February 2004

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There He Goes Again

Kerry's "Benedict Arnold" line backfires

Get used to it: John Kerry crafts a "message" that hits George Bush where he lives, only to see its impact dampened by the inconvenient disclosure that Kerry lives there too.

You may recall that one of the staples of Kerry's stump talk has been an attack on corporate "Benedict Arnolds" who ship jobs overseas and deploy offshore tax dodges. But as Jim VandenHei writes in the Washington Post, Kerry's chief supporters include people guilty of those very sins.

Kerry's position as an anti-big business warrior isn't likely to get any better. The Democrats are presently at a dire disadvantage in raising funds from the usual corporate suspects, which is one reason they have finally stooped to soliciting "the people" again. Most wealthy donors are not Republican ideologues, however; Bush has been a fantastic boon to them, but they're in the business of playing percentages. The longer Kerry's poll numbers stay strong, the more big money will hedge in his direction, pressing him to make himself ever more indistinct from Bush. 

Glorious, I tell you, simply glorious.

Posted by Steve Perry at February 26, 2004 8:55 PM

 

Talking to Ralph on the Big White Phone

BW Readers: Beating Bush Matters, But...

From obeygiant.com

There was an extensive, impassioned, and quite thoughtful response to my call for reactions on the Nader question. I was a little surprised at the volume of mail in support of his candidacy--more specifically, I was taken aback at the number of people who have trouble swallowing Kerry even in the face of Bush. I don't think their concerns are unreasonable. There's no harm in pausing to revisit the question of whether or not it really is important to mount a Popular Front against W. 

I'm planning to take up the subject here soon. Your thoughts appreciated, too, as always. 

Read the Nader letters.

Posted by Steve Perry at February 26, 2004 7:36 PM

 

BW Readers on the Meaning of Nader

 

Alex here, local pundit from Planetarium, and we have an interesting debate going on about Nader's reasons, but I think the gist of it was expressed by a friend of mine last night at the Turf Club: "I watched Nader the other night on Meet the Press, and speaking as someone who hated him during and after the 2000 election for screwing it all up, I can honestly say I've never liked the man more." Meaning, essentially, that simply declaring gives him the chance to go on the same show Bush totally fucked up not 2 weeks previous, and say that he think Bush should be impeached. It gives him some of the same media access that the far right takes for granted, and can really only help Kerry.

Alex McCown 

 

 

I don't know how to answer your question of whether Nader's candidacy is going to mean a damn thing, nor do I mean to tell you that I think you're wrong. But my question for you is, what does it mean for our country and the future, when Nader and Kucinich are dead-on on the issues, and their fates are 1-2 percent. 

 

Tracy McClellan

 

 

 In the sixties I saw a lot of "Burned up your draft card? Well, I burned down my draft board!" There was a lot of moral one-upmanship. Ralph seems to suffer  from that  same ailment. As a result he has lost the distinction between having a right to run (which he does) and what the tactical results of what such a run may mean. He does have some good ideas about making our house a better place to live in  but the problem is that right now the house is on fire.  I voted Nader in 2000. Not this time, Ralph.

Robert McDonald  

 

 

First, I think it depends a lot on media exposure (just like in Kucinich's case).  Campaign successes such as fundraising, organizing, and getting on the ballot in all fifty states could help grab Ralph a few extra headlines.  The longshot of being included in the Presidential Debates, I think, would put him squarely in the public eye.  Aside from Nader's campaign savvy (or lack thereof), it'll be up to the media (and their corporate ownership) to decide how much coverage he gets.  In that case, I don't think it will mean a damn thing.

 

But second, I think Nader thinks he's got something to gain from standing out there and trying to rake in true fiscal conservatives as well as more moderate Republicans scared either by Bush's incredible spending record or his militaristic adventurism.  Further--I live in Birmingham, AL and am the only liberal I know, but I don't know ANYONE who doesn't hate "the man" and gripe about corporate control over our lives.  This appears to be Nader's central issue:  corporate control of both the Republican and Democratic parties.

 

And, though I don't know how I'll ultimately vote, I think he's right.  Enough is enough.  There is a good article on today's counterpunch (which, incidentally, is how I first found your indispensable blog) by Douglas O'Hara worth reading.  Like Nader said, there will never be a "right time" or a "safe time" to stand out and demand more in politics.  O'Hara makes the point that we've been through this whole "anybody but Bush" thing before.

 

Thanks for soliciting my opinion.  I'm no political savant, but it's nice to be asked (Kerry and Edwards have never asked me what I think about anything, and no one from Headquarters Kucinich has ever responded to any of my letters or e-mails; we'll see whether Campaign Nader does...).

 

Thanks also for your blog--I really enjoy it.  I, too, fear the electoral college debacle--and I'm not willing to rest easy in the airing of the many still-buried scandals you have previously mentioned.  Who knows, though?  Maybe Bush will get his "windowshield so full of flags" that the chauffeur, blinded, will run the bulletproof caddy right into the tree of democracy.  Like you, I'm on Zogby (with fear and trembling).  But, hey--part of Nader's platform is a federal elections system, right?  ;)

 

Regards,

 

Landon Stubblefield

You asked for thoughts about Nader, so here's mine: No, I don't think Nader's participation will affect things this election. The people who want Bush out on his ass will be too scared of doing anything to interfere with that, no matter how much they despise the current Democratic "leadership." And from what I've seen there is now plenty of crossover between folks who don't like (or even out-and-out hate) Nader, and those who loathe the DNC & the DLC.

The only thing I can see affecting the Dems' chances is the very real possibility that Kerry's campaign will make Michael Dukakis look like a two-fisted He-man by comparison. If that happens - and I can see it happening very easily - people may be so truly disgusted by the Dems that they'll consider an alternative if it's offered. But then, they risk Bush snatching the Presidency again, this time legitimately. So it's a pickle.

