posted on March 12, 2004 10:24:44 PM new
Some military voters may abandon Bush
President might be losing support among veterans, service members and their families
By WILLIAM DOUGLAS
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON — When the Bush campaign asked James McKinnon to co-chair 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 reserve 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 Bush is seeking re-election as a “war president” 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 ever thinner, many voters in or affiliated with the military are no longer saluting the commander in chief.
Factors threatening to erode Bush’s once-strong support among military voters include:
• The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
• Lengthy deployments of active-duty soldiers and reservists
• Proposed cuts in veterans’ benefits.
In the 2000 presidential election, absentee military ballots from overseas helped deliver the narrow margin of victory that sent Bush into the White House. So even a small defection of current and retired military people and their dependents could spell trouble for Bush in 2004.
“I think President Bush has an electoral edge despite the fact that Senator (John) 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. There is a lot of resentment in the ranks about the level of commitment demanded of the reserves, particularly among the families.”
A bipartisan poll of likely voters conducted in September found that Bush’s approval rating among relatives of military personnel was only 36 percent. Family members upset by Bush’s policy on Iraq are venting through Web sites and public protests.
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 Force 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’s 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.
Bush campaign officials say they expect military voters to return to the fold because the president has delivered on his 2000 campaign promise that “help is on the way” for 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.
