Election Section

When the Democratic National convention ended, on July 30, John Kerry had a slight lead in the presidential polls and George Bush had a negative approval rating. By the time the Republican National Convention ended, on Sept. 2, Bush had taken a lead in the polls and had gained a positive approval rating. What happened during the month of August that explains this reversal?  

In a word, Kerry was “Roved.” Bush’s bounce is more about the success of a skillfully orchestrated campaign to discredit Kerry, than it is about voter enthusiasm for his policies. During August, the president’s campaign manager, Karl Rove, launched a four-pronged attack on the challenger, which managed to shift media focus from Bush to Kerry.  

The Republican response to Kerry’s acceptance speech was to assert that he had done nothing as a U.S. senator. Immediately after the convention, every conservative pundit spoke dourly of the “hole” in Kerry’s resume covering the time between his military service in Vietnam and his presidential candidacy. The Kerry campaign failed to point out that he has had a solid career in the senate, most notably as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and as an expert on affordable housing, energy and the environment. 

Next came an avalanche of negative e-mails. In the fall of 2003, word circulated that Karl Rove had used some of the formidable Bush reelection war chest to build an e-mail list of over five million names. (To put this in perspective, MoveOn is said to have an e-mail list about one-third this size.) Once Kerry’s nomination was assured, the Republicans began to use this to circulate “flame-mail” aimed at Kerry. Many of these missives accused him of a consistently anti-defense voting record. (The guts of Zell Miller’s speech at the Republican convention attacking Kerry were lifted directly from one of these flamers—“As a senator, he voted to weaken our military.”) The Kerry campaign failed to make clear that all of the weapons systems that Kerry was said to vote again were part of a single 1990 appropriations bill—that then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney lobbied against because it was loaded with pork. 

The third prong of the attack on Kerry was an effort to blur the distinction between his position on Iraq and that of the president. Bush challenged Kerry as to whether he would have voted the way he did, in the fall of 2002, if he had known that no weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. Kerry answered foolishly. Where he could have simply dodged the question and said that the war was a mistake, he responded that he would have approved giving Bush the power to go to war. Bush immediately declared that he and Kerry had the same position about the war. The Kerry campaign failed to make the case that Bush was distorting Kerry’s response.  

The final prong of the attack was the notorious swift-boat ads. Presidential adviser Karen Hughes first voiced the charges that Kerry’s Vietnam medals were undeserved during her spring book tour. During the same period, a friend sent me a flamer from the Rove e-mail network that repeated these charges. Apparently this was the “test marketing” period, because the swift-boat accusations dominated the media during the bulk of August. 

These attacks featured two television ads accusing Kerry of misconduct during active duty and of undermining the war effort by his leadership of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Republicans unleashed a media blitz to ensure that the public was aware of the ads and the simultaneous publication of a scurrilous attack on Kerry, Unfit for Command. The swift-boat strategy culminated in the convention speech of Dick Cheney who repeated the charge that Kerry was unfit for command. 

Given the ferocity of these attacks it comes as no surprise that Kerry’s poll numbers have shrunk. But this does not mean that the election is over, rather that the campaign battle lines are clearly drawn; the remaining 50-plus days will be as much about presidential ethics as about policies. 

What should Democrats do to turn the tide before Nov. 2? You and I can turn our disgust and anger into action; a good place to start is volunteering. Check out www.kerrynorcal.com. 

The Kerry campaign must make dramatic changes. To shift media focus back to failed Bush policies, Kerry needs to go on the attack. He should abandon “nuance” and speak directly about his policies that offer real alternatives to those of the Bush administration. He must assail the methods of the Bush campaign, their reliance on lies and distortions. Obviously the Kerry campaign must develop a capacity for rapid response to whatever new negative attacks are unleashed by Karl Rove.  

The majority of voters are not enthusiastic about Bush, but they don’t know John Kerry; they haven’t accepted him as the replacement for an incumbent president. The challenger has a reputation as a battler, as somehow who shows his true mettle when he is behind. Now is the time for Kerry to earn this reputation, and convince voters that he is fit for command.