November 2, 2004

Every four years, by journalistic if not political tradition, the presidential election must be accompanied by a "revolution." So what transformed politics this time around? The rise of the Web log, or blog. The commentary of bloggers - individuals or groups posting daily, hourly or second-by-second observations of and opinions on the campaign on their own Web sites - helped shape the 2004 race. The Op-Ed page asked bloggers from all points on the political spectrum to say what they thought was the most important event or moment of the campaign that, we hope, comes to an end today.

GREG DJEREJIAN,
www.belgraviadispatch.com:

One of the most important events in the campaign occurred in September during the visit to the United States of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq.

Until then, while I was leaning toward George Bush (despite my anger over Abu Ghraib), I remained open to the possibility of voting for John Kerry. But, as I wrote that day, I found the Kerry campaign's handling of Mr. Allawi's visit disgraceful. Joe Lockhart, a Kerry adviser, denigrated Mr. Allawi as a "puppet." And Mr. Kerry himself all but called Mr. Allawi a liar during a press conference. I had hoped that instead of such sniping from the sidelines, Mr. Kerry would deign to attend Mr. Allawi's moving address to a joint session of Congress and even seek a private meeting with him. Mr. Kerry could have assured Mr. Allawi that whoever won in November, America would stand shoulder to shoulder with Iraq.

In place of such statesmanship, however, Mr. Kerry chose to belittle Mr. Allawi.

Aside from playing right into the handbook of Iraqi insurgents by reinforcing the notion that Mr. Allawi's government was a quisling regime, Mr. Kerry's conduct signaled a lack of real interest in Iraqi democratization. After all, Mr. Allawi embodied the beginning of Iraq's perilous journey toward genuine sovereignty. Mr. Kerry's irresponsible attacks spoke volumes.

ANA MARIE COX,
www.wonkette.com:

I was all set to vote for George Bush even after finding out that he wouldn't let me marry Mary Cheney if I wanted to. And when he made the pronunciation of "Lambeau Field" a campaign issue? It seemed fair. After all, he's proved that not knowing the names of foreign leaders is much less important than correctly pronouncing the homes of popular sports teams. Of course, he totally sold me with the debates: any man who explains a mystery bulge as bad tailoring is more than confident enough to take on the Euroweenies. But in the end, with the fate of the free world at stake and all, I've got to go with the guy who would admit that sending thousands of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians to their deaths to protect us from imaginary weapons was, in fact, a mistake.

MICKEY KAUS,
www.kausfiles.com:

John Kerry has been surprisingly successful running as a hawkish fighter against terrorism. Given this strategy, the most important moment of the campaign was President Bush's failure in the first debate to take Mr. Kerry's embarrassing vote against the 1991 gulf war and hang it firmly around his neck. Something like: "Mr. Kerry, you say you want an international coalition. In 1991, we had an international coalition. You say you want United Nations support. We had United Nations support. Saddam had invaded a neighbor, unprovoked, across an internationally recognized border. And yet even then you voted against using force. Al Gore voted for the war. But you did not. If you wouldn't use force then..." etc., etc. It writes itself!

Mr. Bush might also have pointed out that without the 1991 war, the inspection regime Mr. Kerry later valued so highly wouldn't have been installed. And if we hadn't dismantled Saddam Hussein's nuclear program in 1991, he might have been able to build the bomb. (Mr. Bush finally brought up the 1991 vote in the third debate, but still didn't make a big enough deal of it.)

I'm for John Kerry, but George Bush let him skate past his biggest vulnerability and get back into the race.

LORIE BYRD,
www.polipundit.com:

An important event in the 2004 campaign was the Democratic convention. My analysis of the convention, written just hours after it ended, still holds true: "In addition to the mistake Kerry made by placing too much emphasis on Vietnam, which will give extra importance to the opposition of Kerry by vet groups, he also messed up by not addressing his two-decade-long Senate record. Not only can Bush-Cheney now point out the record of votes Kerry didn't take the opportunity to explain or defend, but they can show that Kerry is trying to hide his Senate record."

The convention set the stage for the advertisements from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush-Cheney attack on Mr. Kerry's voting record. The convention produced little momentum for Mr. Kerry, and it wasn't until his strong debate performance on Sept. 30 that he finally got back into the running. If he loses, much of the blame can be traced back to that one week in July.

JOANNE JACOBS,
www.joannejacobs.com:

"The terrorists laughed at the suffering of children, who'd gone for days without water, food or sleep, said a survivor of the Russian school seized by what A.P. calls 'rebels.' "

That's how I started a Sept. 3 post on the Beslan massacre that killed at least 331 hostages. On Sept. 14, I linked to an Israeli newspaper article translated by another blogger about a 74-year-old teacher who died with his students: "The terrorist allowed the teacher to wet one of the bibs of the children and pass it around to dampen the mouths of the little ones who were choking from thirst."

The children wore bibs. The Beslan massacre was a brutal reminder of the ruthlessness of 21st century terrorists. I'm into nuance - till terrorists shoot fleeing children in the back. Then I want a stubborn, single-minded president who's at war with evildoers. They're at war with us.

ANN ALTHOUSE,
www.althouse.blogspot.com:

I'd grown used to waiting for John Kerry to reveal what he would do in Iraq. Though I'd voted for Al Gore and Bill Clinton, respectively, in the last two presidential elections, I needed to hear Mr. Kerry commit to success in the war. On April 14, at an event at the City College of New York, a man challenged Mr. Kerry to explain how his plan for Iraq differed from President Bush's. Mr. Kerry responded testily, "You're not listening."

