A year ago, I doubted there was any way President Bush and his boss, Dick Cheney, would get elected for a second term.

I mean, come on. The guy rode into town on the saddle of national Clinton Fatigue against an opponent who made Bill Gates look personable by comparison. His tendency to mispronounce and oversimplify, in addition to his overall lack of political qualifications for the job were surely going to catch up with him. On top of that, the economy began to fall apart the moment he stepped into office–not his fault, he had not been in office long enough to mess anything up–but most voters fail to separate correlation and causation.

Above everything else, the election controversy managed to piss off a lot of Democrats. The ones who voted seemed certain to take revenge in the next election, and the ones who didn’t (a far greater number than the Republicans who did not vote) finally realized the importance of getting to the polls on Election Day.

But now I have to hand it to Cheney (I simply cannot give Bush credit for such ingenuity): he has found a formula that will virtually guarantee his administration’s reelection in 2004, provided he remains healthy enough to see the plan through to fruition. By continuing a “war on terror,” a war which may conceivably never end because it can never be definitively won, Cheney has all but locked up re-election for his subordinate. I will not presume that purely electoral motives, to whatever degree they can be separated from policy choices, played a direct part in this policy. But they will undoubtedly be served by it.

Cheney did not create this formula out of thin air; he merely played upon the circumstances already in place. The United States was already ripe for a new world policy that would clearly define its role in the world, particularly after the meandering post-Cold War policies of Clinton and Bush senior.

After the Sept. 11 bombings finally sparked the country into national consciousness, Cheney faced a major choice: initiate military action against only Al Qaeda and Afghanistan, or engage in a much vaguer “war on terror” in general. He chose the latter, as evidenced by Bush’s State of the Union vow to extend military action to perhaps a dozen countries, and in doing so did what he could not as Secretary of Defense in the previous Bush Administration. Rather than fighting a popular war with concrete terms for victory and a definite ending point, as he had under Bush the Elder, he ensured that the rallying effect and popularity of the president in general would remain high indefinitely.

I say this because, almost universally speaking, incumbent presidents involved in a war in which their country faces demonstrable danger do not get defeated on Election Day regardless of other circumstances at home.

Sure, Lyndon Johnson probably would have lost had he ran in 1968, but Americans did not equate the Vietnam War with the same kind of urgency and national importance as today’s war on terror; American soil was not immediately attacked or threatened. Thus, as long as Tom, Dick, John, Don and the rest of the Bush Administration can keep the level of terrorist fear among Americans at a high level, they need not look for jobs in 2005.

I am not saying this strategic decision was motivated wholly by political advantages, although I would not put it past Cheney in much the same way I would not entirely acquit Clinton of ulterior motives in the uncanny timing of the 1998 Iraq bombings with the publication of the Starr Report. Nor do I think fighting terrorism is in principle a bad idea, although I think Cheney’s methods prove ultimately dangerous to both the civil liberties and the safety of the nation.

But I do think it will ensure his re-election (and absolutely guarantee it if the economy shows any iota of improvement), especially considering other factors in the country right now.

Among these other factors, the primary one might simply be the lack of a quality opponent. Gore remains the frontrunner for the Democrats in 2004, followed by Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Tom Daschle and John Kerry. None, with the possible exception of Clinton for many women, is exactly inspirational for the country at large, and some may choose not to run in light of the Bush Administration’s popularity.

I will not accuse the current administration of outright manipulation in their war on terror to maintain this popularity, nor will I say the public should ignore its leadership two years from now. If it greatly increases efforts to complement this war with non-military and non-economic involvement for the good of the international community, I might even give it my support. But I will say Cheney has made the dangerous discovery of a powerful principle, one that has sustained totalitarian governments in both reality and fiction, from Nazi Germany to Orwell’s “1984”:

Keep the people in a constant state of war and fear, and they’ll never ask you to leave.

Matt Lynch ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in English and political science.