NOT NEW VS. NO:

Buoyed G.O.P. Says It Has Framed Agenda for Fall (ROBIN TONER and JODI WILGOREN, 9/03/04, NY Times)

Scrambling to regain their political footing, Democrats vowed to recover from the attacks of August and return the voters' focus to the economy, with an aggressive new advertising campaign that highlights Mr. Bush's "failure to deliver'' on issues like job creation and prescription drugs, and with a fiery new attack by Mr. Kerry last night on those "who refused to serve when they could have'' and "who misled America into Iraq.'' The Democrats scoffed at Mr. Bush's speech as an empty defense of the status quo, devoid of new ideas.

No one will know until the postconvention polls how much the Republicans gained here, or how enduring those gains will be in a presidential race that has been essentially deadlocked for months. Given how polarized the voters have become, some experts argue that conventions are more about galvanizing the already committed than converting the undecided.

But Republican strategists have succeeded, at the moment, in setting the terms of the debate, forcing Mr. Kerry not only into defending his security credentials but also into undertaking a tough and possibly risky attack on Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney even before the Republicans had left New York.

The Republicans clearly believed that their decision to hold their convention just four miles from ground zero, to hold it unusually late in the campaign year and to use it to cast Mr. Bush as a tested commander in chief for perilous times, opposed by an untrustworthy alternative, had paid off.

That "no new ideas" seems like a losing argument. The concept of privatizing Social Security, for instance, obviously isn't "new" but it is undeniably revolutionary. The Senator, on the other hand, proposes to leave Social Security exactly the way it is. The contrast between reform and reaction is stark.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 3, 2004 8:27 AM