As is now clear from the tone of both conventions, the 527 sponsored ads that have been most effective, and the current media focus, the election dialogue is going to be dominated by "the war on terror". The degree to which this is the case, took another unsurprising turn today as Vice President Cheney stated that the country would risk another terror attack if it made the wrong choice in November. His exact quote was as follows:
"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice," Mr. Cheney told a crowd of 350 people in Des Moines, "because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
That's right, according to the Vice President of the United States, a vote for Kerry is a vote for more terrorist attacks. This is a somewhat shocking thing to say in its own right, regardless of its legitimacy. However, I personally think it's more shocking when considered against a backdrop of current polling and known threat regions. Almost everyone would agree that the major threats to the United States are focused on the cities of New York, Washington, Chicago, LA and San Francisco, and the landmarks within those cities. Interestingly, all of these places will seemingly vote for Kerry in a landslide this fall. On the flip side, I think that few would argue that Billings, Montana or El Paso, Texas is legitimately threatened by terrorism. So what we have here is a situation where those who are living, working and sleeping on the defensive frontline of the "War on Terror" are voting for a very different prescription for safety than those who are cheering patriotically from the sidelines. I think that this point is particularly interesting when considered in light of the Vice President's most recent campaign comments.
Alan Krueger (the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Princeton University) and David Laitin (the Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University) recently wrote an article for Foreign Affairs called "Misunderestimating Terrorism". I found a particular passage in this article to be very eye opening from the perspective of putting terrorism in context:
"The State Department has rightly emphasized that the threat of terrorism remains serious, but a close examination of its data helps put the magnitude of the threat in perspective. In 2003, a total of 625 people -- including 35 Americans -- were killed in international terrorist incidents worldwide. Meanwhile, 43,220 died in automobile accidents in the United States alone, and three million people died from AIDS around the world. Comparative figures, particularly when combined with forecasts of future terrorism trends, can help focus debate on the real costs people are willing to bear -- in foregone civil liberties and treasure -- to reduce the risk posed by terrorism."
I believe that in order to beat Bush, Kerry and the Democrats need to figure out a way to put terrorism in context for the rural American public. Krueger and Laitin's question hits the heart of the matter. At the end of the day, how much real cost are people going to be willing to bear for a threat that is likely to have a much smaller direct impact on them than rising health care costs, domestic job loss, an education system that is not preparing much of the public to compete in today's global economy, and the long-term economic burdens of an exploding national deficit.
* As a footnote, the article also pointed out what is factually known now, but still not widely talked about amongst the general public, that contrary to what the 2003 Global Terrorism report initially stated and what President Bush and Vice President Cheney have repeatedly said that a) we live in a safer world now, and b) terrorist activity has decreased as a result of the "war on terror", the actual data points the other way. The initially release report experienced some "database errors", which led to faulty data. In fact, their were 169 significant terrorist acts in 2003 worldwide. This was the highest count in 20 years, and a 29% increase over the average over the previous 5 years. Needless to say, the administration has pointed to this non-partisan report with a little less frequency since the data was corrected.
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