Redstate

I gather that the Bush team handled Cleland's march on Crawford rather badly, what the hell were they thinking???

People will assume it is true.  I have personal experience with this in business.  One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a mentor was to immediately fight back when your integrity is challenged.  That advice has been immeasurably useful to me throught the years.

The jury's out on whether or not Kerry handled this properly or not.  First, this is all still ongoing.  Second, the polls won't reflect the net effect of all this until the story has stopped moving forward.  My guess is that this will end up as a net positive for Kerry and a net negative for Bush.  Regardless, it's too early to know for sure.

And damaging to Kerry, media filter removed.

In campaigns, attacking stunts are the province of candidates who are trying to make a name for themselves -- first-timers against incumbents, usually -- or those who are trying to right a sinking ship.

Taranto captured it well today at Opinionjournal.com, in several posts.

That '70s Show

"I called the media. . . . I said, 'If I take some crippled veterans down to the White House and we chain ourselves to the gates, will we get coverage?' 'Oh, yes, we will cover that.' "--John Kerry, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 22, 1971

"Kerry is sending to Crawford former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, a frequent companion of Kerry's on the campaign trail and a fellow Vietnam War veteran who lost three limbs during the war. Cleland . . . will try to deliver a letter protesting the [Swift Boat Veterans for Truth] ads to [President] Bush at his heavily guarded ranch, Kerry aides said."--Reuters, Aug. 25, 2004

The Chutzpah Campaign

You almost have to admire the shamelessness with which John Kerry and his supporters in the press and elsewhere are dealing with the whole Vietnam question. Here's the latest, from an Associated Press dispatch on a Philadelphia campaign appearance yesterday:

At the fund-raiser, Kerry defended his anti-war activism as "an act of conscience."

"You can judge my character, incidentally, by that," Kerry said. "Because when the time for moral crisis existed in this country, I wasn't taking care of myself, I was taking care of public policy. I was taking care of things that made a difference to the life of this nation. You may not have agreed with me, but I stood up and was counted and that's the kind of president I'm going to be."

Yet at the same time, he is waging a smear campaign against a group of Vietnam veterans who are using his antiwar activism to make a judgment about the kind of president he would be.

I was going to post on the nonsense -- OK, flat-out lies -- that Max Cleland was peddling today, but Soxblog beat me to it. It's a great post.

See my diary entry, Bit the Hand that Fed Him . for more about the estimable Max Cleland.

"The best way to starve a scandal is to quickly dodge it. For all his many faults, Bill Clinton was the consummate master of this."

He should have dodged it.  That's what you said!

People are STILL talking about Vince Foster's murder... because it was dodged.  I think the hope was that Kerry would be "above it"... but Kerry is not.

You've mentioned some valuable reasons why the Kerry campaign is likely to have a rough time.

But here's the most important one, the reason why no Democrat from Massachusetts has won national office since JFK: Tip O'Neil did his job too well.

You see, back in the beginning of O'Neil's career as a politician, Massachusets was a Red state. It was Tip O'Neil, who relentlessly organized and ran Democrats for state and local office who flipped Massachusetts, more than any other person.

Indeed, the transition was so complete that not long after it happened, sclerosis and ossification set in. At this point, the Democrats so completely outperform Republicans (or anyone else, for that matter), that most Massachusetts elections are decided in the Democratic primary election.

With only a handful of notable exceptions, few prominent Democrats from Massachusetts have had to compete against serious Republican opponents. Indeed, Massachusetts Democrats can so completely rely on their party vote-production machine, that they simply don't have any training fighting any other way.

The most egregious examples of this lack are found in the Senate seats. Neither Kennedy nor Kerry have faced anything like a serious challenge in many years. (Weld gave Kerry a close fight in 1996, but as Weld himself points out, Kerry won by energizing the Democrat base. )

The Kerry machine -- which is really the Kennedy machine -- doesn't know the first thing about running a general election campaign against a strong opponent.

All they know how to do is energize the liberal base. They are creatures of the liberal base, and the proof of that statement is that they never stray far from it, in either their rhetoric or their choice of allies. No "New Democrats" these.

Now, in a race as close as the current one, someone could argue that Kerry's reliance on energizing the base could be a winning strategy. After all, if there are no truly undecided voters, then the result will be all about which party machine brings more of its supporters to the polls.

But the problem for that strategy is that many more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal.

There simply isn't an overwhelming base for Kerry to draw on, while Bush still has room to grow.

Kerry only knows how to win when he's holding the party machine equivalent of a sledge hammer against the other fellow's wiffle bat.

Right about now, he's finding out that when the other guy has the sledge hammer, it hurts awful bad.

You mean they did wrong by ignoring Cleland's stunt?  Who the hell is Max "I blew my own arms off" Cleland that Bush should rush right back to his ranch when Cleland shows up?  He's a former senator who lost.  Did he serve honorably in Vietnam?  Sure, right up until the time he bent down to pick up that grenade he thought he had dropped.  But so what.  The SBVFT served honorably, and Bush served honorably in that era.  