As for Nader's motives, I honestly think it's just that he's pissed at the Dems (with good reason) and that he wants a genuine alternative available come Election Day. It's as simple as that. Strategically, this may not inspire confidence if your only concern is getting rid of Bush, but I can't find it in me to condemn the man. I'm furious at the Democrats myself; Tom Daschle's most recent verbal blowjob to Bush was delivered on practically the same day as Nader's announcement that he will indeed run this year. Talk about ironic timing. I find the entire situation to be a clusterfuck: If I could, I would almost certainly vote for the Democratic candidate this time out (I'm Canadian, so I can't), because Bush and his gang of thugs are genuinely that bad; but the DNC/DLC is just as bad in their way.

My main worry is that the Dems will blow it entirely on their own, and they'll use Nader as a scapegoat again, which the rank & file will be happy to go along with. That's what we saw in 2000, after all. I don't think Nader should give the DNC such an opportunity, but I doubt such calculations entered into his decision to run. And even if he did elect to bow out this year, the Dems would probably just scapegoat some other handy target, and Howard Dean looks to me like an excellent candidate for that position. (Whether they could pull that off is another question, but I don't doubt that they'd try.)

Regards,

John Dorrian

 

You're right, Nader's impact will be minimal. I strongly supported him in 2000 (here in California, very conscious of Gore's big lead). I won't even consider him this year. I would have voted for Lieberman before Nader this year...

 

Zeb Norris

 

Don't mean a thing.

Thomas R. Belfield

 

Posted by Steve Perry at February 26, 2004 5:57 PM

 

Watching Scotty Growl

General McClellan versus the press corps

I've fallen out of the habit of reading the White House press briefings every day, but Jeff St. Clair at Counterpunch sent along the Tuesday transcript, which finds Scott McClellan in fine near-hysterical form. But notice, too, that practically the entire exchange is taken up with gay marriage. Score one for the White House: Any day that Bush and his record are not the story is a good day for them.

PS: Here's a special treat for you BW readers: Visit Scott's dad's webpage. 

PPS: Terry McAuliffe to step down as DNC chair next year. (Courtesy of Mark Gisleson at Norwegianity--and don't be scared of the phallic flag on the logo; he's just glad to see you.)

Posted by Steve Perry at February 26, 2004 9:49 AM

 

Question of the Day

Where should the Dems hit Bush next?

I want to thank everybody who responded to the Nader query the other day. I'll post a selection of the responses tomorrow.

Meantime, something else for you to consider. I'm working on a piece that will update my Bush Lies package from last summer. The question is, which scandals/misdeeds do you think Kerry and the Democrats ought to press hardest in the campaign? (Accompanying links appreciated but not necessary.)

Write me here. As before, I'll include a list of reader acknowledgments by name with the story when it runs.

Posted by Steve Perry at February 26, 2004 9:01 AM

 

Tangled Up in Red and Blue

Bush may trail in national polls, but beware the electoral college

Will Bush's flag decal still get him into Heaven?

Among my own acquaintances, at least, I've noticed a new polarity lately between folks who still presume Bush cannot lose and others who think he's already beaten. They're both wrong--but the latter more palpably. Look past the national poll numbers that put Kerry 6-10 points ahead. On a state-by-state basis, W is still in a surprisingly strong position despite the many hits he's taken recently.   

Late last week Zogby released a poll that broke down Bush v. Kerry on the basis of 2000 results. In the Blue states won by Gore then, Zogby's numbers have Kerry up 46-45, a statistical dead heat. In the Red states that went for Bush before, he leads Kerry 51-39. Needless to say, this is markedly at odds with what other polls seem to be saying, but I'll take Zogby, who performed best not only in the waning days of the 2000 race but so far in this winter's primaries. It only underscores how absurd it was for Democrats to flock to Kerry over electability: There are half a dozen reasons Edwards would fare better in a number of southern and midwestern battleground states.

But every time I get myself halfway convinced that John Kerry could not win without a miracle, the armored doors of Bunker 1600 slide open and out rolls another stink bomb. The White House has already conceded that its forecast of 2.6 million new jobs created in 2004 is of dubious provenance--Chalabi again, perhaps?

It's become one of the cliches of the hour that Republicans are "scared," but Republicans--at least the ones who live in the Big House--are also being awfully stupid in a tactical sense. Last Friday Howard Kurtz reported that the Bush campaign will indeed sell the "Massachusetts liberal" and "Vietnam radical" lines hard against Kerry. I don't think very many people care to hear either. Maybe Karl Rove is privy to polling data that suggests it will make a difference in a couple of close states, but it's a little too early for fine-tuning the message to that degree. The only other sensible reason for going after Kerry on these grounds is to turn voters off and depress turnout--but again, I don't think it will work on a retail-politics basis. The epithet "liberal" has lost a lot of its sting while no one was looking, and Kerry's Vietnam record only begets other questions distinctly more unflattering to the president than to Kerry.

The more pressing question for Bush is whether he can arrest his own free-fall. If the Democrats and the media keep after him, it's hard to see any answer but "No." Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center confessed the other day, "I'm a little surprised by how negative people are toward Bush personally," and most of the chattering class seems similarly caught out. And it may keep spiraling down; there's an abundant store of scandals in the cellar (I suggested a few here), and at some point even "strong" Bush supporters--some 83 percent of his backers, according to a WashPost poll I wrote about last week--will begin to tune out or turn elsewhere.  

Nor are skeptics and undecideds likely to find the programmatic side of Bush's campaign inspirational: It's all tax cuts and terrorism. He doesn't exactly say, "If you roll back the tax cuts, then the terrorists win," but that's the spirit of the thing. Awfully thin gruel. But what else has he got to tout?

I watched Bush's speech tonight, and while I like to think I'm pretty good at casting a dispassionate eye toward political elocution, I could see nothing in it to excite anyone's imagination--not even the traditional GOP base, much less the fence-sitters. The big line near the end was, "We'll defend America, whatever it takes." I'm telling you, people don't want to hear that shit anymore. In pushing the memory of 9/11, Bush is leaning on glories that feel like ancient history now. More recent disasters, and mainly economic ones, are the lingua franca this season.

