“The missile gap” is a piece of cold war history. Sen. John F. Kennedy and the Democrats invented the term in the 1960 presidential campaign as a way of attacking the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower and the GOP’s candidate, Vice President Richard Nixon. Though Ike himself was an unassailable war hero, JFK said, his administration had fallen asleep at the cold war switch, allowing the Soviet Union to leap past us in the race to build bigger and deadlier missiles and to establish a military presence in space.

Kennedy, while retailing his own role as a PT boat captain in World War II, sold himself as the avatar of a tough, world-wise and savvy young military man, who would tap the best and the brightest of the Ivy League in the service of fighting a shrewder, more sophisticated war against the evils of communism. The new ideal wasn’t Ike or Patton or generals shouting “Nuts!” to the enemy, but rather some amalgam of James Bond (a JFK favorite) and M.I.T.

Whoever the Democratic nominee is in 2004 is going to have to do the same thing: argue that he (or she) has a better, smarter, savvier way to deal with the dread dangers of the world.

If the elections of 2002 told us anything, it was that the new central question of American politics has less to do with pocketbooks than peace of mind. It’s not the economy, stupid. It’s the security, stupid.

‘Strong Horse Theory’

George W. Bush has a plan to make America more secure against terrorist threats. I call it the “Strong Horse Theory,” named, ironically, by none other than Osama bin Laden. In one of his infamous videotapes, Bin Laden grandiloquently suggests that “the people will follow the strong horse”–the implication being, of course, that he (backed by his radical distortion of peaceful Islam) is that figure. The president, in a sense, has accepted the challenge on the tape, and said to the world that he–in his role as leader of the most powerful democracy in the history of the planet–will be the Strong Horse to keep the peace.

Bush’s view is popular, and probably the only one that would have been politically acceptable to most Americans in the aftermath of 9-11. Democrats paint its mentality as equal parts West Texas, Skull & Bones and the gated community of any wealthy suburb in the country. The president is careful to stress the humanitarian reach of his aims, and he has been drawn much farther into “nation-building” than he ever expected. But the essence and symbol of his approach to the war on terrorism is simple, driven by moral certitude and expressed best by the daisy cutters and Predators that rained down on the Taliban in Afghanistan.

He’s the sheriff–or as we called him on the cover of NEWSWEEK after the elections, TOP GUN.

Democrats Must Play

If you’re the Democrats, how do you outdo that? It’s clear to me that you are going to have to try, in some way, to at least play on that field in 2004. To cede it entirely to the president is to court sure defeat.

The Democrats will have argue, it seems to me, that they have a better–in its own way tougher, or at least more realistic–approach to winning the global war on terror. It can’t be based on talk, but on the promise of action. They’ll try to argue that they understand a diverse world better than the well-meaning but simplistic sheriff; that they can deploy our friends and discern our enemies better; that they can tap new technology and fresh, savvy thinking in academia (which tends to loathe the Bush Crowd). In other words, that they would be a new generation of the best and the brightest. The Democrats might well also argue that they–not the Republicans–know how to make government work, and that the GOP, having created a jumble of new agencies, needs to step aside so a new wave of technocrats can make it work.

To get in this ballgame, some military experience is preferable but not essential. (Bush didn’t have much.) Which of the likely Democratic presidential contenders are likely to go this route, or something like it? Well, Al Gore is if he runs. He is a Vietnam vet, he was a hawk once upon a time (voting for the Persian Gulf War in 1991) and his criticism of the president on Iraq now is not based on pacifism–but on the idea that going to Iraq is a distraction from the real, and tougher theaters of the war on terrorism. He is as techie as they get and a global thinker if there ever was one.

Stealing Lieberman’s Thunder

Sen. Joe Lieberman isn’t a military man, but he has focused on homeland security and terrorism for years. Indeed, the president got behind the creation of a Department of Homeland Security in good measure to take the issue away from Lieberman, who has championed it from the start. Lieberman is known for his tough, uncompromising views on the war, but also for his brains and sophistication.

Perhaps the most intriguing player in this arena–and the clearest echo of Kennedy–is Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts. He saw tough and valorous combat in Vietnam (on a gunboat, no less). In the Senate since 1985, he was one of the first members to focus on terrorism, and has read more diplomatic cables than most secretaries of State. He voted for the Iraq resolution, but makes the case that we have to be smarter as well as stronger. He may not have that exact bumper sticker in 2004, but look for something like it in Iowa and New Hampshire.