Most people travel to Israel to see the past. I went there last week and glimpsed the future.
In a country where more than 920 people have been killed since the second intifada started in September 2000, life goes on. People go to work. Like in the U.S., the high-tech sector that powered economic growth in the late 1990s, while smaller, is still humming along in the office parks of Herzilya Pituach and Kiryat Atidim. Israelis shop at the mall, their corner store, and the outdoor souk. Last week, the country celebrated its first Olympic gold medal (in the unlikely event of windsurfing) -- and celebrated that the school year was beginning without a teachers' strike for the first time in memory.
Yet amidst these scenes of normalcy -- scenes that resemble life in America more than life in any country on Israel's borders -- there are constant reminders that the terrorist threat is real and looming just over the horizon. As you pull your car into the Dizengoff Center's parking lot in Tel Aviv, a guard stops you and inspects your vehicle as if you were pulling into the U.S. Capitol building. Almost every cafe in Jerusalem is gated, with a security guard at the door searching bags and running a hand-held metal detector over every patron; it's the same in the supermarkets, the shopping malls, and even outdoor street fairs.
Almost everyone I spoke with has a story of a near-miss, or of someone they know who wasn't that lucky. When news of the bus bombings in Beersheva made its way to Tel Aviv's Carmel market last Tuesday, the cacophony of sellers hawking everything from fruit to fish to foot cream quieted to an eerie, solemn silence as they hung on every bit of news coming from the radio.
While the United States will never have thousands of terrorists living on its borders and hostile nations nearby to give them haven, the terrorist threat that we face will not disappear any time soon. And although our shores -- thankfully -- have been spared from attack since September 11 three years ago, in the years ahead our lives will begin to resemble life in Israel today. Security guards and bag searches will be common in the restaurants of Washington, D.C., and the theaters of New York City. Shopping malls and schools will have to be secured. Security inconveniences and the looming sense of an ever-present threat will be as accepted in the future as taking your shoes off at the airport has become today. Terrorism, unfortunately, will become a fact of daily life.
That's why it was so jarring to return from this trip to the Middle East to find that the Kerry campaign has decided to kick-off its post–Labor Day push by deliberately ignoring the issue of terrorism and security. While the campaign has smartly decided to frame the election as a choice between George W. Bush's record of failed policies and a new direction for the future, the campaign seems determined only to make this argument about domestic concerns. Even talk about Iraq is framed in domestic terms. As John Kerry said about Iraq in a major speech this week in Cincinnati, it's “$200 billion that we're not investing in education, health care, and job creation here at home.” Very deliberately, the Kerry team is attempting to wage the fall campaign on the friendly Democratic turf of domestic issues.
On its face, this is not a foolish strategy at all. As political scientists Byron Shafer and William Claggett argued persuasively in their exhaustive analysis of postwar elections, there are “two majorities” in American politics: one majority that will vote for a Democratic presidential candidate when economic and social welfare issues are at the fore, and one majority that will vote for a Republican candidate when cultural and national issues are at the top of the agenda -- provided that neither party is not wildly off the reservation on the other issue context. For instance, in 1992 the number-one issue was “the economy, stupid,” and Bill Clinton -- who also proved that he was not like Democrats of the past on crime, welfare, and other social issues -- was able to take advantage of this favorable terrain and win the White House.
Yet 2004 is not 1992. The dominant issue context is not the economy, but security: According to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted this past weekend, 51 percent of likely voters said that Iraq/terrorism is their number one issue; the economy rated second at 31 percent. In such an environment, trying to shift the debate away from security is the political equivalent of canoeing upstream with a sieve as a paddle. Security is the defining issue of our time, and a Democrat will not be able to win the presidency unless he is seen as an acceptable commander in chief.
For months, the Kerry campaign seemed to understand this. In the primaries, Kerry's unique appeal was that he was a war hero with 20 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and could go toe-to-toe with Bush on security. His strength on strength was what would allow Democrats to neutralize the Republican advantage on security so that the huge advantages the Democratic Party has on health care, the economy, and the budget could carry it to victory. The Democratic convention followed this script closely; if the message was any more martial, the delegates would have been marching in time and waving khaki signs.
After the Democratic convention, Kerry began to close the security gap; according to a Newsweek poll taken immediately after the Boston confab, Kerry whittled Bush's advantage on whom voters trust more to handle terrorism/homeland security to five percentage points. That same poll taken after the Republican convention found Bush leading on this issue by a margin of 60 percent to 32 percent.
Facing these numbers as well as a newly opened and small Bush lead overall, the Kerry campaign is retreating to the friendly ground of domestic issues. Yet in an age of fanatics who do not hesitate to turn our planes into missiles and their own children into suicide bombers, the argument that less expensive health care will make America strong rings hollow -- no matter how important such a policy may be.
Kerry needs to continue to make his newly reinvigorated case against Bush, but add to it a powerful indictment of how Bush has waged the war against terror in a way that has not made America safer. In addition, Kerry needs to prove that he will not hesitate as commander in chief to find and destroy terrorists.
If he does not, I am afraid that a glimpse of America's future can also be found in Israel. Israelis debate with gusto every political issue under the sun, but come election time there is only one issue that matters: security. And ever since the dominant party of the center-left, Labor, lost the trust of the electorate on this issue, they lost not just one but two elections.
Kenneth S. Baer, a former senior speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, runs Baer Communications, a Democratic consulting firm.
