February 21, 2004
KERRY VS. KERRY:
Kerry's Past to Star in Bush's Ads: Reelection Team Says Democrat's 32-Year Career Is Rich in Ammunition (Howard Kurtz, February 20, 2004, Washington Post)
President Bush's reelection campaign has decided to focus its coming advertising barrage not only on John F. Kerry's record as a senator but also on his days as an antiwar activist, a House candidate and Massachusetts's lieutenant governor."The beauty of John Kerry is 32 years of votes and public pronouncements," said Mark McKinnon, the chief media adviser. McKinnon suggested a possible tag line: "He's been wrong for 32 years, he's wrong now."
Campaign officials said in interviews that they plan substantial positive advertising about the president, focused on his proposals rather than accomplishments, when they begin spending tens of millions of dollars on the airwaves next month. But they made it clear that many of the ads will accuse the Democratic front-runner of "hypocrisy," in McKinnon's word, in part by reaching back into his early career. [...]
While the Bush camp is sitting on a $100 million war chest, strategists plan to target the ad blitz to fewer than 20 states -- such as Florida, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, New Hampshire and New Mexico -- that were most closely contested in 2000.
By taking the rare step of preparing for a general-election ad blitz five months before the party conventions, the Bush team is following the lead of President Bill Clinton, whose early 1996 commercials helped frame the election by tying GOP nominee Robert J. Dole to unpopular House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The Bush ads would air at a time when Kerry may lack the resources to effectively respond, and in any event the money must be spent before the fall, when both nominees will be limited to $75 million in public financing. [...]
The Republican National Committee, which is sitting on more than $30 million, could join in the aerial assault on Kerry, but officials there said no decision has been made. The Democratic National Committee has raised about two-thirds of the $15 million it hopes to spend on ads to help Kerry counter the Bush barrage.
The real beauty is that you can co-opt Senator Kerry into your argument by making ads that feature him taking the opposite position to the one that's popular now on every issue and then forcing him to repdiate himself. It's sublime.
Posted by Orrin Judd at February 21, 2004 2:18 PM
They're missing the boat with their theme. It should be:
John F. Kerry ... Ted kennedy with a fresh liver!
Copywrite: Orrin Judd
Posted by: Genecis at February 21, 2004 2:40 PMHere's my entry:
John F. Kerry - He's just like Ted Kennedy except the only girls Kerry murdered were in Vietnam, not Chappaquiddick.
Is that a tad harsh?
Posted by: Governor Breck at February 21, 2004 4:14 PMAccording to Hugh Hewitt, there is an NBC video of Kerry on Meet the Press in August 1971 that Tim Russert has allegedly said will not see the light of day.
Now, wouldn't excerpts of that alone make a good commercial (like Howard Dean dissing the Iowa caucuses)?
I have always thought more of Russert than this. If any network had any snippet of President Bush saying anything remotely political in 1971, we would have seen it already (ad nauseum).
Posted by: jim hamlen at February 21, 2004 9:03 PMI'm worried. I think they are going after the wrong target. I think it will be John Edwards. Do they have anything on him?
Posted by: Jana at February 21, 2004 10:27 PMJana:
Plenty.
However, that seems a very remote possibility. Kerry would have to crumble about as quickly and completely as Dean did, if Edwards is to be the nominee.
Jana:
And what they don't have on Edwards reflects not his unassailability but his inexperience. Who is John Edwards and what has he done to earn your confidence that he can step into the role of leader of the free world. The man brings to the table the inexperience of a fractional senator (not the freshness), with the stink of inside the Beltway special interests.
Posted by: MG at February 22, 2004 8:48 AM