OCR Text |
Show DaIlY toft 12 Wednesday, November X 2004 HERALD '' 111 A FINAL LOOK UTAH .ii iiiiiiiiil 1- ,. C -- "."V ! f 0 'if .1 JOSHUA BROWNDaily Herald New Team for Utah h. f i4 ij i 1 JOSHUA BROWNDaily Herald and his wife, Jeanette (top photo) celebrated his election Tuesday night as the state's next lieutenant governor. Herbert and his running mate, Jon Huntsman Jr. thanked Utah voters for electing them. Democrat Scott Matheson Jr. (left, with Hunts- man) conceded the election two hours after the polls closed Tuesday night, making a call to congratulate his opponent. Herbert and Huntsman, thanked Utah voters for giving them the victory. Matheson told his supporters they "fought the good fight." Utah County Commissioner Gary Herbert DOUGLAS . C. PIZACAssociated Press THE NATION Choosing between fear and anger Michael Tadcett CHICAGO TRIBUNE rTIn the end, it came down to a J r choice between fear and anger. mmM Throughout his campaign, President Bush traded on fear, the threat of terrorism and a hot war in Iraq. Sen. John Kerry traded on anger about the war and job losses that was di- - 't rected squarely toward the president. The American electorate woke up worked up on Tuesday. No one would call this the "era of good feeling." Fear and anger were fighting to a standoff. Voters in unusually high numbers were clearly motivated by animus more than anything positive about either candidate, a problematic sign for an incumbent asking to be judged on . his record. If voters appeared to see Bush metaphorically as an exclamation point, a man of fixed and firm view, they saw Kerry a question mark, a slate credible but largely blank. Many seemed to cast a vote fafKer-r- y merely because he was not Bush. "The message is there is a split ver- -' diet here on Bush's presidency," said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center. That's why we have . such a divided country. In every swing state nationwide, the president's approval rating is about 51 percent, not much more, not much less." For all the time and money and attention spent on the campaign, for-althe historic, tragic and triumphant moments since the last election, much of the nation reverted to the same blue-stat- e divide of four years ago. The West Coast remained a wall of Democratic strength, along with New York and Illinois and a solid northeast as wel The Old South, Rocky Mountain West and the Great Plains were the Republican opposite Bush's campaign theorized that this election was a continuation of the fractious political divide that rendered the notoriously split decision of 2000. Only in the final two weeks of the campaign did the president even make modest appeals to Democrats and swing voters. It was a strategy predicated on holding ground, and as such, one of l red-stat- e, . limited possibilities. But he didnt need much. No surprise, Bush supporters said that terrorism and moral values were their top issues, while.Kerry supporters said they were most cxmcerned about the war in . press it. . Iraq, the economy and jobs. That is Bush's case for war that Iraq had precisely the set of themes to which that it possessed both candidates hewed. ties with While voters mostly played to type, ' weapons of mass destruction that terin the sense of reprising the 2000 rorists could use, that Iraq was devel- count, they also defied much of the oping a nuclear weapons program conventional wisdom. People comwas undercut, most notably by 911 plained about the negative nature of , r Commission report. And yet Bush said the campaign yet they expressed ex-- 1 ,t there is nothing he would change about treme interest in it. Money flooded the his prosecution of the war. The fine line the president walked system and fueled increased turnout, between steadfast and stubborn is at particularly among younger voters. least one of the reasons he was vulnerThey were united on the need to fight terrorism, but divided on the conflict in able to defeat. By many measures, Bush should Iraq. Were he to lose, the president would never have been in this position, particjoin a new club, so exclusive that he ularly given the extraordinary support . he received after the Sept. 11 terrorist would be its only member incumbents who lost attacks. Incumbents start every cam-in wartime. The last time the nation was so enpaign with a presumption that they will be , gaged in conflict during an election was 1968 and in that year the anger He could not sustain that unity, howwas so profound that Lyndon Johnson ever, and the Congress, and the counchose not to run. try, soon reverted to its respective corThe president got his way But this time the anger has been exners, 50-5on tax cuts and some social issues, but pressed in different ways and for different reasons. Mass demonstrations almost exclusively on the backs of Rehave been limited. College campuses publican votes. Incumbents start every campaign are not erupting in violence. Still, disenchantment over the war is profound, with a presumption that they will be Senators make great candi-and people turned to the ballot to ex ' . - . 0. dates in theory and lousy ones in prac-ticwhich is why none has been elected president directly from the senate since John F. Kennedy in 1960. Both sides tried to rewrite the rules. Kerry ran a campaign based almost entirely in electability in the primaries and plausibility in the general election. The president tried to make the election about the caricature of Kerry too liberal and waffling, even dangerously so. But the election was clearly a referendum on the incumbent'. Bush's style was on trial, his manner.' But his substance was on trial as . well most notably his decision on the most fundamental issue that a presi-- " dent can make: committing the nation ' to war. His campaign for seemed - far removed from his run in , 2000, when he talked about armies of compassion, leaving no child behind and the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Sept. II transformed Bush's presidency and the war in Iraq changed the national conversation. He ended up seeming more the logical air to the Gingrich Revolution in Congress than the man who vowed to be a "uniter, not a di- - . ' ' i. vider." . i, e, u ,, |