Donkey Loyalty
"Donkey Loyalty" is the delightful title of a chapter in Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. The chapter describes the curious behavior of Irish-American civil servants in New York City who prized loyalty to clan above all other values. There are few families in the United States less Irish and more Wasp than the Bush family. When it comes to loyalty however they are as Irish as any political family - Kennedys included. Besides the uninterrupted tenure in office of Cabinet members Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, another manifestation of this obsession with loyalty is the presence on the 2004 ticket of Dick Cheney. While Cheney's service has been admirable his political value on the ticket has gone from being negligible in 2000 to a net liability in 2004. The president could have easily replaced Cheney on the ticket with any number of excellent candidates. These candidates would have made it easier to win the November election rather than more difficult. A candidate who could put the states of Ohio or Florida out of reach for the Democrats would be sufficient to assure victory. One obvious candidate is national security adviser Condi Rice. It is distressing to think what a huge positive contribution Rice could have made to the ticket. She is extremely bright and extremely articulate, and while he may be bright, the president has never been called articulate. Furthermore Rice and the president have an excellent working relationship. The inclusion of such a candidate on the ticket would not only balance the temperaments of the two candidates, it would be a historic moment for the Republican party to first advance the national candidacy of an African-American woman. Rice would draw tens of thousands of votes to the Republicans in states like Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Illinois, and New Jersey. Bush was foolish not to seize such a rare opportunity to do well by doing good.

The Media
The behavior of the mainstream media during the six months prior to the November election was highly partisan, biased, and completely disgraceful. So what else is new? The mainstream media was completely in the tank for candidate Clinton in 1992. The media was deeply antagonistic towards candidate Reagan both in 1980 and in 1984. Reagan had no bloggers to help his administration un-spin the media. Instead, he relied on his superb communication skills and his ability to use sound-bite-sized moments to get his message directly to the people in spite of a hostile media. Bush's inability to express himself well verbally does not excuse this poor performance in propogating short messages through a hostile media.

Bush
Last but not least, we can blame the work of the candidate himself. In spite of his best efforts he did not build as comprehensive a coalition to fight the second Iraq war as his father had built to fight the first one. But his chief weaknesses in this area was that he did not effectively nurture the domestic consensus for war that was reached in the wake of the September 11th attacks. The will of our citizens to fight the war is the most important weapon we possess. It needs to be sharpened and maintained in a manner worthy of its importance.