An anything-but-Bush campaign will not be sufficient; experience, responsibility and an alternative vision for America will be needed, too.The contest in New Hampshire promises a fascinating week’s campaigning, but a serious trial of strength, too. Mr Bush, opening his formal campaign in New York in September with the memory of the World Trade Centre attacks still raw, will be harder to beat than most. Barring major setbacks in Iraq between now and the election, Mr Bush’s record as protector of America will be his ticket to re-election. He has the discreet backing of several highly expert former Clinton staff members.
Contrast Dr Dean’s list of eminent supporters, which reads like a cast of the defeated: Al Gore, Bill Bradley, Jimmy Carter.Any incumbent president is hard to beat. Senator Kerry’s gruff experience, valour and principle hitched to the good looks, exuberance and social conscience of Senator Edwards. It is tempting, because such a combination could enable the Democrats to take on Mr Bush on something like equal terms. But – as in any American presidential election – it would be premature.Dr Dean’s campaign is not over. He fights another day, next week, in New Hampshire, a state geographically and spiritually close to his home state of Vermont.
His anti-Bush, anti-war credentials may play better here than in the Midwest. But he also faces the only other genuinely anti-war contender, the four-star general and former Nato commander Wesley Clark.General Clark has much to recommend him as a challenger to George Bush. He has a war record; he has foreign policy experience; he has broad public appeal. An Arkansas native who has travelled the world, he spans the North-South, home-abroad divides with an ease none of the others can replicate. They looked for solidity, optimism and charisma, and divided the bulk of their votes between Senators Kerry and Edwards, who each offered two of those key qualities.It is tempting to see a Kerry-Edwards, North-South alliance as a dream ticket for the Democrats.
They had little time, it seems, for his “new style” campaign – all that internet wizardry and remote polling They did not even flock to embrace his anti-war stance. Real live voters, at least Iowa’s real live voters, advanced the fortunes of the two men they judged to have the best chance of beating Mr Bush. That, according to exit polls, was their over-riding concern: to select a nominee who would be credible in the considerable fight to come.In so doing, they rejected the emotive hyperbole of the former state governor and doctor from Vermont. And surging into an early lead goes the man of experience, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, and not far behind him, the telegenic young Senator from North Carolina, John Edwards.
After one short evening of caucuses in snowbound Iowa, the choice for voters hoping to oust George Bush from the White House looked suddenly more realistic and more serious. Down from first to a poor third went the long-time front-runner and chattering classes’ favourite, Howard Dean. Out went Richard Gephardt, the supposed choice of organised labour.
