Dean's World

Don't expect August to be the usual semi-political month leading up to a convention — in this case the Republican one: the Bush campaign is ready to take to the hustings by storm.

And they have a clear-cut strategy, according to the New York Times:

President Bush's campaign plans to use the normally quiet month of August for a vigorous drive to undercut John Kerry by turning attention away from his record in Vietnam to what the campaign described as an undistinguished and left-leaning record in the Senate.

Mr. Bush's advisers plan to cap the month at the Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr. Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision.

The summer campaign plans described by aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry, who is in the midst of a two-week cross-country bus tour, suggest that August is no longer the slow and sleepy month it once was in presidential campaigns. Campaign aides described the period this year as an opportunity to shift the dynamic for their campaigns, because the race is so tight and because voters appear to be paying attention to what is going on.


Entering a four week run-up to the unusually late Republican convention, Mr. Bush's aides said they had laid out a week-by-week in plan in which Mr. Bush would talk about his accomplishments and his second-term agenda. But they said they would also try to blunt what Democrats and Republicans said was a successful four-day Democratic convention focused on Mr. Kerry's veteran credentials by turning attention from what they described as his brief four-month tour in Vietnam to his 20 years in Washington.

Part of this strategy sounds smart...and part of it sounds risky since it could turn off swing voters.

And YES surveys not only indicate that they DO exist but they can tilt the balance of the election in a highly polarized and virtually evenly divided electorate...and in key states (so flip comments about "What swing voters??" and "What do they matter — who cares?" are nice to look at but don't have any validity from an analytical standpoint. Do a google search and read serious analysis or talk to any political scientist).
Here's our view:

(1)Kerry's advisors truly must be tone deaf. They let him get up at the convention and make an otherwise well-received speech (well received except by those who already hate or staunchly oppose him) without addressing what is clearly going to be an issue raised in the campaign: his Senate record. It is beyond comprehension that they did not deal with this issue in his acceptance speech. Someone should be fired; if he loses the election this will be why.

(2) The danger for the GOP is that Kerry's supporters could respond by saying: "See? They don't want to talk about the issues." But any candidate's voting record IS an issue. It's the most valid issue in politics....as is the issue of an incumbent president's. Kerry can't skirt his Senate record; the administration has to defend more than it's record on the war on terror.

(3)Making Kerry a figure of "an object of humor and calculated derision" is going to backfire with many voters.

That may play well on the Rush Limbaugh Show (which is increasingly show for true believers only) but for people who are seriously looking at the candidates and working through issues that will smack as personal attack politics. If this is done as heavily as this article suggests — as an actual orchestrated goal of the convention — the Democrats can come back and charge the GOP with not wanting to talk about the administration's record and resorting to personalities.

So it's going to be tricky, even though Karl Rove in the same article talks about a positive approach. And if it isn't a positive approach, look for the Democrats to be jumping down GOP throats via their response squad during thne convention:

"This gives us a chance to lay out an agenda, to tell people what he wants to do over the next four years," said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior political adviser. "We need, as we go into the convention, to put more of an emphasis on our agenda. But we still need to explain the war on terror and we need to offer a contrast with Senator Kerry."

Mr. Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, said: "It's going to be an unusually contested month. What we're going to do is try to continue the momentum we have coming out of the convention."

The Time's article concludes with this paragraph:

Some Democrats and even some Republicans have argued that such attacks have less power than they once did, and could backfire on Mr. Bush.

Another point is this: a lot of what you now see in politics has less to do with traditional ways of communicating messages.

T-shirts, TV/radio ads and websites have replaced the old button as the prime form of political slogangeering. And conventions, which used to be given (boring) gavel to gavel coverage on television are now releated to (boring) hour long programs on broadcast networks. Yes, cable news runs with it but their coverage this year has been dominated by self-absorbed talking anchors and personalities putting on self-absorbed political celebrities from both sides...cutting out what actually goes on at the convention.

So who is all of the convention speechmaking, etc. really aimed at? Ostensibly, at the voters. But if you look at it, most of it is aimed at creating a context for an upcoming campaign in the TRADITIONAL news media — to influence the conventional wisdom about who each candidate it, what each candidate's chances are, and who is ahead.

That's why a convention campaign of humor, derision and sarcasm may provide great sound bites, stir up the GOP faithful, etc. but it could backfire in terms of media reaction (which influences the stories) and the impact on swing voters (who are increasingly sick of personal attack politics unless it's a politico attacking another one's stand on an actual ISSUE...).