March 25, 2004, 8:49 a.m.
Too Early To Panic
The Bush team has a handle on the situation.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article appears in the April 5, 2004, issue of National Review.

“The only poll that matters is on Election Day," the trailing candidate typically asserts; but the polling eight months before Election 2004 has mattered, in contributing to the gloomy mood among many of President Bush's supporters. Most polls since late January have the president tied with or trailing John Kerry, and Bush campaign strategists counsel Republicans to get used to it because they don't expect a better showing until the fall. Campaign officials have launched their offensive against Kerry, even as some conservatives look for silver linings in a Bush defeat and the "Key Republicans" who "Admit Anxiety Over Campaign" make headlines.

As the battle is joined, there's trouble brewing in GOP ranks. Following weeks of Republican nail-biting over White House missteps ranging from the National Guard controversy and overblown predictions in the president's Economic Report to the administration's botched nomination of a manufacturing guru, supporters are now wondering whether the reelect campaign, too, is stumbling.

A group of prominent Republicans who went to Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters for a recent meeting — designed to arm them with a winning campaign message — left the briefing decidedly off-message. It was "very discouraging," according to a participant. One depressed veteran of past campaigns reported, "It felt like 1992." Others said that the only strategy they could discern was lowering expectations about the president's poll standing for the next six months — which, the attendees fear, could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. It wouldn't be the first time that George W. Bush benefited from low expectations, but in the past it was his opponents who were discounting his prospects; it could prove difficult to energize a base disheartened by low expectations arising from White House actions and bad poll numbers month after month.

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