POLITICAL POINTS
Dealing in Dirt, Not Issues
From the New York Times
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: September 12, 2004
Democrats say the election is about the economy, and Republicans say it's about national security, but right now the campaign is all about mudslinging. The Republican commercials and convention speeches attacking Mr. Kerry seem to have paid off, and now Democrats are rushing to strike back.
The situation looks familiar to Rick Davis, who managed Senator John McCain's 2000 campaign and watched Mr. Bush come from behind to win the South Carolina primary thanks to a series of personal attacks on Mr. McCain.
"The attacks got us off message, and that's what the Swift Boat ads did to Kerry," Mr. Davis said, referring to the commercials by a group of Navy veterans. "He would have been much better off not spending all that time saying Bush was behind it. But it's hard to be disciplined enough to avoid responding, especially when it's personal."
Attack ads work partly because they attract so much free media attention. But not just any kind of mud will stick, said Darrell West, a political scientist at Brown University and the author of "Air Wars," a study of campaign advertising.
"Mudslinging works best when it taps into existing beliefs among voters," he said. "Attacks must rest on some kernel of truth to be believable."
The first Swift Boat ad attacking Mr. Kerry's record in Vietnam was widely criticized for inaccuracies, but it was followed by a second showing him testifying on Capitol Hill about atrocities "committed on a day-to-day basis" in Vietnam by American soldiers, whom he compared to Genghis Khan.
That was the most devastating ad of the presidential campaign, said Kenneth M. Goldstein, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who directs a group monitoring commercials.
"That ad broke through the clutter and took on Kerry on something he'd spent a couple weeks defining himself on," Professor Goldstein said, referring to Mr. Kerry's image as a war hero surrounded by a "band of brothers" supporting him.
"It wouldn't have worked if it didn't play into the perception, whether true or not, that he is an opportunist and a flip-flopper," he said.
Several experts said Democrats could benefit from going negative against Mr. Bush, but they suggested attacking Mr. Bush's policies rather than his character, which is better-defined in the public mind than Mr. Kerry's. They were generally skeptical, Democrats as well as Republicans, about the efficacy of a new commercial by an independent group, Texans for Truth, questioning whether Mr. Bush shirked National Guard duty during the Vietnam War.
"Does anybody believe that George Bush wasn't a skimmer who got out of the Vietnam War?" said Bill Carrick, a Democratic media consultant who worked on this year's presidential campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt. "The American people have moved beyond that. They don't need to know more details."
