Is world perception of U.S. foreign policy an issue the Democrats will exploit?
The Democrats should be smart enough not to try to exploit it; it would only make them look bad. When John Kerry talks about relying on the UN or about multilateralism, he sets himself up for a quick sound bite rejoinder by Bush. Bush can say: “I won’t mortgage my policy to anybody, I won’t let American lives be determined by the UN.” In America, the UN is a code word for a bunch of nincompoops who made Libya the head of a human rights commission, who don’t understand the difference between Zionism and racism, and who don’t have any kind of principles. Is there a part of the population angry enough about the war to create a backlash? The question is, who are the angry ones? The biggest danger for Bush is that Iraq gets dramatically mismanaged so that there is a backlash among rock-ribbed Republicans in the south and the west – the ones who send their boys off to war. If it’s a backlash among the same people who are pissed off about the Florida election, about issues like Iraq, Kyoto an
