> A reverse
>analysis is to see the last month as a massive defeat for the Bush forces
Financial Times - September 2, 2004
Kerry has lost control of his own campaign By Richard Medley
Imagine - a US campaign advertisement aired just before the November 3 US presidential election closes with the simple statement, "John Kerry: Liar, Traitor, Opportunist". Harsh? Excessive? Perhaps, but a series of historic mistakes by Mr Kerry's campaign has allowed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the anti-Kerry war veterans, to change the course of the presidential race and set the Democratic challenger up for a barrage of such charges over the next month.
The real damage is not yet visible. Forget the current polls. George W. Bush was always going to pull even with Mr Kerry around the time of his convention. Campaign officials on both sides agree that the ads launched by the Swift Boat vets last month shaved only a couple points off Mr Kerry and that the race is a dead heat.
What hurts Mr Kerry is that he has lost control of the news cycle and the rhythm of this campaign. And that is a big problem for a challenger. Unseating an incumbent is always a two-step process. First, the incumbent has to make himself vulnerable. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were never going to lose their re-election ssbids; they had strong economies and no serious foreign policy humiliations to explain. Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were vulnerable and paid the price. But vulnerability alone is not enough. The second step requires the challenger to "make the sale" with voters by convincing them he could do a better job on the defining issue of the campaign. The Bush campaign knew from late last year it was vulnerable and its planning was designed to keep whomever the Democrats nominated from sealing the deal with voters.
That is why the Bush team could hardly believe its luck when Mr Kerry took the stage at the Democratic convention in Boston and made national security and his military record the centrepiece of his campaign. Convincing voters that a Democrat would better protect America than a Republican is a tough sale. The devastatingly effective Swift Boat vets' media blitzkrieg - two weeks of lightly funded ads accelerated by a media feeding frenzy - made it nearly impossible. Indeed, the Swifties have handed Mr Bush control of the election dynamics for the first time this year. Unless Mr Kerry can regain the momentum, he will lose. Mr Bush is well aware of that and the Republicans have a simple strategy to stay in control until November. A second round of Swift Boat veteran ads is now under way - funded by a massive inflow of donations via the group's website. These ads use Mr Kerry's testimony to Congress accusing American soldiers of war crimes in
Vietnam. Whereas the earlier ads, while questioning Mr Kerry's integrity, were largely untrue, the new ones use Mr Kerry's own words to make him look a traitor. Sure, the Kerry campaign can complain that his words are taken out of context, but that does not convince voters and keeps Mr Kerry reacting rather than dictating the campaign news flow. Let local television stations interview veterans about how they feel about those ads, and this part of the strategy is complete.
With the contest moving into full swing, the formal Bush campaign can take over again. The Bush ads in coming weeks will reintroduce the already weakened Mr Kerry to voters as a senator so bereft of accomplishment in 20 years that he runs a campaign based on a few months in the jungle 30 years ago rather than on his record in Washington. This is Kerry the lightweight, unprincipled waffler and flip-flopper. These ads proved effective in the spring, keeping the contest close despite bad news from Iraq and the findings of the 9/11 Commission.
To escape this trap, Mr Kerry must regain control of the campaign dynamics before Mr Bush has finished defining him to voters. He can always hope that tomorrow's unemployment number is so damaging that the economy becomes the dominant theme. But life rarely works in that generous way. The Kerry campaign does have some blistering anti-Bush ads ready to run as the convention glow fades. Those will certainly guarantee that the campaign turns more personal and nasty than any in recent history; but can control of the campaign be wrested from an incumbent purely with negative advertisements? The record of that strategy is poor. All this makes it even more remarkable that the Kerry campaign failed to blunt the Swift Boat vets before their ads were launched last month. After all, the same bitter veterans have dogged Mr Kerry in every election for the last 30 years. Had Mr Kerry's ads tied the Swiftie attack to similar slander against John McCain in 2000, the press could have been locked and loaded to attack them as kooks. Then it would have been one more example of the "mean" face of George Bush.
Mr Kerry has always been a great campaigner in the final few weeks of an election. He has come from behind often and therefore cannot be written off. But he is in the toughest spot in his history and has only himself to blame for that. If he loses, his decision not to come out early and hard against the Swifties will go down in history as a blunder equal in size to the last Massachusetts Democrat to lose to a George Bush. And no one wants to be Michael Dukakis.
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The writer is chairman and chief executive of Medley Global Advisors