Obligatory Nader Survey

Do you really think this is going to mean a damn thing? My own sense is that no one is going to pay attention. Witness the fate of Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic primaries. Not just partisans but onlookers are focused exclusively on the main event this time. But tell me if you think I'm wrong, and tell me what you think Nader is thinking.

   

Posted by Steve Perry at February 23, 2004 8:58 PM

 

Bush v. Bush

[Excerpted from "50,000,000 Kerry Fans Can't Be Wrong," City Pages 2/11/04]

No matter how low the approval ratings go, a vast number of anti-Bush folk remain absolutely, fatalistically convinced the White House will find a way to pull out the election. Or steal it, as they did last time. One can't fault them for thinking that this is the most cutthroat bunch of political operators to soil the Oval Office rugs in a long time. On the popular question of whether there will be an October Surprise--a sudden crisis or breakthrough of apparently spontaneous origin that is in fact politically manipulated--the smart-money answer is plain: Only if they can arrange one. Osama naturally looms largest. There are those who believe US intelligence already has a pretty good idea of his whereabouts and is keeping one eye on his movements and the other on the calendar, and they are not just the usual paranoid crowd. This is mainstream cocktail party chatter now. One way of expressing Bush's present crisis is to say that a lot of average people seem prepared to believe he'd do just about anything to stay in power.

But wanting an October coup, finding one, and executing it are three distinctly different things. Popular liberal mythology has visited on Bush and Rove an almost supernatural air of invincibility. It's silly. If Karl Rove is really the Great Gazoo of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, able to bend political reality to his will by sheer force of mind, then tell me again how his boss got in trouble in the first place. The website Pollkatz maintains a tracking chart of Bush's approval ratings (see illustration page 22). The tale they tell is one of steady erosion punctuated by three events that buoyed Bush's numbers: 9/11, the start of the Iraq war, and the capture of Saddam. But the bang afforded by Bush's triumphs and crises has diminished with each succeeding wave. For a White House that is said to be "all politics all the time," and run by a genius to boot, it's a paltry record.

Last Sunday's Meet the Press showed how quickly and profoundly the earth has moved under Bush's feet. Just a couple of weeks ago, charges that Bush was a Vietnam-era deserter from his National Guard unit were quite beyond the pale. Shortly after Michael Moore re-aired the claim at a Wesley Clark rally, I saw Peter Jennings inform Clark that the allegations were baseless en route to asking how the candidate could fail to repudiate them. On Sunday, one of the pooh-bahs of broadcast news, Tim Russert, was sitting in the Oval Office grilling Bush about it. Near the end, Russert held up a chart with data on unemployment (up 33 percent under Bush), economic contraction (2.2 million jobs lost), and the federal deficit ($521 billion next year alone), and said to the president of the United States, in essence, What the fuck?

Weighed against the servility of most press interactions with Bush, Russert's brusqueness came as a shock--but not as great a shock as W's own demeanor. Bush looked disconsolate and distracted. ("Was he medicated?" a friend called to ask afterward. "Is he into the old man's Halcion?") He barely bothered parrying the National Guard question--"I put in my time, proudly so," he croaked--and his famous pugnacity was nowhere in evidence. If the interview had aired in prime time and not on Sunday morning, it might have dropped another 5 to 10 points from his approval rating all by itself. If Bush ever comes this close to his own version of The Scream when people are actually watching, it's big trouble.

The National Guard question is a window on the world of hurt Bush could be in for if Kerry and the Democrats decide to run a serious campaign for once. Claims that Bush never bothered showing up at his Alabama Guard unit have circulated for years. It is widely perceived to be one of those he said-she said matters that can never be settled conclusively owing to missing attendance records. But a blogger named Phil Carter has pointed out at least three other means by which Bush's active duty could be verified: military pay records, military retirement points, and personal income tax records. It's an answerable question that no one has ever pressed seriously. (Of course we already know the answer: If a shred of paper that vindicated Bush existed anywhere, Team W would have produced it in 2000 to lay the subject to rest.)

There is the story of Bush II writ small: He has been "invincible" to the exact extent that the whole political apparatus has remained unwilling to challenge him. If that is really changing now, a rich vein of scandals awaits unpacking, starting with the terms of Bush's 2000 win: the chicanery at numerous levels in Florida, the scandalous 5-4 Supreme Court vote from which two pro-Bush justices should have recused themselves. (Scalia and Thomas had family members who worked for the Bush campaign.) The lies and intelligence manipulations leading to the Iraq invasion are a lode unto themselves. The ongoing 9/11 investigation, and Bush's efforts to stonewall it at every turn, contains enough explosive material to dominate the news cycle for weeks. Unofficially, it's already clear (from leaks and from the strategic excisions in the congressional 9/11 report) that Bush did receive notice in pre-9/11 briefings of a possible imminent attack on US soil involving Saudi nationals--and, most likely for political reasons concerning US ties to the House of Saud, did nothing. This is not the same as saying Bush "knew" about the attacks, but it smacks of appalling negligence and cronyism--two great themes of the Bush administration, and, one hopes, of Kerry's stump speeches.

The handling of pre-9/11 warnings, in turn, could pave the way for a more comprehensive look at all the ways the administration has been cynical and unserious about homeland security. And we have yet to mention the economy and the deficit. In that connection, one of the most telling lines in Bush's poll chart is the one that's not there. W has never earned a significant bounce in public esteem for anything he's done on the home front.

If attacks on Bush's credibility and performance stay at critical mass for very long--the Republicans desperately need a Kerry scandal--it will upset the White House's entire reelection strategy. It's no secret that Rove means to position Bush as a resolute, in-command war president. But when the Republicans scheduled their three-hanky telethon for New York in September, they could not have anticipated a climate in which the Democratic nominee might be able to stand up and say: "Mr. Bush, it is offensive to see you wrap yourself in the memory of a tragedy that you might have prevented for the sake of your own political gain."

It's early. A dozen things could happen to change the campaign landscape overnight. But for the first time it seems more than plausible that it will be a long, hot summer for Bush--possibly to be followed by a long, hot winter back in Crawford, Texas.

