You can tell that the elections are coming up — the Bush team is beginning to move to the offensive. On Sunday, Condoleeza Rice tore into Bill Clinton’s recent defense of his administration’s policy toward terrorism. Monday, Dick Cheney strongly criticized various Democratic figures for their positions on terrorism, national security, and Iraq. He managed to portray Democrats in general (and a number of important national figures in particular) as being inherently weak on matters of vital importance to the country.
This aggressive posture is clearly a support for Republican efforts in the 2006 election. The Democrats have enough weak points (and more importantly, points where they seem to be weak) for the administration to be able to gain some ground with a solid and well-coordinated offensive. Expect various other administration officials (such as Tony Snow) to also crank up the public pressure on the Democrats, while Bush remains more focused on illustrating his own position on the topics where the Democrats are being shown as weak. The plan is likely to be that Bush will be the standard-bearer for the Republican platform (a job which the President is naturally suited for), while his administration carries out the criticism — that way, Bush and his policies look good, and it does not appear that he’s trying to personally attack the Democrats to make them appear so. Negative press can backfire, tarnishing the criticizer as well as the criticized, and the White House seems to be consciously avoiding this.
The timing of this offensive is also pretty good. While a far more aggressive campaign of this sort could be waged, it could also not be sustained until November. This type of higher-level criticism can easily be maintained for the six weeks leading up to the election without looking like a smear job. At the same time, six weeks is a long enough time to actually maneuver public opinion. Opinion (particularly on a broad scale like this) takes a while to influence, but an increased effort like this should be able to make a reasonable difference over the coming weeks.
On the whole, the current White House strategy on the election (which I would presume was dreamed up by Karl Rove) shows a good deal of intentional planning and preparation. It remains to be seen, however, how well this particular battle will be carried out.