US: There was a lot of hot air in Manhattan yesterday: it was being pumped into the 120,000 balloons that will be dropped from 75 feet at the climax on Thursday of the Republican Party Convention in New York's Madison Square gardens writes Conor O'Clery
There will also be a lot of hot air expelled on the convention floor by speakers during the coming week.The Bush-Cheney campaign though is working on the principle of "feel hot and think cold", like the lady in Derry-born novelist Joyce Carey's Herself Surprised. President Bush has presided over one of the most ideologically driven administra- tions in recent US history but with the election going to be decided by moderate voters in the centre, a cold calculation has been made to keep the neo-conservatives out of sight.
His father George H. W. Bush lost his re-election bid in 1992 after a disastrous convention in Houston when the right was given free rein and speakers like Pat Buchanan were allowed to talk of a religious and cultural war. Meanwhile Bill Clinton's Democrats had stolen the Republicans' clothes to promote a moderate conservative ideology with compassion, and went on to win the election.
Anxious to show that there is plenty of room for diverse points of view in today's party, the Bush- Cheney campaign has given prime- time speaking slots to cultural moderates like Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and George Pataki of New York, former New York mayor Rudi Giuliani, Senator Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat who made the keynote speech for Clinton in 1992 but now backs Bush, and maverick Senator John McCain of Arizona.
Some conservatives aren't altogether happy about this, especially the Club for Growth which aims to replace moderate Republicans around the country and whose protests ensured a speaking slot for abortion foe Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
George Bush is this weekend displaying his moderate friends to voters in several states, wrapping his arms around Rudi Giuliani, the hero of 9/11 and John McCain, who is so popular with moderate voters in both parties that John Kerry once floated the idea of taking him on as running mate.
The proposal gave Democrats a 14-point lead over Bush-Cheney at a time when Kerry was even with Bush on a one-to-one match- up. When McCain announced on Wednesday he was going to call the president to ask him to disown the "disgraceful" Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad attacking Kerry, Bush hurried to take the initiative and called the senator first.
McCain, a Navy bomber who served five years in a Hanoi prison, suffered from the same smear tactics in his primary fight with George Bush in 2000 after he won the New Hampshire primary and threatened Bush's nomination bid. He also called on his friend John Kerry to stop running a counter ad showing four-year-old footage of McCain criticising Bush for standing by as a planted questioner accused McCain of deserting veterans. Kerry did so immediately.
The democratic candidate is the third Vietnam veteran to have his record attacked by a party whose leaders avoided service in Vietnam (George Bush served in the National Guard and Dick Cheney got several deferments).
"This president has gone after three veterans in four years, where's his shame?" asked Max Cleland, a former Georgia senator who was defeated in 2002 after ads compared him to Osama bin Laden when he failed to support the Homeland Security Act as drafted by Mr Bush.
Privately the Bush family don't like McCain very much. After New Hampshire in 2002, Bush's brother Marvin told reporters: "That great sucking sound you hear is the sound of the media's lips coming off of John McCain's . . ." He didn't finish the sentence.
Pat Buchanan is definitely not going to get a speaking role at this Republican convention. The former Republican presidential candidate and Washington-based commentator has just published a book Where the Right Went Wrong, attacking Bush over the invasion of Iraq and the deficit.
"In 2003 the United States invaded a country that did not threaten us, did not attack us and did not want war with us, to disarm it of weapons we have since discovered it did not have," he writes. The nation was now tied down and the army daily bled in an attempt to impose democracy where it never existed and US prestige is at its lowest in the world after what he called "the greatest strategic blunder in 40 years".
The neo-conservatives he attacks are also showing the strain of the mess in Iraq they helped create. Francis Fukuyama, one of their most influential thinkers, has also repudiated the war. Buchanan makes the case that Bush is wrong in saying that perception of weakness, not the use of force, invites terrorist attack. Military force often sows the seeds of more violence and terrorism often works, he claims, citing the case of the Irish War of Independence.
He notes that one sees today in the faces and conduct of Israeli soldiers forced to deal with a rebellious Palestinian population who hate them with the same impotent rage felt by the Black and Tans who were sent to fight the IRA in 1920-21.
Buchanan's anti-war rhetoric contrasts with John Kerry's failure to condemn Bush's war decision. Some weeks ago Bush used a speech to ask Kerry if he would still have voted for war against Iraq given what he now knows about weapons of mass destruction, terrorist links and the aftermath.
Kerry said he would have voted the same way, causing his anti-war following to tear out their hair and allowing Bush to mock him as a flip-flopper.
The Kerry camp seems to believe it has the anti-war vote locked up and is making a play for the undecided middle. He has also been slow to respond to attacks.
Bill Clinton recalled on the Jon Stewart Daily Show two weeks ago how he always hit back immediately when attacked. It was a message to Kerry that went unheeded until it was too late.
The polls now show that the Republicans have been able to neutralise Kerry's post-conven- tion effort with the Swift boat controversy. If Bush comes out of the Republican convention with a jump in the polls, Kerry will have nothing to lose and will likely go all out on the attack. Maybe we haven't seen anything yet.
One of the principles of American democracy is that anyone can come to hear a politician making an election speech and heckle if they like.
Kerry has often been interrup- ted by protesters waving beach sandals to make a "flip-flop" sound. Free speech though is taking a beating in this election.
Bush-Cheney campaign rallies are mostly all-ticket affairs. Some Democrats who signed up to hear the vice-president in New Mexico were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse President Bush.
Last week at a Bush rally in West Virginia, a man shouted him: "Where are the weapons of mass destruction?" Next day he was fired from his job at an advertising and design company for embarrassing a client who provided the tickets to the event.