I wrote on my blog at the time, "If you still don't know what he would do differently from Bush, do you deserve to be snapped at for 'not listening'?" After that, as I heard Mr. Kerry wriggle his way around the Iraq question one way and then another, I never forgot his willingness to blame the listener for not already seeing his answer, and my mistrust of John Kerry hardened into support for George Bush.

J. BRADFORD DELONG,
www.j-bradford-delong.net:

Last winter a small group of moderate Republicans tried to dislodge Vice President Dick Cheney from the ticket. Reporters for The National Journal found senior Republicans trying to generate groundswells for Mr. Cheney's replacement by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York; Secretary of State Colin Powell; Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge; the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; or Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader.

The hope, I think, was that with Mr. Cheney out of the picture, Mr. Powell could then be the grand vizier for a "reality-based" security policy, and somebody like the United States trade representative, Robert Zoellick, could then be the grand vizier for a "reality-based" economic policy. Something similar had been accomplished in the 1980's, when James Baker, Howard Baker and George Shultz were given new responsibilities midway through the Reagan administration.

In the 1980's the moderate Republicans tried and succeeded. In 2004 they tried and failed. And with their failure died the chance to drag the Bush administration out of incompetence and ideology.

KEVIN DRUM,
www.washingtonmonthly.com:

Four years ago, Vice President Al Gore bungled his first presidential debate with George Bush. He sighed theatrically, he rolled his eyes heavenward and periodically crossed the stage to loom over Mr. Bush like an impatient schoolmarm. America was not amused, and four weeks later George Bush was elected president.

Mr. Bush, of all people, should have learned an obvious lesson from this: don't treat John Kerry the way Al Gore treated you. And yet, inexplicably, on Sept. 30 that's exactly what he did. He looked bored. He rolled his head weakly. He sounded defensive and exasperated.

And John Kerry, who had been a steady six or seven percentage points behind in the polls, suddenly closed to within two or three points. And then kept gaining. And maybe even gained enough to win. All because Mr. Kerry looked calm and presidential during the first debate while Mr. Bush looked vaguely affronted at the mere idea of having to share a stage with him.

DAVID ADESNIK,
www.oxblog.com:

There was no single moment when America came to know for sure that Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction. Yet after the C.I.A.'s top weapons inspector, David Kay, told Congress in October 2003 that his team had failed to find any illegal weapons, the widespread conviction that we would find the weapons stockpiles disintegrated. From that point on, George Bush became profoundly vulnerable and a Democratic victory today became a serious possibility.

John Kerry has not been able to capitalize on this vulnerability fully and effectively because he shared George Bush's mistaken belief. Yet imagine for a moment that Mr. Kay had found abundant stockpiles of outlawed weapons in Iraq. Would Mr. Kerry be able to insist that Mr. Bush started "the wrong war in the wrong place and at the wrong time"? Would he be able to insist that alliances are a powerful weapon in the war on terrorism rather than a dangerous restraint on American power?

I don't hold it against George Bush that he was wrong about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, since Bill Clinton and John Kerry were just as wrong. But if Mr. Bush had been right about Iraq, it would have counted strongly in his favor and I would probably be voting for him today instead of John Kerry.

JOHN HINDERAKER and SCOTT JOHNSON,
www.powerlineblog.com:

The most important event of the campaign was the exposure of documents cited by "60 Minutes" in its report on President Bush's Air National Guard service as fraudulent. We participated in this exposure by asking our readers for information relevant to the documents' authenticity, and then by organizing and disseminating the information we received on topics like the typewriters of the early 1970's and arcane points of military protocol in the same era.

We posted our observations about the "60 Minutes" documents on the morning of Sept. 9, the day after Dan Rather's report was broadcast. We updated the posting through the day as new information came in from readers. Within 12 hours, more than 500 other Web sites had linked to ours, millions of people were aware of the serious questions that had been raised about CBS's documents, and CBS News executives were on the defensive.

When it became clear within a few days that the documents were indeed fake, it was widely recognized that journalism had changed forever. Never again will the mainstream news media be able to dictate the flow of information to the American people.

GLENN REYNOLDS,
www.instapundit.com:

The biggest story of this campaign was the candid admission in July by Evan Thomas, assistant managing editor of Newsweek, that the press "wants Kerry to win." Though this seemed significant at the time, it was only later - with things like CBS's bogus-document scandal, and the attempted late hit about the alleged missing explosives - that it became clear just how right Mr. Thomas was. Mr. Thomas has since suggested that press bias is probably not as influential as he first thought, but it has been abundantly clear that the press has been in the tank for Kerry/Edwards for several months.

People have noticed. As I wrote in August: "Elections come and go, politicians come and go, and pretty much all of them turn out to be disappointments one way or another. But the 'Fourth Estate' is a big part of the unelected permanent government that in many ways does more to run the country than the politicians. And it's unraveling before our very eyes, which I think is the biggest story of the election so far." It still is.

TOM BURKA,
www.tomburka.com:

Even before he started his campaign in earnest this year, President Bush made a crucial and perhaps fatal misstep when he announced a manned mission to Mars in January - and then abandoned the initiative as hastily as he had adopted it. In doing so, the president alienated the increasingly important group of voters who have given up and "just want to get off Earth."

"Bush misunderestimated the importance of the 'Get me out of here' bloc," said Dr. Herb Flaggellum, a former thyroid doctor-turned-pundit.

Exit polling will almost certainly show that in a sea of issues baffling undecided voters, Mr. Bush's lack of commitment to expensive space exploration was a deciding factor in the election today. That, and his failure to wear a receiver and earpiece in the first debate.

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company