Posted by Steve Perry at February 23, 2004 7:56 PM

 

Yes, Virginia, John Edwards Does Take Pisses

Scholastic News breaks it all down for you

Remember this name: Ben Silberman.

Silberman is a 12-year-old reporter for Scholastic News who attended the John Edwards appearance in St. Paul yesterday and stayed for the "press avail" held afterward for us honorary members of the political establishment. It was young Ben who delivered the definitive verdict on the event and on Campaign 2004.

My City Pages colleague Paul Demko likewise attended, and files this note:

"Probably the most illuminating comment came from a 12-year-old reporter for Scholastic News. Upon word that the candidate was using the john, the kid said:  'I didn't know he was allowed to use the bathroom.' It kind of gets at the android-like qualities of the man, with his unwavering hair and perfect skin. Edwards answered four questions, two of which were from the scholastic news kid, and then was ushered away by his press people. 

"Incidentally, the print and TV media were cordoned off into separate rooms. Edwards answered questions for the TV folks first and then gave us five minutes. 'There are two press corps in America,' one of his campaign people quipped. Undoubtedly true."

One reason I love kid-reporter Silberman's observation so much is that it also underscores something that occurred to me months ago when Arnold Schwarzenegger was being elected. The point isn't that celebrity trumps politics; the point is that politicians have become an exotic subspecies of the genus Celebrity, as remote and exquisitely unreal as all the other celebs in the world if only occasionally as interesting. They're People On TV.

Posted by Steve Perry at February 22, 2004 1:08 PM

 

Kerry: Going All Soft?

Edwards gives good exit polling

But is it too little too late?
(from Edwards campaign website)

It's only a single day's tidings, but Democrat watchers in search of something interesting to talk about are making a fuss over John Edwards's late surge in Wisconsin. William Saletan at Slate has a detailed breakdown of how Kerry and Edwards have performed with independents and crossover Republicans in states whose primaries let them participate.

A couple of things seem evident. One, John Kerry has imbued Democratic regulars with the mystical faith that he is the most "presidential" and "electable" (scroll down to yesterday's post for a note on the latter) candidate of the lot. Yet many of them are not all that keen on him themselves. Saletan writes, "the exit polls show that, by and large, Democrats aren't voting for Kerry because they prefer him on the issues. They're voting for him because they think he's the Democrat most likely to beat Bush. What happens if they find out he isn't? What happens if they realize that Edwards is doing as well as Kerry among independents and is doing better than Kerry among crossover Republicans?"

Two, in states where Edwards has spent serious face time, he seems to have broader appeal outside the Democrats' core. He connects better on issues surrounding the economy, which will come more prominently to the fore after the fervor to find a candidate to beat Bush has passed. And his five-year Senate record offers a less sizeable target than Kerry's 19-year file. 

Are the Democrats awakening from their fever dreams of electability? And are they about two weeks too late? Tell me. I'll post some of the responses later.    

Posted by Steve Perry at February 18, 2004 3:57 PM

 

Kerry 1, Drudge 0

But it's still the first inning

Yes, this is really a featured download at
johnkerry.com

Well, that was strange: Just hours after the Murdoch UK tabloid The Sun posted the most concrete hint yet of big sex troubles for John Kerry, the woman of the hour finally emerged to deny that any affair ever took place. And Alex Polier's parents added their pledge to vote for Kerry even though her father had been quoted last week as opining that Kerry was a "sleazeball." As Churchill observed, "There is nothing more exhilirating than to be shot at and missed," and today Kerry has a fresh reminder of what he meant. Now that the first putative "crisis" of his campaign has passed, let's review the landscape, starting with the obvious.

Parsing Polier: Naturally, Republicans were disappointed. Rush Limbaugh had a very predictable fit over the Poliers' statements, and closed by sputtering--oh, just guess--that they "raised more questions than they answered."

He meant to imply that dark doings of some sort had colored the parents' revised opinion of Kerry. I doubt that, but their statement was curious. Last week Polier's father, Terry, told reporters, "I did kind of wonder if my daughter didn't get that kind of feeling [that Kerry was a sleazeball] herself... He's not the sort of guy I would choose to be with my daughter." And today he and wife Donna said, "We appreciate the way Senator Kerry has handled the situation, and intend on voting for him for president of the United States."

How did Kerry "handle the situation"? All he did publicly was to deny a liaison, which was entirely in his own self-interest--and hardly a gesture that seems likely to assuage parents who resented him for drawing public attention to their daughter in the first place. What does it mean? Maybe nothing; maybe just that they're glad it's over and want everybody to go away. Or perhaps Kerry was gracious toward the family in some private way.

But read the parents' words again: It practically sounds as if it was Kerry who had Polier at a disadvantage, and not the other way around. Which in turn makes one wonder whether there are aspects to the story that might have proven unflattering to Alex Polier as much or more than to John Kerry.

It looks like Polier's role in Kerry's campaign is over, but I wouldn't be surprised if we learn there's more to the tale of Polier and her connection to the Kerry camp. For one thing, The Sun article was emphatic that she had taped some sort of television interview about Kerry, and even quoted an anonymous network source describing how badly she wanted to tell her story. Now all that may be wholly fabricated, but if so it would be a fairly remarkable thing for even the worst tabloids to be so reckless in this litigious age. I'm assuming there was some basis for the initial uproar, even if inferences of an affair were wrong--any pro knows that wholly baseless allegations taint the accuser with time and are therefore best saved for the 11th hour.

Bush's Guard troubles: Ever since Kerry took command of the Democratic race, I have been waiting for him to turn back into John Kerry, a guy who historically has been not just "another Washington insider" but an exceptionally cheesy and prosaic one who followed much more than he led. But Kerry has been awfully canny so far. His Monday pronouncement that everybody ought to stop looking so hard at Bush's Guard records was impeccably timed: The point has been made, and there was danger of a Bush-symp backlash if the Dems pushed that line much harder at this juncture.

