WASHINGTON, 2 October 2004 — After watching 90 agonizing minutes of the Bush-Kerry presidential debate, historian Michael Beschloss commented, “This is not a debate that will change minds.” So isn’t there always a winner and a loser, or at least a draw, in a presidential debate? Not necessarily, but we might want to ask “security moms” what they think.

Political soothsayers delight in dividing American voters into cleverly named segments. For years we have heard the term “soccer moms” who was used to classify suburban moderate women who trucked their kids to soccer matches and generally supported the Clintonesqe positions on issues such as employment, education, health care and the environment. Many of those soccer moms gained new concerns in the post Sept. 11 world.

And the polls began to show those changes, particularly after the terrorist takeover of the Russian elementary school, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of children, and the period around the Republican convention earlier in September.

Following the Republican convention, First Lady Laura Bush made the rounds at least seven campaign stops in key electoral states throughout the nation. Although she acknowledged that education, the economy and health care were important issues, she stressed, “But we grieve for the families in Russia and as we mark the third anniversary of Sept. 11, I believe what’s most important is my husband’s work to protect our country and to defeat terror around the world.”

Mrs. Bush was clearly making a direct appeal to security moms throughout her campaign stops.

Security moms are all those mothers out there who rushed to schools to pick up their children after the Sept. 11 disaster and who now are quoted, like Rochelle Bird, a working mom in California as saying, “When I tuck my daughter in bed at night, I want to know my president is watching my back and keeping me safe. If (our political leaders) are not doing that, what else are they good for?”

This shift in sentiment on the part of women like Bird has apparently affected the gender gap that for so many years has favored the Democrats in the presidential race. For example, during the 2000 presidential election, there was a marked difference in the preferences of male and female voters.

Women favored Al Gore over George W. Bush 54 percent to 43 percent, while men backed Bush 53 percent to 42 percent.

A Sept. 21 poll by Investor’s Business Daily showed the gender gap narrowing. The poll showed Kerry leading Bush 44 percent to 40 percent among women and Bush leading Kerry among men, 49-40. And the poll showed that Bush leads 45 percent to 42 percent among married women. Married women are much more likely to vote than single women and they are also slightly more likely to vote than men.

According to Andy Smith, the director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, “If the Democrats lose 5 percent of the women’s vote, they’ll lose big.”

So how are soccer moms likely to respond Thursday’s presidential debate? Republicans these days seem to know how to play hardball and create trends in their favor in the election cycle. President Bush went on the offensive on the issue of safety and security during the debate. He consistently pointed out that he was fighting the war on terror in Iraq to protect all of us in the United States. He continually made reference to Kerry’s campaign statement that “This is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time” and turned the statement back on Kerry’s “waffling” and his inability to protect us at home. Though Kerry may have “won the debate” in the classical sense, Bush may have won the battle for the security moms’ vote.

Recently, many articles have been written on various academics who emphasize that the Republicans have been winning the battle of “framing” the issues to the American public. Principal amongst those academics is University of California at Berkeley linguistics Professor George Lakoff. Lakkoff maintains that the use of language to frame political debate is key to winning an election.

He starts his model by his explanation of what the two parties stand for and why the gap between liberals and conservatives is as wide as it is.

Basically Lakoff says: “I put in the two different views of the nation, and out popped two different models of the family: A strict father family model and a nurturant parent family.” He goes on to say that the conservative or strict father model contends that the world is a dangerous place because there is evil out there.

There will always be winners and losers in a competitive world and there is an absolute right and wrong. Children are born bad, in the sense that they just want to do what feels good, not what is right. Therefore, they have to be made good.

What is needed in this kind of world is a strong strict father who can protect the family in a dangerous world, support the family in the difficult world and teach the kids right from wrong. Bring on George W. Bush. On the other hand, Lakoff defines political liberals as parents who are equally responsible for raising the children.

The assumption is that children are born good and can be made better. The world can be made a better place and our job is to work on that. The parent’s job is to nurture their children and to raise their children to be nurturers of others. Nurturance is empathy and responsibility.

Therefore, liberals empathize with their children and provide protection from the hazards of life. Furthermore, it is your moral responsibility to teach your child to be a happy fulfilled person who wants others to be happy and fulfilled.

In other words, Lakoff says that while the conservative frame rewards those who succeed where others fail, the liberal frame rewards those who are outraged when others fail. This is very powerful material and might give us better insight into why the Republicans appear to be winning the political battle. George W. Bush came across in the debate as the strict father who can protect his family/nation while John Kerry waffles around on the issues. During the debate, in a point missed by most analysts when the issue of their respective daughters was raised, Bush even said in reference to his girls, “I’m trying to put a leash on them.” Kerry replied, “I’ve learned not to do that.”

So who won the debate might not be nearly as important as who won the vote of the security moms. Was it the strict father who is protecting his innocent children or the dad who just lets his kids do as they please? Ask a security mom who she feels most comfortable with after watching the first presidential debate.

— Dr. Michael Saba is the author of “The Armageddon Network” and is an international relations consultant.