More bad news for GW
ELECTION 2004: Military vote for Bush isn't a sure thing now
Iraq weapons debacle, long stints hurt support
March 11, 2004
BY WILLIAM DOUGLAS
FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF
WASHINGTON -- When the Bush campaign asked James McKinnon to cochair its veterans steering committee in New Hampshire -- a job he held in 2000 -- the 56-year-old Vietnam veteran respectfully, but firmly, said no.
"I basically told them I was disappointed in his support of veterans," said McKinnon, who served two tours in Vietnam with the Coast Guard. "He's killing the active-duty military. . . . Look at the reserves call-ups for Iraq, the hardships. The National Guard -- the state militia -- is being used improperly. I took the president at his word on Iraq, and now you can't find a single report to back up or substantiate weapons of mass destruction."
President George W. Bush is seeking re-election as a "war president" -- his words -- whose decisive leadership steered the military to victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. But as guerrilla warfare drags on in both countries, casualties mount and the Army is stretched thinner, many voters in the military or affiliated with it are no longer saluting the commander in chief.
In the 2000 presidential election, absentee ballots from U.S. military personnel overseas helped deliver the narrow margin of victory that sent Bush to the White House. So even a small defection of current and retired military people could spell trouble for Bush this year.
A bipartisan poll of 1,000 likely voters conducted in September found that Bush's approval rating among relatives of military personnel was 36 percent. Family members upset by Bush's policy on Iraq are venting through Web sites and public protests. The poll has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
The failure to find banned weapons in Iraq or evidence that deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda, lengthy deployments of active-duty soldiers and reservists, and proposed cuts in veterans' benefits and perks to military families are threatening to erode Bush's once-strong support among military voters.
"I think President Bush has an electoral edge despite the fact that Senator Kerry has a better military service record," said Loren Thompson, the chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a conservative Washington think tank. "That said, the prolonged tours of duty, the unexpected intensity" of the Iraq war "and the way reservists are being deployed are working against the president."
Military Families Speak Out, an antiwar group of relatives of deployed troops, plans to observe the Iraq war's first anniversary next week with processions outside Dover Air Base in Delaware, where the bodies of dead soldiers are returned, and at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, where wounded soldiers are treated.
Democrats sense an opportunity to chip away at what has been a mostly Republican base since the United States turned to an all-volunteer military in 1973. Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate from Massachusetts and a decorated Vietnam veteran, touts his military record on the campaign trail.
"There are several battleground states with significant veterans and military populations -- Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida, Pennsylvania," said Josh Earnest, a Democratic National Committee spokesman. "In the last election," Bush "won their support. Clearly, the military vote could prove to be the difference."
But Bush campaign officials say they expect military voters to return to the fold because the president has delivered on his 2000 campaign promise to help the underfunded, underpaid armed forces.
In his 2005 budget, Bush proposed 3.5-percent pay increases for armed service members, more than double the 1.5-percent increase for federal workers. Since Bush assumed office, the Pentagon has upgraded about 10 percent of its military housing and expects to modernize 76,000 more homes this year.
Contact WILLIAM DOUGLAS at
bdouglas@krwashington.com.