Is Kerry's "electability" a mirage?: The Economist put it best in their February 7 issue: "Electability is a will o' the wisp idea. Voters are choosing a candidate not because they like him, but because they think other people do. And that raises doubts about how solid Mr. Kerry's support is." Do tell: According to a Washington Post poll released last week, Kerry led Bush 52-43--but 83 percent of Bush backers said their support was "strong," compared to 59 percent for Kerry. That suggests that the Republicans' attack ads will cut deeper than the Democrats'--and there's every reason to think this will be the nastiest presidential campaign of the media age. 

The Mother of all Direct Mail Campaigns: You may have noticed the small buzz over an anti-Kerry commercial titled "Unprincipled, Part 1," that Republicans emailed to supporters earlier this month. (You can see it here, at the Bush-Cheney reelection page.) It's quite effective, really, and underlines some of the weaknesses in Kerry that I discussed in my 2/11 City Pages feature. (Small wonder that Kerry, as GOP mouthpiece Bob Novak wrote last week, is the Democrat "Republican heavy thinkers"--we know who that is, right?--deemed their second-favorite choice for a Democratic nominee, after Dean.) Republican officials said the spot or one like it would eventually be aired on TV.

So the Republicans sneak-peeked a TV ad on the Internet; so what? This is what:

a) Direct mail has long been the nastiest and least scrutinized aspect of national political campaigns. Nor is it strictly the province of Republicans; in Iowa before the caucuses, the Democrats likewise saved their most ruthless attacks on each other for direct mail pieces.

b) Direct mail is, however, a Republican specialty, and an integral part of Karl Rove's career.

c) The Internet opens up whole new vistas for direct mail campaigning, by dint of technology and of the vast number of email lists compiled by countless companies and political interest groups. Now not only printed tracts can be targeted to individuals, but cheap-to-produce audio and video spots as well. 

In short, the possibilities for mounting guerrilla ad strikes, and testing themes and ads broadly before taking them fully public, has grown exponentially since even the 2000 election. The Democrats and Bush antagonists will have these tools at their disposal, too, but somehow I suspect the Republicans and their fellow travelers will make better use of the medium--if only because they understood better the role of old-fashioned direct mail in the first place.

So it will behoove all of us media watchers on the net to get on as many partisan mailing lists as we can, and see what winds up in our inboxes. The role of direct mail and guerrilla marketing in this campaign is going to be too large to allow that whole segment of the race to happen off-radar. 

(Incidentally, I'm sure others must be writing about this, but I've read very little. If you've seen any commentaries on the Internet's changing role in political marketing--any commentaries that are not about organizing and fundraising on the web a la Howard Dean, that is--please send them along to me, and thanks.)

Posted by Steve Perry at February 17, 2004 8:46 AM

 

Bush's Guard Record: It's Not Over

Rot Never Sleeps: W gets in deeper on the Guard question; the cover-up's the thing

First I have to apologize for my infrequent posts of late--I've been working on print features for City Pages, but I'll be posting more regularly as the campaign festers on. (For those of you who grew accustomed to reading Mark Gisleson in this space, I'm happy to report you can now check out his new blog, where he is doing a fine job of keeping abreast of breaking Bush scandals, daunting as the task may be.)

Here's a sneak of my CP column to be published this Wednesday. Tuesday I'll post an additional non-print item (now posted) about John Kerry's bimbo problem.

  

In strictly political terms, the week of February 8 proved the roughest yet at Bunker 1600. It began with an hour-long appearance on Meet the Press in which the president ducked and mumbled like a punch-drunk, rope-hugging fighter waiting for the bell. The public mostly missed it, but the chattering classes were shocked--arch-conservatives most of all. Author and radio host Laura Ingraham (think Ann Coulter, without the personality disorder) declared that this was not the George W. Bush "we" elected. Republican columnist Bob Novak, a soldier so loyal he last year outed an undercover CIA agent at the behest of the White House, harrumphed that the interview was Strike Two on Bush's reelection effort. (The State of the Union was Strike One.) And op-ed diva Peggy Noonan deserves some sort of award for finding ponies in piles of horseshit. The Bush I speechwriter and grande dame of Republican letters explained Bush's Rain Man demeanor this way: Democrats, you see, are all about "talking points," while Republicans are all about philosophy of governance, which does not yield talking points, and this is why the president found himself unable to say anything.

 

To make matters worse, reporters began showing up bright and early Monday morning to see the National Guard service records that Bush had categorically and perhaps unintentionally promised Tim Russert he would provide. (When Bush made the pledge, he added that he had already made the records public during the 2000 campaign, which he patently had not done--raising some doubt as to what Bush thought he was promising, and lending credence to the widespread suspicion that, for whatever reason, the president was even less than usual the master of his own words that morning.) In any event the White House reacted as though caught by surprise. At first it released very limited records that indicated Bush received pay, sporadically, during part of the time he stands accused of going AWOL from his Alabama National Guard unit. For Wednesday's news cycle their sole release recorded a Bush dental exam at the Alabama base in 1973, demonstrating conclusively that the president had done the right thing with respect to--his teeth. 

 

After that stinker, the clamor rose to such levels that on Thursday, Team W finally assented to "full" release of his military file. No one has entirely digested the resulting document dump yet, but here are a few salient points raised or left hanging by the disclosures so far:

 

A blogger named Kevin Drum, the proprietor of Calpundit.com, has pointed out that the pay records released by the White House are Air Reserve Force records. The ARF was a "paper unit" for Guard members who were off active duty. Assignment there was sometimes a disciplinary measure, and those on its roster were subject to call-up for Vietnam duty. As I write this on Sunday night, the mainstream press has yet to explore this dimension of Bush's record at all.

 

The records released by the White House contain no indication of why Bush skipped his pilot's physical in early 1972, forcing him off active flight duty. Two Guard generals told the Boston Globe that any such lapse by a Guard pilot should have triggered an automatic investigation, though there is no record at present that one ever occurred.

