Driving Votes: Oliver's Blog - Archived Entry

I heard an interesting bit on NPR last Thursday (4/1/04) morning. A panel participant--sorry, I can't now remember his name--said he believed the election will be decided on the terrorism issues, not so much other issues like the economy and health care.

His rationale is that most Americans have decided long ago where they believe each of the two parties stand on the recurring national issues, and these preferences are hard to change. But terrorism is a new issue and many voters haven't yet decided which party's approach to the problem is most effective.

It made me think that perhaps we should highlight this issue when we encounter voters who are still on the fence. I don't think it's hard to argue that the Bush administration's anti-terrorism strategy is weak:

* more Americans have been killed by terrorists since President Bush took office than ever before
* the war in Afghanistan did not succeed in capturing or killing all of Al-Qaeda's senior leadership, including bin Laden
* the war in Iraq has distracted attention and resources away from the Al-Qaeda threat and the war against terrorism
* despite our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, terrorism is still a deadly threat to Americans, our allies and the rest of the world as evidenced by the attacks in Madrid, Bali, Istanbul, etc

Most Americans don't feel safer now than they did 1 yr ago. Perhaps we could hammer this point home by asking people "Do you feel safer?"