Time for the closer to close

It was the kind of two-fisted rhetorical assault that the Democratic faithful have been pleading with Kerry to unleash for months.

Since the Republican convention at the end of August, Kerry has been on the receiving end of a serious pummeling by the Bush campaign, its surrogates in the media, and "independent" groups, that has seen his poll numbers plummet.

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Now Kerry finally seems to have got the message that to win this election he is going to have to take it to Bush as strongly as Bush has been hitting him.

Since effectively wrapping up the nomination in the middle of the summer, Kerry has been running a lacklustre campaign, failing to articulate a coherent position on the Iraq war, and seemingly flummoxed by the barrage of negative attacks against him.

It seemed when he captured the nomination that Kerry had learned the lesson of the primaries. Howard Dean caught fire early because he was the one candidate who tapped into the anger of the Democratic base.

Anger at the direction in which Bush was taking the country. Anger at Bush's hijacking of the 2000 election. Anger at the media for letting Bush get away with his deceptions. Anger at the Democratic establishment for having been outfought and outfoxed by the Republicans for the best part of the past four decades.

The mood of the Democratic base was: we can be just as mean and tough as the Republicans -- we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more! And it seemed as though Kerry had learned this and had co-opted Dean's anti-Bush message.

But until this week Kerry had been running a woeful campaign. Lousy media operation. Lousy message operation. People were confused as to where he stood with respect to Iraq. He was unable to articulate what he would do differently from the President. He was doing a poor job of pointing out the incumbent's many missteps and mistakes.

Most seriously, he appeared to have no strategy to deal with the barrage of bad press and publicity that dogged his campaign through August and most of September, and people were beginning to lose respect for him due to his failure to fight back against the Republicans' scurrilous attacks on his character. If he can't even protect himself, the thinking went, how well will he protect the country? If he runs such a lousy campaign, who knows what kind of a presidency he is going to run?

Now Kerry has forty days to turn things around and the indications are good that he has finally hit his stride. His speech at NYU was a masterpiece. He did a great job of enumerating the blunders Bush has made in Iraq and the war on terror and of how a Kerry presidency would be different:

"The first and most fundamental mistake was the president's failure to tell the truth to the American people.

He failed to tell the truth about the rationale for going to war. And he failed to tell the truth about the burden this war would impose on our soldiers and our citizens.

The president now admits to miscalculations in Iraq.

That is one of the greatest understatements in recent American history. His were not the equivalent of accounting errors. They were colossal failures of judgment -- and judgment is what we look for in a president.

The administration told us we'd be greeted as liberators. They were wrong.

They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure. They were wrong.

They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders, and secure the arms depots. They were wrong.

They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmad Chalabi to build political legitimacy. They were wrong.

They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it. They were wrong.

In Iraq, this administration has consistently overpromised and underperformed. This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candour, arrogance, and outright incompetence. And the president has held no one accountable, including himself."

Now that's what I'm talking about!

This is the message that the American people need to hear and that Kerry has struggled to articulate for so long. But at long last he seems to have found the words to connect with the American public.

Bush's campaign strategy has been interesting and leaves many openings for a smart operator to attack. He knows that he can't really run on his domestic record, so he is running on his record on the war on terror. Unfortunately for Bush, his record on the war on terror is not much to write home about either.

The decision the Bush team had made is to run what -- for want of a better word -- I am going to have to describe as a metaphysical campaign.

Bush is running on the notion that he is a strong and unflinching leader in the war on terror and that he has the character and the steadfastness to keep the US safe in these dangerous times.

The interesting part of this tactic is that Bush is running on the platform of being a strong leader in the abstract because his actual record of leadership in the war on terror has been pretty weak. It's an astonishing gambit: don't judge me by my actual record -- judge me according to my supposed character. The person I am is more important that the things I do.

This is why it is not enough for Kerry to point out Bush's many failures -- he has to point out Bush's failings as well.

Bush has turned the election into a referendum on the question of who is more of a man -- him or Kerry -- and to win, Kerry has to convince the American public that he is the true tough guy in the race.

Fortunately for Kerry, this is not difficult.

I mean, come on. This is the President who couldn't even face the 9/11 commission without Dick Cheney there to hold his hand. This is the President who barely holds press conferences because he can't handle tough questions. This is the President who spent September 11, 2001 in hiding.

If the election is going to be fought on the question of -- as my one time students in the Bronx would put it -- "quien es mas macho?" then it should be pretty easy to slice and dice Bush up into little pieces.

The three debates which are scheduled to begin at the end of this month are do or die for Kerry. He has to make the case for a Kerry presidency in clear and direct terms that will resonate with the public.

He has to appear presidential. He has to give a performance that will counter the Republican depiction of him as a flip-flopper with no beliefs or positions who is not strong enough to fight the war on terror or to keep the US safe. Most importantly, he will have to show that he is just as tough or tougher than Bush.

The public is ready to jettison Bush. They just need to be able to see a future president up there when they look at Kerry. This is his big chance.

I suspect that Kerry has to score a knock-out punch in the debates. Remember, in a championship fight, if it ends in a draw, the champion keeps his crown. To defeat an incumbent you have to do so decisively.

Kerry managed to score a knock-out punch in his 1996 Senate race against Bill Weld. He made up a ten-point deficit in the final weeks of the campaign and it was his stellar performance in the last of the debates which finally won over the undecided voters.

The word on Kerry has always been that he's a good closer. He looked down and out until a week before the first of the Democratic primaries, but then rallied to close strongly and surge past Howard Dean to take the nomination. He might just be able to do it again in November.

It's time for the closer to close.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.