 

Of the hundreds of individuals who might have encountered Bush during the time he was supposed to be at the Alabama base, precisely one--a John B. "Bill" Calhoun--has come forward to profess any recollection of his being there. And Calhoun's recollections do not match the White House's own pay records, though they do match the dates contained in a widely circulated but erroneous AP wire story.

 

The alt-weekly Memphis Flyer published an interview with two pilots from Bush's Alabama unit who say they're sure he was never there. This is significant because both say they remember hearing of Bush's transfer and looking forward to meeting him, and because they could hardly have missed his presence: He would have been one of only 25-30 fighter pilots in the whole unit.

 

The New York Daily News reported that Bush went to Alabama in 1972 without the permission of Texas Guard officials, only applying for a transfer nine days later. But that transfer, to a postal unit, was denied. W had been in Alabama for a full five months before Texas brass belatedly granted him a transfer to the 187^th in Alabama.

It's clear enough that Bush passed his time in Alabama as he had spent his time at Yale, in full-time pursuit of a career as the prodigal son. No one seems to have noticed that one of the most notorious of Bush's reported "youthful indiscretions" occurred during the period when he was assigned to the Alabama Guard. During the 1972 Christmas holiday, Bush was visiting his parents in Washington when he and 15-year-old brother Marvin got crocked at a party and wound up dragging a neighbor's metal garbage can home under their car. According to a 2000 Time campaign profile, Bush Senior summoned his son to the family den: " 'I hear you're looking for me,' the son told the father. 'You wanna go mano a mano right here?' It was Jeb who tried to ease the tension by announcing to the Bush parents that W. had just been accepted at Harvard Business School. They hadn't even known he had applied, but they leaped at the idea until he told them, 'Oh, I'm not going. I just wanted to let you know I could get into it.'"

 

He was 26 then, by Barbara Bush's own account a "late bloomer," which is what the better class of mothers has always called sons who are chronic fuck-ups. If you're Uncle Sam, do you want this character flying your expensive fighter jets?

 

But it's a mistake to suppose the real question is what Bush did in the National Guard. As ever, the cover-up outstrips the crime. A former Guard official named Bill Burkett has gone public with the claim that he saw 20-40 pages of documents from Bush's service file in a waste basket, where they had been tossed by campaign operatives during a 1997 purge of the then-governor's records. Burkett's account has been publicly denied by one of the Guard officials he says he spoke to at the time, George Conn. One problem: Two years ago, Conn told USA Today reporter Dave Moniz that Burkett had indeed told him of the Bush file cleansing when it happened.

 

Conn isn't the only one who's changed his tune. William Leon, a freedom of information officer in the Texas Guard, confirmed to USA Today in 2002 that there had been meetings regarding Bush's record. Contacted by the paper again last week, Leon spat: "Don't ever call me again at home. I'll call your publisher and sue you." On the face of it, the president's men appear to be leaning on people.

 

There may be more to conceal than meets the eye. What the press corps is really after at this point has not been laid on the table: a persistent buzz that during the period in question, Bush was either in treatment or doing community service to expunge a criminal offense from his record, or both. Helen Thomas hinted at it in an extraordinary exchange with press secretary Scott McClellan last week in which she repeatedly raised the question of Bush's "community service." 

 

The Guard issue is hardly over, though Democrats would do well to turn the focus from the matter of Bush's service--about which two-thirds of the public does not care, according to a Washington Post poll--to the abiding cover-up, which speaks volumes about the way the Bushmen do business. Ask Paul O'Neill. 

Posted by Steve Perry at February 15, 2004 9:48 PM

 

Drudge: Kerry's Got Woman Troubles

Normally I wouldn't do this; there wouldn't be any point. But for the past hour I've been unable to get to the Drudge Report--presumably owing to heavy traffic. So here, with all due credit, is the text of the item that has everyone flocking to the net's Republican Central:

CAMPAIGN DRAMA ROCKS DEMOCRATS: KERRY FIGHTS OFF MEDIA PROBE OF RECENT ALLEGED INFIDELITY, RIVALS PREDICT RUIN

**World Exclusive** **Must Credit the DRUDGE REPORT**

A frantic behind-the-scenes drama is unfolding around Sen. John Kerry and his quest to lockup the Democratic nomination for president, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal.

Intrigue surrounds a woman who recently fled the country, reportedly at the prodding of Kerry, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

A serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Sen. John Kerry has been underway at TIME magazine, ABC NEWS, the WASHINGTON POST, THE HILL and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, where the woman in question once worked.

MORE

A close friend of the woman first approached a reporter late last year claiming fantastic stories -- stories that now threaten to turn the race for the presidency on its head!

In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week, General Wesley Clark plainly stated: "Kerry will implode over an intern issue." [Three reporters in attendance confirm Clark made the startling comments.]

The Kerry commotion is why Howard Dean has turned increasingly aggressive against Kerry in recent days, and is the key reason why Dean reversed his decision not to drop out of the race after Wisconsin, top campaign sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

Try to get to the Drudge Report.

Posted by Steve Perry at February 12, 2004 11:43 AM

 

50,000,000 Kerry Fans Can't Be Wrong, part II

Monday: Section I, Howard's End

 

Kerry v Kerry

 

"He's going to be the nominee of the Democratic Party, and he's coming across as a future president," Washington Rep. Norman Dicks raved to an LA Times reporter last week. "He's just on fire." This could prove hazardous in the long run: Many longtime Kerry watchers still insist that down deep, he's made of wood. In Boston Kerry is a famous target of mockery for liberal and conservative columnists alike. The criticisms usually concern his imperious manner, his love of privilege, his unerring sense of what is best for John Kerry. For years his nickname among reporters was "Live Shot," a reference to Kerry's gift for showing up in front of any camera in his vicinity. If he is elected, his wife's nearly half-billion dollar fortune will make him the wealthiest president the country has ever had.

 

Can such a dowdy, narcissistic Brahmin keep on burning for the people through November, or will he turn to ash at some point and rise again as Al Gore the Second? In a normal year the answer would be obvious: For a generation now, the Democratic party has played me-too politics and unswervingly followed Republican leads. But 2004 is not a normal year. The party has caught the scent of Bush's weaknesses--that is, they have finally learned that a good deal of the public sees those weaknesses, and despises Bush personally on top of them. Establishment elites in both parties have been heard to fret about Bush's recklessness and his brazen political style. 

