Spengler in Asia Times Online predicts an October surprise that’ll propel the GOP to victory — and it’s spelled I-r-a-n:
One hears not an encouraging word about US President George W Bush these days, even from Republican loyalists. Yet I believe that Bush will stage the strongest political comeback of any US politician since Abraham Lincoln won re-election in 1864 in the midst of the American Civil War.
Two years ago I wrote that Bush would win a second term as president but live to regret it. Iraq’s internal collapse and the president’s poll numbers bear my forecast out. But Bush’s Republicans will triumph in next November’s congressional elections for the same reason that Bush beat Democratic challenger John Kerry in 2004. Americans rally around a wartime commander-in-chief, and Bush will have bombed Iranian nuclear installations by October.
…To be very precise, I am not accusing the White House of manipulating the Iranian issue for political purposes. On the contrary, if the US president thought only in terms of political consequences he never would have risked so much on the Quixotic quest for Iraqi democracy. Still, Bush has the opportunity to shift the subject away from the unpopular campaign to improve the politics of the Middle East, and back to the extremely popular subject of killing terrorists. He believes (and I am long since on record agreeing) that Washington will have to put paid to Ahmadinejad before very long, and there is no reason not to look for a political benefit as well.
He basically contends that much of the administration’s talk so far about diplomacy is to get down on paper that it tried other means. He concludes:
….if conflict with Iran is indeed unavoidable, the Bush administration can re-emerge as a war government rather than as Wilsonian nation-builders, with every expectation of popular support. The Democrats already have begun to game the responses to a US attack on Iran before the election, as Last reports, which is to say that the Republicans have begun to game the Democratic response.
Just as in the 2004 elections, the Democrats will have a losing hand if the White House orders force against Iran. Americans rally behind a wartime leader; the one exception was Vietnam. America’s engagement with Iran would resemble the Bill Clinton administration’s aerial attack on Serbia rather than the Iraq wars, for there is no reason at all to employ ground groups.
God takes care of drunks, small children and the United States of America. Improbably, destiny has a surprise in store for George W Bush.
It could indeed give Bush and the GOP boost. But if there is a major U.S. operation it would turn off a certain number of Americans who could then not be convinced under any circumstances that it was anything other than a craven political minipulation. They might not be enough to halt the GOP’s positive political fallout, so there would not be a broad national consensus supporting this action…but then having some Americans polarized and lacking consensus has never stopped the Bush administration before.
On the other hand, before every election people write about an October surprise. The biggest October surprise would an election without stories about October surprises. But since Karl Rove has reportedly been assuring GOPers that one is indeed coming, this report (and others) have a bit of extra credibility.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.