could anyone have beaten Bush in '04?

[kashifsakhan]

John Kerry. he could have done it.

[kashifsakhan]

An incumbent President in a time of war is extremely difficult to beat.

I believe Bush would have prevailed, in large part due to the national security issue, against any Democratic nominee. 

Actually its getting harder and harder to beat an incumbent in any situation. Just look at how many incumbent's have lost the general election since the end of the second world war:

George H.W.Bush
Jimmy Carter
Gerald Ford

Thats pretty much it, although Lyndon Johnson would have been on that list had he decided to go for re-election.

[kashifsakhan]

I think that when you try to be something you're not in politics, people pick up on that, and become suspicious.  Kerry obviously is not joe six-pack, so why to act like he is?

This is the same thing that, to a lesser extent, really hurt George H.W. Bush.  He tried to be a tough guy from Texas, but he looked, acted and sounded like a Connecticut preppie.  It's generally better if you embrace who you are rather than run away from it.

I disagree, the two political figures today who have done more than anything to cultivate an inaccurate image of themselves are George W. Bush and George Allen. Allen walks around with cowboy boots continually, has a well known obsession with the confederacy, and tries to pretend like he knows something about southwestern Virginia by dabbling in racist populism. The truth is he was raised in an upper middle class household in SoCal. It would be like John Ford trying to pretend to be StatesRights- it just isn't so.

But the biggest one by far is George W. Bush. He comes from one of the most privileged New England families in America, and his whole career basically stems from the fact that his father was once the Vice President and President of the U.S. He was in the same Skull & Bones society at Yale as Kerry, which his grades alone would never have gotten him near. He has never been poor or middle class in his entire life. His policies, more than any other President in over 70 years, have tended to explicitly favor the upper echelons of society. He even stated himself how his base consists of the "haves and have mores." Yet he carefully cultivated the image of a "common man" rancher from Texas, the average Joe, the southern hick, who sticks it to the intellectuals and wonks like Al Gore. More than any other very high profile politician in several decades George Bush has tried to be something he is not. And the thing is it worked. Many people did not see through it, at least not enough people, and not in time to make a difference. As fake as it was people bought into it.

George H.W. Bush did not try that hard to be something other than New England Brahmin, in my opinion. I have never seen a photo of H.W. in a cowboy hat, or wearing cowboy boots. He never tried to pass himself off as a rancher. In fact, during one of his Presidential campaigns, one of the large mansions he owned in Maine actually was the subject of media attention. If he had really tried that hard to cultivate a faux image, he would have known what a grocery store checkout scanner was, even if he never used them. In fact, I think that his mink coat image is one of the things that hurt him the most, and our current President, his son, specifically learned from his father's mistakes, and that is why W. has tried so hard to run away from it.

As for Kerry, if he tried to cultivate any sort of deceiving image, it was probably that he tried to imitate Jack Kennedy too much.

Even though i absolutely hate George W, one of the things i always give him credit for is cultivating an image of the everyday American. Thats probably the reason why he won in 2004- Bush successfully portrayed himself as an average-Joe, while Kerry couldnt. Kerry seemed to be too smart to be an average joe. I think Bush's poor public speaking record might have been a blessing in disguise even.