 

But the most critical reason for the Democrats' change of heart is material. Among the executive class and the not-so-idle rich--that one-tenth of 1 percent of the population that makes 83 percent of the political contributions in America--Bush is God, or at least Santa Claus. In the Clinton era, the Democrats became adept at drinking from the same corporate fountains. But as Alan Murray wrote in the Wall Street Journal on January 27, "Those days are over. If any Fortune 500 CEOs are backing John Kerry, they are keeping quiet about it."

 

Thus the Democrats, for the first time in modern memory, find themselves forced to sing to the people in the cheap seats for their supper. It's noteworthy that DNC head Terry McAuliffe, Bill Clinton's principal fundraiser and one of the architects of the go-along, get-along DNC, recently took up an attack on Bush that the media had already branded scandalous and absurd when Michael Moore voiced it at a Wesley Clark rally: the lingering matter of Bush's non-service in the Vietnam-era National Guard. McAuliffe was hardly delicate about it. He stopped short of terming Bush a deserter, but termed him "a man who was AWOL in the Alabama National Guard."

 

Interesting times. The White House is clearly a little off-kilter from all the sudden volleys. Its first line of attack on Kerry, according to the New York Times, will be the Dukakis Card: He's "just another Massachusetts liberal." I can't believe they expect to ride this very far. If they do, they will likely learn that the old labels liberal and conservative don't have the same hot-button appeal anymore. The public has begun to see that left versus right is not the name of the game. "Left" and "right," after all, have not had a consequential public disagreement in many years. The split that is inflaming the public mood is the one between insiders and outsiders.

 

This is the taproot of popular animus toward Bush, but it also happens to be Kerry's great weakness. The real payoff in Republican attacks on Kerry will come from taking shots not at his voting record but at who he is: a mainstay DC insider who can be shown, without much trouble, to have twisted with the political breezes all through his career. They will point out that although Kerry may have awakened one recent morn on the wrong side of "special interests," he is still the leading recipient of lobbyist contributions in the US Senate over the past 15 years.

 

They will highlight his 1995 support of a bill that enabled Enron-style accounting abuses by curbing investor lawsuits. "The law, which consumer groups opposed vociferously precisely because the feared it would lead to white collar crime," wrote Jonathan Cohn in the New Republic, "was part of New Gingrich's Contract With America. Yet Kerry voted for it anyway, not once but twice--the second time overriding a veto by President Clinton."

 

They will pound at the frequent and cheerful hypocrisy of Kerry's collected public utterances, the most famous being his Yes vote on the Iraq war he now condemns. But there's no shortage of examples. JK on the Patriot Act now: "We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night. So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time." JK on the Patriot Act then: "It reflects an enormous amount of hard work by the members of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. I congratulate them and thank them for that work... [I am] pleased at the compromise we have reached on the anti-terrorism legislation."

 

And they will trawl up story after story about the kind of guy Kerry is. Howie Carr, one of those Boston columnists who's made a cottage industry of mocking his state's junior senator, recently published a brief compendium of some popular ones. It's worth quoting at some length to catch the flavor:

"The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: 'Do you know who I am?'

 

"And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a pickle-and-ketchup heiress.

 

"Kerry lives in a mansion on Beacon Hill on which he has borrowed $6 million to finance his campaign. A fire hydrant that prevented him and his wife from parking their SUV in front of their tony digs was removed by the city of Boston at his behest.

 

"The Kerrys ski at a spa the widow Heinz owns in Aspen, and they summer on Nantucket in a sprawling seaside 'cottage' on Hurlbert Avenue, which is so well-appointed that at a recent fund-raiser, they imported porta-toilets onto the front lawn so the donors wouldn't use the inside bathrooms."

Democratic partisans and Bush haters of every stripe will rightly retort that Kerry's sins are far less egregious and consequential than Bush's, but that's not the point. Karl Rove saw the numbers of "nontraditional voters" giving money to Dean at the start, and he has no doubt noticed the record numbers turning out for primaries and caucuses. He's not stupid. The eventual Republican endgame will be to stifle public interest in the whole mess and depress the number of voters that turns out in November. Between the lines the Bush campaign will be saying: You may or may not like us. Okay. But John Kerry--you think John Kerry is something new under the sun? Come on. He's business as usual and this whole process is business as usual. We hope you're on board with us, but don't kid yourself. You can have us or someone else like us. Just remember that a vote for John Kerry means your son will grow up to marry the boy next door.

 

In short, the White House will labor to present Kerry as just another self-seeking political pro. There's no saying how damaging it will prove; much depends on the tenor and temperature of Kerry's campaign. But it's impossible to think the rap won't stick in some measure--it is, after all, true. And the more it adheres to Kerry, the closer the election will come to a pure up-or-down referendum on Bush.

 

But even if the White House succeeds in defining the race on those terms (a dicey proposition), there is no assurance at all that George W. Bush will be able to win a referendum on George W. Bush.

Tomorrow: Section III, Bush v Bush

Posted by Steve Perry at February 10, 2004 3:24 PM

 

50,000,000 Kerry Fans Can't Be Wrong

Can they? And other questions from Campaign '04

At the suggestion of my former BW collaborator Mark Gisleson, a doyen of blog-marketing strategies, I'll be posting my upcoming City Pages cover story about John Kerry and the prez race so far over the next couple of days. (I will also let you know when Mark has his new blog up and running, and give a link.)

Here is part one; I'll be adding pertinent links to the copy soon.

I. Howard's End

  

In the days following the Iowa caucuses, and the New Hampshire primary a week later, the political news was all John Kerry all the time, and you could not read far or listen long without finding the words shocking and stunning applied to his ascent from the political dead.

