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From patriotnews.com The Old Doctor
But the notion of "winning the hearts and minds" of the people came into the American political vernacular and today most Americans would agree that elections turn according to which party does the best job of appealing to the hearts and minds of the American voter. I'd argue that the "appealing to the minds" part is a pointless exercise. Americans, and most folks in countries where they have a say, respond at the ballot box to emotion rather than reason. None of the ads we'll see in the midterms will have anything whatsoever to do with facts and figures per se. Most Americans, even those of us who think of ourselves as democrats or republicans, are not hardcore ideologues. Indeed, hardly any of us vote consistently for one party or the other (especially in Presidential contests) based on the platforms of the respective parties. And too few of us by far vote on the basis of what we know to be fact. Most Americans vote their emotions. That's why politicians, who are smart men and women (lawyers, mostly), are able to extrapolate, from a half truth, a fifteen second sound bite that rings true emotionally, facts be damned. And at the moment in America, emotions among voters are running high. There's the nagging fact of Iraq, a question upon which I'd predicted the last election would turn (and it did, though not in the way I'd have thought). Americans at the time were not yet privy to the revelations of the last few months and the votes of many, many folks were cast in a spirit of patriotic support for the troops. That emotional support for the plight of our warriors is still there, but there's also a growing spiritual regret at the waste of lives and treasure that Iraq represents, and a growing disappointment that Democracy is not something that takes root and grows in the absence of an accommodating culture.
The magnitude of the oil conundrum in politics and the economic and social impact of the problem can't be overlooked. In many ways, it was the Arab oil embargo that mortally wounded the American automobile industry and administered the poison pill to the union movement. Pundits on both sides of the aisle recognize the peril of the GOP. Republican congressmen and senators are showing new signs of political independence. Democrats smell blood and are showing signs of the political backbone they lacked in the run up to the Iraq war. Despite the gloom, President Bush has a chance to pull off a mid-term coup, if he's willing to bite the Nixonian bullet of price controls. I don't propose this as a subject of debate but rather as a matter of fact. Nixon introduced wage and price controls with a passionate speech, preempting "Bonanza" and laying out his program in such a way as to paint himself, and his government, as the people's David slaying the Goliath of big oil. The public bought it then and I'll bet they'll buy it again, if President Bush has the political cahones to propose it. In Nixonian America even the investing class bought it, with the Dow showing its biggest one day rise up to that point. A year and a half or so later the program was shelved and America returned to business as usual. There's really nothing much The President can do about Iraq. The biggest problem for any occupying force is the simple fact that in the absence of real combat the soldiers become mere targets. Murtha's recommendation to "redeploy" to Kuwait or elsewhere is not the answer, nor is redeploying outside the cities to large, fortified bases on the order of the green zone. As long as our soldiers are required to move from place to place through a countryside where they are not welcome they will continue to die. Politically there is an upside to this for President Bush. That is that in political terms the democrats don't gain much from this issue since they have no solution to offer. If republicans are to fare well in the upcoming elections The President has to win one for the people. He can't do it in Iraq but maybe he can help himself by "standing up to the oil companies." Before announcing his decision Nixon had one worry, whether the press and public would perceive his actions as bold, or whether he'd be perceived as changing his mind, or flip flopping. This is the same dilemma faced by President Bush. There's an old saw that says, "do something, even if it's wrong." President Bush and the GOP are in that same position. They have to do something. If they don't grab the allegiance of the American people quickly, it will be too late. For President Bush, especially, this election is the most important of his era. If the republicans lose both the house and the senate, he'll be impeached just as surely as the sun will rise in the morning. Personally, I don't believe in impeachment. I think that if we're dumb enough to elect the wrong guy that we should be forced to live with our mistake. Not everyone feels that way. Many democrats and more republicans than Karl Rove would like to imagine are coming to recognize that electing President Bush, especially the second time, was probably the biggest mistake ever made by American voters. If you'd like to seriously address this article, please send email, subject, "Letter to the Editor," to patrioteditor@comcast.net. Your comments will be carefully considered and if meritorious will be published. We will not publish email that is hateful, disrespectful or otherwise inappropriate. If you'd just like to argue with the writer, between river trips you may catch him at Faded Glory Political Forum, where he is a regular. © Copyright by patriotnews.com |
When I "reported in" to the S5 of the 5th Special Forces Group in November, 1967, I learned from a Captain who had the strange notion that he was interviewing me for the job (to which I'd already been assigned by the Group S1) that our mission was to "win the hearts and minds" of the people. As it turned out, we won neither hearts nor minds. 
There's also, for the first time since the great Arab oil embargo of 1973/1974, a real fuel crisis in this country. That bodes ill for politicians of both parties, but especially for republicans, with a president and vice president who made their financial bones in oil. VP Cheney's infamous secret caucuses with the movers and shakers of the industry further sealed the deal in the minds of most voters: Republicans equal big oil.