Rather than getting bogged down in debate over Iraq, health care, taxes, or that other thing… what was it?… oh yeah, that thing nobody talks about anymore… used to be important… the thingamajig… environment… that’s it, the environment. Anyway, rather than get all tangled up talking about that stuff, a lot of media attention’s been focussed on the Bush campaign’s “Wolf” ad.

The Bush camp seems to think they’ve stumbled upon their equivalent of the LBJ “Daisy” ad, a devastatingly scary attack on the possible consequences of voting for Kerry. Wolves, big toothy wolves, waiting around for the first sign of weakness from their prey.

I’m not sure it’s going to be as effective as its makers hope - the American people aren’t all that good at metaphors. The Bush camp really ought to recut the ad to show us the wolves developing weapons of mass destruction in their den, heading to a nearby city, and snickering while they set off a homemade thermonuclear device. That would scare me. Wolves are extremely clever, after all, and I’m pretty sure that they hate freedom. Science has yet to prove definitively that wolves aren’t muslims, either. So an ad featuring wolves with turbans and nukes, high-fiving (or “fouring”) each other at the news of a Kerry victory, now that would scare me.

The Kerry people think that the ad won’t be too effective for the simple reason that the wolves are… kinda cute. They may have a point there - Americans are especially sensitive to cuteness. If Osama bin Laden looked more like Snoopy, we’d probably have given him everything he’s asked for by now and be reimbursing him for those 19 plane tickets.

And those wolves do look pretty cuddly. Whatever Karl Rove was thinking about appealing to our “reptile brains,” he probably should have picked a less adorable and furry metaphorical foe. In the 21st century, wolves are very low on the list of voters’ concerns, ranked just above the whatchamacallit… that thing… rhymes with “retirement…” oh yeah, the “environment.”

Me, I think the wolves are a brilliant metaphor, just not the one that the administration intends. With this ad, the administration is quite literally “crying wolf.” That’s just perfect. Because if the CIA walks into the Oval Office tomorrow morning and offers incontrovertible intelligence that Iran is just weeks away from developing nuclear, chemical, and zoological weapons and that they intend to immediately blow up Israel, Baghdad, and Chicago, and Bush takes said intelligence to NATO, the UN, and the American people… there’s not going to be much support for a preemptive invasion. Most folks, even Bush’s supporters, will say, “WMD’s? That’s what you said last time. Maybe we oughta bag that whole preemption idea for now and settle for some good ol’ fashioned emption when the time comes. Can’t beat emption, that’s how we always did it in the past, yessiree…”

Bush often says, with regard to terrorism, that “we have to be right 100% of the time.” With our whole preemptive war doctrine, we’ve been right, give me a second… roughly 0% of the time. 0 for 1. So “pre-emption” isn’t likely to work next time as a rationale for war. We’ve already cried wolf once, loud and long, and we were wrong. So the real test in the coming months, should Bush win, is if the post-war explanation for Iraq is going to work in a pre-war context for Iran or North Korea or wherever…

“My fellow Americans, diplomacy has failed. The people of Iran still aren’t free. And they long to be free. So we’re going in.”

No, come to think of it, he should probably stick to wolves.