With Bush’s popularity sliding because of the war in Iraq and a widespread sense that many Americans were not benefiting from economic growth, Democrats in 2004 sensed a golden opportunity to retake the White House. They nominated as their candidate John Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts and the first Catholic to run for president since John F. Kennedy in 1960. A decorated combat veteran in Vietnam, Kerry had joined the antiwar movement after leaving the army. The party hoped that Kerry’s military experience would insulate him from Republican charges that Democrats were too weak-willed to be trusted to protect the United States from further terrorist attacks, while his antiwar credentials in Vietnam would appeal to voters opposed to the invasion of Iraq.
Kerry proved a surprisingly ineffective candidate. An aloof man who lacked the common touch, he failed to generate the same degree of enthusiasm among his supporters as Bush did among his. Kerry’s inability to explain why he voted in favor of the Iraq War in the Senate only to denounce it later as a major mistake enabled Republicans to portray him as lacking the kind of resolution necessary in dangerous times. Meanwhile, Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political adviser, worked assiduously to mobilize the Republican Party’s conservative base by having Republicans stress the president’s stance on cultural issues—opposition to the extension of the right to marry to homosexuals (which the Supreme Court of Massachusetts had ruled must receive legal recognition in that state), opposition to abortion rights, and so on.
Throughout the campaign, polls predicted a very close election. Bush won a narrow victory, with a margin of 2 percent of the popular vote and thirty-four electoral votes. The results revealed a remarkable electoral stability. Both sides had spent tens of millions of dollars in advertising and had mobilized new voters—nearly 20 million since 2000. But in the end, only three states voted differently than four years earlier—New Hampshire, which Kerry carried, and Iowa and New Mexico, which swung to Bush.
Post-election polls initially suggested that “moral values” held the key to the election outcome, leading some commentators to urge Democrats to make peace with the Religious Right. Most evangelical Christians, indeed, voted for Bush. But the “moral values” category was a grab-bag indicating everything from hostility to abortion rights to the desire for a leader who says what he means and apparently means what he says. More important to the outcome were the attacks of September 11 and the sense of being engaged in a worldwide war on terror. No American president who has sought reelection during wartime has ever been defeated (although Harry S. Truman and Lyndon Johnson declined to run again during unpopular wars). The Bush campaign consistently and successfully appealed to fear, with continuous reminders of September 11 and warnings of future attacks.
Republicans also slightly increased their majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate. But the most striking feature of the congressional races was that by the careful drawing of district lines in state legislatures, both parties had managed to make a majority of the seats “safe” ones. Only three incumbents were defeated for reelection, and nearly all the House seats were won by a margin of 10 percent or more. In the old days, one commentator quipped, voters chose their political leaders. Today, politicians choose their voters.