It was a minor-league stunt.  It reminded me more of the "phone call" from Gore in Florida to Daschle and Gephardt who were in DC during the Florida recount -- you know, the one where they were all "spontaneously" sitting around a speakerphone in DC with a gaggle of reporters and Gore was "spontaneously" reporting what great stuff was happening and how they were going to win...  juvenile.

A thorough job of it, too. The guy was a lousy senator, and he's no martyr for the cause either.

There's something patronizing about the way Democrats now view Max Cleland--and faux naive about the way they view his defeat. Was Chambliss' ad really that much worse than what happens in any election? Chambliss' criticism was based on Cleland's actual votes. The fact that Cleland volunteered for Vietnam and Chambliss avoided it means something, but it certainly doesn't mean that Cleland should be immune from all attacks on his Senate voting record. Georgians were voting for senator, not platoon leader, after all. And yet Democrats see the attacks on Cleland as categorically worse than any others. It's hard to think that's not partly an emotional reaction to a man confined to a wheelchair. But politics ain't beanbag, as they say. Cleland is hardly the first man ever to be savaged in a political campaign. Michael Dukakis, to name one, had a pretty similar experience: He was brutalized by Republicans who painted him as weak on defense, and he failed to hit back effectively. But you won't see Dukakis warming up crowds for Kerry any time soon...

What Cleland brings to Kerry's campaign is the emotional power of victimization--a throwback to the worst of old-time Democratic Party politics, to its emphasis on victimhood over ability and virtue. But whereas in the past it was specific interest groups--minorities, women, gays--who were the noble victims, today it is the Democratic Party itself. Cleland is a reminder to fellow Democrats that they have spend the past three years being persecuted and that it's time to start avenging their humiliations. That's fine as far as it goes. But eventually Kerry will have to stand for something more than Bush hatred and payback. Revenge is not a campaign platform.

This is by far and away the most pathetic bit of political theater I've ever witnessed. Hunting down your opponent with bloodhounds is at least amusing. The guys who played the the "Flipper" themesong over loudspeakers outside a Kerry rally in OH a few weeks ago were amusing and inventive.

But sending a wheelchair bound partisan hack is about as manly as sending your wife out to defend you.

If Kerry had shown up, personally, to say "we both have to make these groups knock it off" that would have been news. I still wouldn't vote for him but I wouldn't think he's craven either.

The story played deep on the inside of the WaPo today (page A6 Firing Missives Over Vietnam). Dana Milbank, who has raised press dishonesty and partisanship to an art form, took a brief time out from writing Kerry press releases to pooh-pooh the event.

But since you have the answer, why won't you tell us how to do it right?

The best way of dealing with a political scandal is to get in front of it. During the Clinton years Lanny Davis would preemptively leak information to the press so that they'd be able to have their talking points out before the bulk of the scandal broke - a very effective tactic.

Kerry should have never made his biography the centerpiece of his campaign. Not only because he had to have known that the Swift Boat vets were gunning for him, but because bringing up one of America's most divisive wars doesn't help Kerry. It was a boneheaded move on Kerry's part. Even without the Swift Boat Vets there's Kerry's testimony before the Senate which is exceptionally damning.

Kerry should have responded by simply stating that it was yet another negative partisan attack and then moving on. What Kerry should not have done is raise the issue at every turn - which was like throwing gasoline on the fire. Kerry took the charges personally, and I have a feeling he did so against the will of many in his own campaign.

A candidate must have a thick skin, and appearing desperate in an campaign is like bleeding in a pool filled with sharks - you're only going to provoke a feeding frenzy.

Handling a political attack differs markedly from what a corporation should do to get out in front product defect or environmental/safety hazard.

The worst thing you can do when handling a personal attack is draw attention to an allegation by repeating it. Like when Chick Hecht called a press conference to deny goofy article in a Washington magazine that he was the dumbest Senator.

People usually react with total disinterest to political ads attacking a candidate's character. I can't think of even a single time where this worked. Occasionally you get a homerun but it is a policy ad, not a personal attack. The timeless classic, "Daisy Girl" ran only one time during the 1964 campaign and arguably torpedoed Barry Goldwater. It focused on temprament. The recent classic "Willie Horton" ad was also about a candidate's record.

In retrospect this ad is going to rank on par with the anti-Goldwater "Daisy Girl" ad in effectiveness. The Swifties' ad ran in three states and the ad buy was only in the neighborhood of $150,000. Chump change. It has now dominated nearly two weeks of news and, drum roll, raised well over $1.5mil for the Swifties to produce and run more ads.

The reason we know about the ad and are discussing it is because Kerry acknowledged it even existed. If you look at the history of this ad, the mainstream news media didn't talk about it until Kerry had his meltdown talking to the firefighter's union.

He was on Thurlow's boat, when Thurlow claims that there was no gunfire.  This witness is an independent.  He calls Kerry's opposition to the war when he returned to the states, 'absolutely reprehensible', but he still backs Kerry's version of events.  He also says that they were, in fact, under fire.  FWIW, he respects Thurlow, but he says Thurlow's wrong.

Link here.  http://www.mailtribune.com/archive/2004/0826/local/stories/01local.htm

I maintain that the jury is still out on whether or not Kerry is handling this properly.  I don't think we will know until this thing has played out to the bitter end.  So this part of what you wrote

Kerry should have never made his biography the centerpiece of his campaign.

