NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Party unity runs only as deep as NovemberWASHINGTON -- To judge from the passion of the crowds, the ferocity of the television ads, and the intensity of interest in every uptick or downtick of the polls, each of the two major parties is as unified as it has ever been. The two conventions were beyond pep rallies, which require a little spontaneous back and forth with the audience: They were rock operas performed before purely adoring crowds.
But the very perfectness of the performances -- the way Democrats wearing vests coated with buttons going back to Humphrey and McGovern cheered for Vietnam veterans and Joint Chiefs, and the way famous evangelists shrugged off their excommunication from the GOP convention and celebrated President Bush's renomination on their TV shows -- raises suspicions that all is not as it appears. And it is becoming increasingly clear that it is not -- that the main thing tying each party together is fear of defeat by the other. After November, the alliances that define Washington will almost certainly alter in ways that are hard to envision today. Bush's policies on Iraq and the economy have stirred so many strong feelings that neither side has had to do much to win over its base other than remind them of the alternative. But the passions ignited by the war do not settle easily into two camps, and polls showing each candidate winning huge percentages of his own party may give the false impression that there are two clear paths, each supported by half the electorate. In fact, there are two candidates supported by half the electorate but no clear paths. Loyalty and respect for authority are written into the conservative creed under normal circumstances, but etched in granite in times of national crisis. Thus, many conservatives who were skeptical of Bush's decision to invade Iraq, and especially of the need to remain indefinitely to promote democracy, are repressing their feelings for the sake of the campaign. They may even agree with Bush's assertion that the United States must show its resolve to the world and prove that the country delivers on what it promises, no matter how hard they have to grit their teeth. But in recent weeks, as many polls have indicated that Bush maintains a solid lead, some conservatives have started positioning themselves for a second term. And it is increasingly clear that they have no idea what the guiding philosophy of that term will be -- whether Bush will stay true to his ''neoconservative" advisers who advocate military action to promote democracy, or revert to the way conservatives usually run foreign policy, by dealing with powers as they are, not how idealists think they should be, and by being distrustful of risky entanglements. Last week, columnist George Will joined other conservative mainstays like Robert Novak and Patrick Buchanan in rejecting the neoconservative underpinnings of the Iraq war. In his Newsweek column, Will attacked John Kerry for failing to offer a sufficient alternative to Bush's foreign policy, but left no doubt about what he thinks of neoconservatism, the chosen philosophy of Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz. He called it ''foreign policy overreaching--the anticonservative delusion that political will can control the world." Add Will, Buchanan, and Novak to the fiscal conservatives in the Club for Growth, Cato Institute, and parts of the Heritage Foundation who already have made clear their disdain for Bush's high spending, and you have more than a murmur of right-wing discontent. Meanwhile, senior Republican senators like Pat Roberts of Kansas, Richard Lugar of Indiana, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska have distanced themselves from various rosy assessments by Bush about Iraq and the war on terrorism; their intention is not to damage his campaign, but to send him an early signal that they will demand more accountability in the next term. The outlook for Kerry is even rockier. Unlike the situation with conservatives, liberal discontent is already visible in polls: Many, if not most, Democrats have far deeper reservations about the Iraq war than Kerry. While Kerry attacks the war as a foreign policy mistake -- the ''wrong war at the wrong time" -- many Democrats have far more fundamental reservations about military force as a foreign policy tool and an impatience bordering on fury over casualties in Iraq. Kerry has always made it clear he intends to see Iraq through to a point of stability while maintaining Bush's policy of preemptive attack on nations promoting terrorism. But in doing so, he will lose the support of liberals, and in this partisan era, will not be able to count on any conservative support, even among those whose views are close to his own. So Kerry will have to govern by ''triangulation," like Bill Clinton, who treated his party's liberals as a pole in his search for the middle ground. But playing liberals and conservatives off against each other requires a political dexterity that is unusual, if not limited to Clinton himself. And for better or worse, no one believes Kerry has Clinton's dexterity, to say nothing of his nerve.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. National Perspective is his weekly analysis of events in the capital and beyond. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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