پاتريک باکانان در مقالهای به نام «چهار سال ديگر؟» در شمارهی سپتامبر آتلانتيک دربارهی ميزان شکست پذيری بوش در انتخابات آينده، سه احتمال را برای پيروزی دموکراتها در نظر گرفته: (متاسفانه حوصلهی ترجمه کردنش را ندارم و در نتيجه اصلش را میآورم)
This reduces the hopes of the Democrats to three possibilities, over which they have no control.First is a continuance of the jobless recovery over which Bush has presided, in which three million private-sector jobs have vanished since he took office. But with interest rates now slashed by Alan Greenspan to one percent, the deficit at $400 billion and rising, the third largest tax cut in history about to take effect, and a falling dollar propelling exports, even pessimists are predicting growth of four or five percent for 2004.
Second is a souring of America's victories in Afghanistan and Iraq by continued and widening combat in which Americans are dying every day. Our tolerance for that kind of war has not been tested since Vietnam. A June Washington Post poll showing that 44 percent of the nation already finds the casualty rate in Iraq intolerable does not bode well for Bush, or for the country—especially with Arabs and Muslims from outside Iraq turning up in firefights.
Third is a major scandal of the kind that has bedeviled Republican Presidents, though usually in their second terms: the Sherman Adams affair, Watergate, Iran-contra. Here Bush seems most vulnerable to revelations either of misreading intelligence prior to 9/11 or of cherry-picking intelligence to make a case for war. In Britain the issue may yet prove fatal to Tony Blair.
But events may conspire to kill Democratic hopes. If some terrorist horror on the scale of 9/11 occurs, how many Americans will rise as one man to cry, "Get me Howard Dean"? Will they not, rather, reflexively rally to the tough guys who win wars—Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell—just as Israelis rally to Ariel Sharon each time a new atrocity is perpetrated by Hamas?