A reader asks if the nation would be less divided if Bush had found WMDs in Iraq. My answer is that even he had found integrated ready-to-launch nuclear arsenals he would still have had to deal with the insurgency and some of the other issues that dominate life in Iraq today. If anything, if there had been WMDs there probably would have been some pieces missing and that would have given Bush opponents exactly the same materials as they have in their hands today: facts open to multi-layered interpretations to smear Bush. As I argued last week, Bush got off to a wrong start:

My sense is that Bush should have been a uniter from day one. In the Florida aftermath he could have scored some valuable points in the center and 9/11 would have proven to be an even bigger boost for Bush than it turned out to be.

His post 9/11 approval ratings were artificial; any President worth his salt would have been able to attain these levels in the face of such a disaster. I am not kidding when I say that even Al Gore would have obtained a greater than 50% approval rating during those fateful days three years ago. The trick was to sustain these levels and while it is near impossible to carry the whole 70% from September 2001 to November 2004 it takes a rare talent to reduce it to below 50%. Bush let that happen and he and his team of advisors can be blamed for the hubristic thinking (as the Economist calls it) that has led to problems such as post-War Iraq management, Abu Ghraib and yes, Guantanamo Bay. Flexibility to deal with adversity, adapting plans, reshuffling teams (replacing Rumsfeld for one) would have helped greatly in maintaining the support of well over half of the population. The inability to manage and communicate Iraq to the American people and the world at large remains the key weakness of this Bush administration. It showed during the campaign, Bush was stuck in his usual “freedom” rhetoric without being able to really convince his listeners of the why, what and where.

My question is: could the flaws on the international side have been offset by progress on the domestic side? The record is mixed with the escalating budget deficit and adopting the Rove strategy to nail down the social conservative right to win the election rather than capture the center. Dismissing Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and ramming through the FMA reveal the same hubristic attitudes and these are two key examples of issues that have surely alienated conservative and liberal centrists alike. Yet, in the wake of 9/11 and what could have been a dramatic stock market crash, the economy held up well. Arnold Schwarzenegger not only pointed to positive economic attitudes with his “don’t be economic girlymen”, his very presence on the Republican scene provided a glimmer of hope for conservatives with a socially liberal stance.

So on both the domestic and foreign side the net results of Bush working to maintain his stratospheric approval ratings are mixed. They were unsustainable to begin with and the amplification of the negative by Democrats and mainstream media combined with the administration’s hubristic attitude has resulted in the divided nation or the 48/48 split as polls would indicate. WMDs or not, success at Tora Bora or not, external and internal factors have put Bush in a marginal situation on the eve of the election. By being pro-active he could have kept a large portion of his post 9/11 capital intact but it almost seems that his advisors argued “we’ve got so much of it, let’s gamble with it: there will be enough left to secure the election”. Banking on America’s security as a campaign issue and on the inability of the Democrats to field a credible candidate and platform made that gamble less risky but in the process more capital was lost than even Karl Rove must have imagined. Still, the divided nation remains a construct of polling, tonight’s numbers will shed a decisive ray of light on the divider/uniter discussion.