The Town With the Answer Is Undecided

LIBERTY, Mo. —  When pondering the prospect of picking the next president, voter Barbara Lozier was once a self-described ABBie (Anybody But Bush). But now the 47-year-old businesswoman is rethinking the wisdom of choosing a candidate out of mere anger.

If she’s tired of the Texan, the man from Massachusetts remains a mystery.

She wonders whether Sen. John F. Kerry is strong enough to beat President Bush on his own merits, “without the boost of the anti-Bush vote.” Says Lozier: “I don’t know yet.”

This historic Midwestern hamlet is at the epicenter of the brewing political battle over the White House. Liberty is a typical small town in a state that both the Bush and Kerry campaigns say could tip the scale of a close election. And eight months before voters go to the polls, the place is still up for grabs.

In a community equally divided between Democrats and Republicans, many voters are disenchanted with both Bush’s inability to create jobs and U.S. troops’ lingering deployment in Iraq. But they’re also scratching their heads over apparent contradictions in Kerry’s personal resume and his public voting record as a U.S. senator.

Many question how a Vietnam War hero awarded three Purple Hearts could distinguish himself in battle and then return home to criticize his country’s role in the conflict, as Kerry did in 1971. Or, they ask, did he seek to slash intelligence spending in 1995, two years after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, as Bush claimed in a speech last week?

Outside name recognition, Kerry largely remains an enigma to voters here; they know little of his personal past or public voting record. Republicans are primed to fill in the blanks: They’ve cranked up a mammoth national advertising machine to caricature him as another cartoon-like New England liberal who’s weak on defense and incapable of making up his mind on critical issues.

Kerry’s challenge, experts say, is to keep control of his own public image among voters.

Especially in a state like Missouri, which knows how to pick presidents. The Show-Me State has chosen a winner in every election since 1900 except 1956, when it went for Adlai Stevenson over Dwight Eisenhower.

“Missouri’s record in choosing presidents is no fluke,” says University of Missouri political scientist David Robertson. “Its borders touch every region. It reflects the nation’s racial makeup and its economy, from agriculture to the auto industry. It’s a snapshot of America.”

Liberty is itself a national bellwether. The picturesque town, a Kansas City suburb settled in 1817 as a Missouri River frontier post, has picked the winner in every presidential election after 1960, when it preferred Richard Nixon to John F. Kennedy.

Novice voter Dana Cunningham has no such history, but she is still sure still of her instincts.

“The only thing I know about John Kerry is that I don’t like George Bush,” says Cunningham, 21, a waitress at a combination mystery bookstore and cafe called Sherlock’s Home. “What more do I need to know?”

Plenty, says Doug Bratcher. He calls Kerry “a waffler who just can’t get his mind right.”

“Maybe I’m just a dumb hillbilly or maybe he’s not explaining it right, but I don’t have the slightest idea where he stands on anything,” says Bratcher, who builds oak barrels. Kerry, he says, is no substitute for a president with proven governing skills.

“Some folks here would rather vote for the Missouri mule than President Bush,” says Bratcher. “You ask them why and they’ll tell you they hate Bush. But that’s not enough, at least not for me. This Kerry character is an unknown. He’s just one big question mark.”

Bratcher, with his denim overalls and cow-catcher white beard, has a workshop located near the quaint storefronts of Liberty’s historic central square. He’s proud that the town of 26,000 was once known as Little Dixie and that Missouri was a Civil War-era slave state -- so much so that he hangs a Confederate flag in his shop.

Residents didn’t fly Old Glory over the courthouse until 1912, he says, because of lingering resentment over “the damage those Yankee soldiers did” while occupying local William Jewell College in the 1860s.

Liberty now promotes its brick bank -- once robbed by Jesse James -- more than its Confederate history. But the town still identifies with its Southern roots, and voters here say this year’s presidential campaign may be viewed as a choice between an elitist Northerner and a good-old-boy Southerner.

