CAMPAIGNING WITHOUT CAMPAIGNING
CAMPAIGNING WITHOUT CAMPAIGNING: WaPo reports that President Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign is underway but Bush himself with not participate in it until after the war with Iraq. This is one of the odd features of American politics. On the one hand, a president can not appear to be politicizing a war. On the other, unless there is another major terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11, there is nothing that will happen between now and the election that is more important to whether he’ll get re-elected than, well, the war. Plus, because of the viscisitudes of fundraising and the ever-increasing length of presidential campaigns, Bush pretty much has to start running for re-election now–he just can’t appear to be running.
