It's the national security, stupid

In 1992, Clinton's campaign running title was, "It's the economy, stupid."

If the 2004 campaign is run on that, it will probably be close and Bush might lose. But if the economy continues to recover, Bush wins re-election narrowly.

However, if the election is run on, "It's the national security, stupid" then barring some drastic changes in the sounds coming from the Kerry camp, it will be a 40+ state blowout.

Over at MSNBC, Glenn Reynolds has this analysis of the campaign and the national security angle. Excerpts:

But the spirit behind this "optimism" is revealing -- the idea that the war is going badly is a reason to be "optimistic."  And I suppose it is, if you think that getting rid of George Bush is more important than, you know, winning the war.  And the evidence is that for an unfortunately large minority of Democrats, that's where the priority lies.

That's a recipe for disaster, of course, electoral and otherwise, and more sensible Democrats know that.  The problem is that the Democratic nominee -- pretty much sure to be Kerry -- will have to deal with the baggage that the "Hurray!  We're losing!" crowd represents.  That places an extra burden on Kerry if he's to prove himself acceptable on national security grounds.  So far, he's not there, though he's offering a few reasons for, er, optimism. 

Kerry's Super Tuesday victory speech contained only one specific on national security, and it's not too specific:

We will rejoin the community of nations and renew our alliances because that is essential to final victory in the war on terror.

I'm not sure what this means -- next time we won't go to war unless the French allow it?  Hard to believe that's what Kerry meant, since he's okay with unilateralism in circumstances that are far less central to American security, saying about Haiti:

"I would intervene with the international community, and absent an international force, I'd do it unilaterally," he said, adding the most important thing was to protect democracy.

There's a lot more democracy in Iraq than there was before Saddam fell, which makes me wonder what the difference is -- besides the fact that Bush went in "unilaterally" to Iraq, except for a bunch of other countries like Britain, Australia, Spain, Poland, Japan, etc. who apparently don't count because they're not France or Germany.

Read the whole thing.