Keep the faith – or find some

What do you call it when the president, as he did Thursday, calls John Kerry’s health care plan “the largest expansion of government health care in American history,” meaning that’s a bad thing, when last year he passed the $550 billion Medicare drug benefit, the largest expansion of the senior health program in its history, and declared it a good thing? I call it faith.

Faith in this case means the president believes in the private market: The Medicare benefit hands tons of public money to private middlemen who take their cut before passing the rest of the money to pharmaceutical providers. Sen. Kerry’s plan would give the money directly to the providers of care, which, of course, is madness.

But faith, and some suppressed budget numbers, got the Medicare drug benefit through a doubting House and faith is carrying the president in this campaign. Democrats have a hard time with this. On those rare instances since 2000 when they have been feeling cocky, or just to employ the cool put-down of anything said sardonically, they have referred to something President Bush is doing as “faith based.” Faith-based missile defense or faith-based budgeting, something smart like that.

Faith means “inferior” in this sense, lacking as it does the abstractions of science to test the inner workings of whatever is being discussed. But I’ve just spent a couple of hours looking over polling numbers for the presidential race and I say hallelujah for having faith. The most important gap I found amid dozens of questions covering months of campaigning is the faith gap: those supporting the president have it; the Kerry supporters too often, do not. I’m not talking about religious faith, but political belief.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “He who loses money, loses much. He who loses a friend, loses much more. He who loses faith, loses all.” She was referring, as you probably guessed, to this year’s Democratic campaign, where money, friends and faith should be harmonizing like Peter, Paul and Mary. Instead, the party is bracing itself to lose all.

This isn’t necessary. The presidential race has been a dead heat since Sen. John Kerry’s performance in the first debate Sept. 30. Daily, sometimes hourly, polls from around the country call the race tied or a lead within the margin of error by President Bush. Campaign managers have barely had time to offer the clich? that voter turnout will be key to the race – when isn’t it? – before another newly identified interest group (something even more finely calibrated than Security Moms, whose children used to play soccer but now mostly hide in the basement) emerges to be embraced.

Republicans view this situation with faith. A close popular vote, complications within the swing states that could shift a half dozen Electoral College votes and, therefore, the race – none of it matters: 84 percent pick President Bush to win, according to the polls. Kerry supporters look at this same situation and get all logical. A statistically appropriate half pick their guy to win. Why? No faith. They are the Red Sox fans of politics, aware that at any moment a grounder could roll between their legs.

This reluctance to believe shows up in another measure pollsters use: ardency. Sure you like the fellow, they ask as if they had caught you somewhere in your middle-school years, but do you really, really like him? For the president, 70 percent of people who claim they will vote for him support him fervently. For the senator, those willing to write his name on their locker is a sucky 45 percent.

The easy analysis of these numbers is that, as the challenger, Sen. Kerry naturally would have more uncertainty about him and so his supporters would be less sure of themselves. But that may not be all of it. I think the voting numbers reflect the candidates themselves. For President With Us or Against Us, love him or move along. For Sen. Voted For It Before Voting Against, the stages of courtship are what matter. The jargon for that is product vs. process, and which one you emphasize says a lot about which candidate you’ll vote for this year.

The Bush campaign must smile every time Kerry backers get into a process discussion over, say, the crucial side agreements for the Caribbean Basin Cocoa Butter Agreement because details of this sort create doubt and confusion among the undecided, keeping them from getting excited about going to the polls. There are four years coming up to debate policy, four years to explain the inconsistency in the assertion that expanding public health care in one direction is unquestionably good and expanding it in another the folly of a bureaucrat. What matters now is faith in your candidate.

Democrats have 10 days to process that.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News.