An upscale Clay County seat populated by a mix of lawyers, doctors and college professors, Liberty also has become a popular bedroom community for Kansas City commuters.

The community boasts excellent schools, safe streets and an unemployment rate that’s less than 4%, thanks to such major employers as the nearby Ford Motor Co. plant and a distribution center for Hallmark cards.

Clay County Eastern District Commissioner Craig Porter says the community has mostly held onto its jobs, unlike some other areas of the country.

“We’ve had some job loss, but nothing like they have in other places,” he says. “We just haven’t seen the highs and lows. We’re steady here.”

Many newcomers to Liberty are Republicans who like the small-town atmosphere and who have fought the spread of fast-food chains and mini-malls that have sprung up in nearby towns.

But Republican leanings don’t necessarily translate into support for Bush. Even some of Liberty’s conservatives have problems with him.

Sandy Totes, 65, a saleswoman, is appalled at what she calls his abusive treatment of American troops, who remain in war-torn Iraq on extended, open-ended stays.

“I voted for Bush; shame on me,” she says. “I thought I did good and I didn’t. John Kerry has been to war and knows how terrible it is. He wouldn’t have sent our boys over there like that.”

But for the most part, Liberty voters remain as far apart on the issues as Bush and Kerry themselves.

“My husband and I get into fights all the time,” says Angie Borgedalen, editor of the local Liberty Tribune. “He’s pro-life and an NRA member who thinks George Bush is mandated by God to save babies and protect the right to bear arms.”

For once, Dale Borgedalen agrees with his wife.

“Kerry’s super-liberal, even more than John F. Kennedy. And for me, that doesn’t fly,” says the retired airline mechanic. “The liberals are everything that’s wrong with this country. No matter how Kerry defines himself, he won’t stand a chance against Bush around here.”

And since Liberty can’t count on seeing either presidential candidate in person, residents know their opinions largely will be formed by what they read and see in the media, from newspaper and TV coverage to a barrage of political campaign ads.

It’s that insularity that worries Sara Jo Shettles, the local Democratic Party chairwoman.

She can’t fault Kerry critics who don’t like his politics, but she worries that voters will base their decision on more superficial reasons. She blames TV coverage that she says is more about entertainment than politics.

“I have a 60-year-old friend who voted for Bush in 2000 because she thought he had a cute butt,” she says.

“Too many voters make choices because of a candidate’s looks, whether he appears presidential. And a lot of the problem is that they’re spoon-fed these misleading 10-second blurbs.”

To counter the GOP character assault, Shettles says, Kerry must fight back.

“Too often, Democrats act like wimps -- they’re afraid to take a swing at the other guy’s chin,” she says. “Kerry needs to give as good as he gets if he’s going to win.”

Will Adams, a retired political scientist at William Jewell College, says Kerry needs to explain his apparent about-face on issues from free trade to the war in Iraq -- in fewer words than he’s accustomed to.

“Most politicians aren’t accustomed to being precise,” he says. “It’s easier to give a 50-minute speech than a 10-minute one. And Kerry’s going to have to give 2- or 3-minute insights into his decisions if he is going to connect with voters.”

And, Adams says, Kerry must continue to differentiate his policies with those of Bush -- as Kerry did, for instance, by saying he would have protected elected Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide rather than shuttling him out of the country, as the Bush administration did.

Although Kerry is riding his Democratic primary momentum, Katharine Porter knows the real presidential campaign has just begun. “There are 284 days before the election -- that’s a long time for a politician’s past to resurface,” the local Republican chairwoman said recently.

“Right now, Kerry’s the fair-haired boy taking shots at the president, but he’s got some skeletons in his closet. We’ll find things we can use against him.”

But Judy Evans, who owns an antique store, expects Kerry to hold his own.

“When accused of flip-flopping on issues, he can use the Abraham Lincoln defense,” Evans says.

“Lincoln wasn’t the most attractive man, and he told critics, ‘If I was two-faced, why would I have chosen this one?’

“John Kerry can say the same thing.”