I believe is yet to be proven.  If the public's overall impression of this situation is that the President used surrogates to lie about Kerry's Vietnam war record, the same way he used surrogates against McCain, the same way he did against Dole, then this will have helped Kerry enormously.  If the public's impression is, instead, that Kerry lied about his bravery in Vietnam in anticipation of a future political career, then this will help Bush enormously.  To assume that this has to end up working against Kerry is, I believe, wishful thinking.

The worst thing you can do when handling a personal attack is draw attention to an allegation by repeating it.

It all depends.  What's the nature of the attack?  How many people have heard about it?  How are people reacting to what they hear?  Are they hearing and then ignoring it?  Or do they think it reveals something defining about the person?  Are the facts on your side?  Does sharing your facts give you an opportunity to get free media that makes you look better in the long run and your opponent worse?  How long is it until the election?  Do you have enough time to effectively combat the charge and use it against your opponent?  Or is there not enough time so you're best off to ignore it and hope it doesn't have an impact?  Are there other stories that the press is jumping on, so the impact will be naturally suffocated by the news?  Or are we in a slow time, as far as political news is concerned, so the press is going to keep bringing it up because it gives them a foodfight they can recycle every thirty minutes?

I believe these are all considerations in determining whether you fight something like this or ignore it.  Again, I think the jury is still out around whether or not this was good strategy or not.

This KILLS Thurlow's accusation.

Lambert is the one listed in Thurlow's BS recommendation papers as the witness.

It's more proof that the D's are using Michael Moore's playbook.  This is right from Roger and Me.

And a correction: he didn't say "Make it stop!", but rather "Aidez-moi! Arrêtez-le! La douleur!"

questions, I think you'd have to agree that you are dead wrong.

If you took the time to answer your own questions, I think you'd have to agree that you are dead wrong

You said that

The worst thing you can do when handling a personal attack is draw attention to an allegation by repeating it.

I disagreed, and I presented a series of questions that I think are important for a candidate to answer before allowing personal attacks to stand unchallenged.  Now, you are saying, What exactly?  Are you saying that if I asked those questions about Kerry's situation, I would have to conclude that he made a wrong decision to respond to the attacks?  If so, then you are saying that it does, in fact, depend on the answers to those questions, which in turn means you contradict your previous statement saying that the 'worst thing' a candidate can do is respond to an attack, because you are now saying that sometimes you should respond, but Kerry shouldn't have this time.  Or are you saying that you looked at all of the questions I said a politician should consider before deciding how to respond to an attack, and you think that the answer is simply that they are all irrelevant in all instances.  Thereby maintaining your original opinion, that responding to a personal attack is always the 'worst thing' a politician could do.

If you actually read my questions, you know that neither of us are privy to all of the answers for Kerry's situation.  Only Kerry's campaign can know most of the answers and some of them can only be guessed at.

Finally, I repeat that no one, myself included, knows how this is going to play out, because this has not finished playing out.  The first round clearly went to the SBVFTs.  Now, the public is learning that these men have contradicted their previous statements, they speak as if they were eyewitness to Kerry's actions that caused him to win medals when most were not, the vast majority of actual eyewitnesses back up Kerry's version of those events, and that the SBVFTs accusations have inspired other eyewitnesses, who never before wanted to be involved, to come forward and backup Kerry's version of events.  Lastly, the most recent LA Times poll shows that, when asked the question of whether Kerry "misrepresented his war record and does not deserve his war medals, or that he fought honorably and does deserve his war medals", the Independents took Kerry's side by a 5 to 1 margin.

We'll see how this plays out, but it's not over yet.

I said the worst thing a candidate can do is respond to a personal attack because your response 1)acknowledges the attack and gives it credibility, 2) the public ignores personal attacks, and 3)your response gets coverage the attack probably won't.

YOU, in turn, laid out a bunch of esoteric booshwah as criteria for response, which are pretty much BS, by the way.

I said that if YOU followed YOUR own criteria then YOU would be forced conclude Kerry should have kept his yap shut.

Now by the miracle of Martian Logic I am contradicting myself. Whatever.

And we do know all the answers to all the questions you posed. The only relevant question we don't have a definitive answer to is how much of Kerry's Excellent Cochin China Adventure® is fraudulent.

Several times on this site you've engaged me in argument.  That's great.  It's why I come here.  But after repeated attempts to argue with you in a straight-forward manner, I find we do not read the same meaning in each other's posts.  It's not really even close.  So, since we can't seem to agree even on the smallest matters of what the other is saying, I ask that you stop posting replies to my comments, and I will stop posting replies to yours.  I find that your replies to my posts miss my meaning, and after several attempts to try to rectify the problem, I find it is impossible.  Fine.  As the transmitter of my message, I'll take the responsiblity that I'm not writing it in a way that you, the receiver, can understand it.

Can we agree to stop posting to each other, so we can enjoy debate with others with whom we can more easily make ourselves understood?

At least you've managed to avoid him going on a troll-rating spree on ya...  He must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed before reading my posts.