 

The biggest surprise was Kerry himself. Long known as a remote, patrician figure of no great energy or conviction--just a couple of weeks before the Iowa turnaround, Gore Vidal remarked that he was looking "a lot like Lincoln--after the assassination"--Kerry caught hold of something in the waning days of Iowa. Periodic visits to C-Span confirmed the buzz: Kerry was actually lighting up rooms, and he was doing it with relentless, full-throated attacks on the Bush regime that would have been inconceivable coming from any mainstream Democrat six months earlier.

 

But in itself, the resurrection of John Kerry is not the great mystery. In a field that for months had seemed to consist of Howard Dean and everybody else, he was always one of the likelier suspects to rise from the pack in the event that Dean faltered. The abiding question is, how did the Dean campaign fall so far so fast? This is a query for historians now, and in a year we'll no doubt have our pick of several books on the subject. They will variously ascribe his collapse to one or more of a handful of factors: his purported "unpresidential" temperament, an impression forever cemented in the public mind by The Scream; the selective and unfair scrutiny of American media toward an establishment outsider (The Scream didn't re-broadcast itself countless thousands of times); the concerted efforts of his Democratic opponents and of party chieftains to smear Dean in the weeks before the Iowa caucuses; and the campaign's own mounting shrillness and self-referentiality at crunch time.

 

Dean's collapse was so abrupt and so complete that some now argue it was an another internet-spawned bit of hoodoo, like the dot-com stock bubble of the '90s: The Dean bandwagon evaporated so quickly because it never really existed. This is a pretty silly notion on its face. If a Dean groundswell never took place, how did the campaign manage to raise $40 million, mostly in increments of less than $200? It's more apt to say that the whole cyber-buzz surrounding Dean's campaign amounted to a layer of mystification that caused many to overestimate the size of Dean's following--and its degree of commitment to Dean the candidate versus its taste for an anti-Bush, antiwar, anti-cronyism message that, for a long time, only Dean espoused.

 

When the tell-alls have been published and some of the machinations exposed, we will gain a more nuanced picture of Dean's rise and fall, but I suspect the arc of it will be like this: Under ceaseless and often unfair attack, by the media as much or more than his Democratic foes and detractors, Dean played into their hands at the most critical point of his Iowa campaign. He spent too much time angrily parrying attacks, as frequently noted. But more than that he inadvertently turned the focus of his campaign from the issues that had elevated him to his own cult of personality. While his opponents were copping his best lines and elaborating on them, Dean gave his same "red meat" stump speech and bragged increasingly of his great organization and the inevitability of their cause. I watched a number of his campaign appearances on C-Span, too, and often found something creepy about the insularity and self-satisfaction of those events. (That was the unnerving thing about The Scream, wasn't it? That the whole tenor of the Dean rally that night felt so at odds with everybody else's reality that it seemed cultish?)

 

Evidently others thought so too. But if the hordes of Democratic primary voters proved not to like or trust Dean very much in the end, give credit where it's due: Howard Dean nonetheless shaped the campaign we see unfolding in front of us. Now that Kerry has gotten across by means of populist-sounding frontal assaults on the Bush White House's actions, motives, and morals, it's easy to suppose that course was inevitable all along. It wasn't. In fact, there is not much to criticize about the Bush gang now that wasn't already manifest by last summer. (Shitty economy, as far as jobs are concerned; ample public evidence that Bush lied us into war; clear signs that we would be in Iraq a very long time despite the president's pledges... and so on.) But back then John Kerry's "message," according to Iowa sources he visited around the time, was Hi, I'm John Kerry, and it's my turn.

Dean's tenure as frontrunner forced the rest of the Democratic field to talk tough against Bush as well. And it has paid off very handsomely in a couple of ways we can already measure: record or near-record turnouts at every Democratic primary and caucus held so far, and southbound approval ratings for Bush and his gang.

Tuesday: Section II: Kerry v Kerry

Wednesday: Section III: Bush v Bush

Let me know what you think. Links to supporting materials appreciated as always. 

 

Posted by Steve Perry at February 9, 2004 11:15 AM

 

Kerry v. Edwards: The Empathy, Economy Gaps

LA Times highlights weaknesses in Kerry exit polling

"And if elected, I shall continue
to feel your pain!" From Edwards
2004 website

Interesting piece by Ron Brownstein today looking at Tuesday primary voters' verdict on John Kerry. As in Iowa and New Hampshire, he fared well with those who put "electability" first on their list of concerns. And since nothing succeeds like success, yesterday's wins will only buttress that impression, for the short term at least.

But Brownstein points to a few areas in which Kerry comes up short, particularly versus John Edwards. Citing exit polls in Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Arizona, he points out that a) the economy mattered more than "electability" to a majority of voters, and b) Edwards seriously outperformed Kerry on that count in both states where he campaigned hard, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Why? The answer may lie in the fact that Edwards also fared better than Kerry on the Bill Clinton "Feel Your Pain" factor--voters thought him more attuned to their lives than the blue-blooded Kerry.

It's hard to think that Edwards will rebound to mount a serious challenge for the nomination, but the numbers illuminate weaknesses in Kerry that are bound to play bigger in a general election than they have so far in the primaries. 

Posted by Steve Perry at February 4, 2004 6:37 PM

 

Sneak Peak: Today's Exit Polls

From originaldo.com

Some of the exit poll numbers that circulate through major news organizations have made their way to my mailbox. And if they are even remotely close to accurate, there's little chance that leaking them is going to affect any of these outcomes:

AZ Kerry 46, Clark 24, Dean 13

MO Kerry 52, Edwards 23, Dean 10

SC Edwards 44, Kerry 30, Sharpton 10

OK Edwards 31, Kerry 29, Clark 28

DE Kerry 47, Dean 14, Lieberman 11, Edwards 11

Assuming these patterns hold up, there is finally a number two in the race--and as most observers expected, it's John Edwards.

I'm writing a post-Feb 3 analysis of the Democratic field (okay, of John Kerry) for next week's City Pages; I'll be posting here occasionally for the rest of the week as I put it together.

 

Posted by Steve Perry at February 3, 2004 2:07 PM

 

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