozen times to describe Kerry."

3) Keep saying, "You can run but you can't hide."

"Bush then warns — his audience often chanting along with him — that Kerry "can run but he cannot hide" from a record that the president criticizes as both unimpressive and unabashedly liberal."

Maybe it's me, but I find this an insanely weak strategy.

Bush seems to still be operating on the assumption that he gets a free pass on everything he says. That he can just assert any old crap and it will be neither challenged nor subject to scrutiny. But that isn't true anymore. He can no longer lie with impunity. The press has begun to treat his statements with skepticism. When they report his claims, they also report Kerry's response, and Kerry does not let him get away with that crap. When Bush bullshits, it gets corrected. He's not used to that, he doesn't know how to handle it, and he even doesn't realize it's happening.

I think it looks really stupid for Mr. Tax Cut to stand there claiming that a pledge not to raise taxes on the middle class is "unbelievable. "

Why is it unbelievable for Kerry not to raise taxes?

It's unbelievable for Kerry not to raise them, but it ISN'T unbelievable for Bush to CUT them?

Perhaps Kerry should ask if Bush has a secret plan to raise taxes on the middle class, since he finds it totally unbelievable that someone won't.

And I think times are just too damned serious, and being stuck in an endless war is just too damned serious to just label somebody "liberal" and think it's a campaign strategy. People are paying attention and they are paying attention to the SUBSTANCE of what these two guys say. I think the effectiveness of that horseshit is long gone. In fact, it's reminiscent of Lee Atwater and Bush pere, which may not be a coincidence.

And is Bush actually chanting "you can run but you can't hide" as the article suggests? If so, he comes across as unbelievably childish and unbelievably unpresidential. That's the mark of someone who is seriously stuck in adolescence.

He obviously is still in his bubble. He still only appears before crowds of worshippers, so he has no idea how he appears to everybody else. The crowd he is talking to may love seeing someone talking like a common high school punk, but normal people probably think it's rather unbecoming for a President of the United States. He looks like an ass. The mask is coming off, and Bush is actually publicly behaving like the callow punk that he's always been.