Two weeks ago a friend asked me, "Where's Kerry?" With the volume of high-voltage stories dominating the national news over the past few weeks, I was starting to wonder the same thing myself (and that was even before President Reagan's death). Which isn't to say that Kerry hasn't been out there traveling, campaigning hard, talking about issues, and laying out his policy agenda. Unfortunately, not much of it has seemed to break through.
In fact, in the past two weeks only two stories about Kerry have appeared on the front page of The New York Times, one on Sunday, June 13, and one about a week ago; the latter was a story focused on the veepstakes, not policy-related campaign issues. Actually, aside from the ongoing musings about the possibility of a Vice President John McCain, the most recent thing a number of people recall from Kerry seems to be not his plan for modernizing the military but the announcement that he was considering not accepting the Democratic nomination at the convention in July. That's not exactly the story you want lingering in the minds of voters when your opponent is criticizing you for being a flip-flopper.
Politically speaking, the Kerry campaign absolutely made the right decision, in the aftermath of Reagan's death, to show respect by canceling scheduled events and suspending most campaign activity last week. Not to have done so would have been political suicide; he would have certainly faced sharp criticism for being inappropriately political and insensitive during a time of tragedy, with the risk of alienating swing voters. But the right decision can be incredibly frustrating. First of all, there's the matter of lost time, time that you are not driving your message home to the voters. On top of that, it was a particularly ill-timed week for having to stay silent. The heels of the D-Day celebrations provided an ideal time to remind voters of Senator Kerry's service and support among veterans; the sudden announcement of CIA Director George Tenet's resignation would have provided a perfect opportunity for Kerry to reiterate his stance on improvements needed in intelligence operations.
During Hillary Clinton's 2000 New York Senate campaign, we faced a similar situation when Mayor Rudy Giuliani dropped out of the race. In mid-May, Hillary was finally starting to get a little traction after a rocky start. Giuliani had made some mistakes and folks within his own party were questioning his commitment to the campaign. Then, facing prostate cancer, the mayor announced that he would be dropping out of the race -- hardly something you could criticize him for, in spite of the fact that it had also recently been made public that he was leaving his wife for another woman. I can't even recall what event we were doing or what issue we were talking about publicly that day; once the mayor made his announcement, it simply didn't matter. It was immediately obvious that the news coverage for the next day or so would focus on the mayor's battle with cancer, his decision to drop out, and his potential successor. Not much else would break through, and any statement other than an expression of sympathy and support would be seen as inappropriate. So Hillary expressed her sympathies both publicly and privately, and we officially laid low. We used the downtime to realign our strategy to the new reality of our campaign and to focus on our new opponent, Rick Lazio, who came out swinging at us just two days after Giuliani's announcement.
A precious six weeks remain before the Democratic National Convention in Boston, which begins July 26. One hopes that over the course of the past week, the Kerry campaign spent some time strategizing about what it must do in those weeks. Indeed, this week, as we collectively refocus our attention, the Kerry campaign has an opportunity to begin to break through the news and get back into the driver's seat. He needs to weigh in loudly and boldly with a couple of substantive, attention-getting announcements. His decision to focus on the economy is a step in the right direction, but not enough.
For starters, the campaign and the DNC must resolve the labor disputes surrounding the FleetCenter. They're an unnecessary distraction from talking about the virtues of the Democratic Party that will be on display during the convention. Second, and most obvious, is that they must go ahead and make the VP announcement. This always reinvigorates a campaign, as the announcement precipitates a fresh round of stories about the new team and its agenda for America. It's also the kind of announcement that provides a perfect platform on which to roll out a couple of big new ideas with the certainty that they will get coverage and break through. Third, Kerry needs to be more aggressive about why he's the better candidate to put America back on track. Such a strategy should go a step further than what we've seen from the campaign and leverage what the polls are saying about Americans' dissatisfaction and suspicion about the way Bush has handled the war in Iraq. Kerry should be casting the Bush economic policies in a similar light to the mess in Iraq: a set of short-sighted policies based on miscalculations that may in the end weaken our country.
As part of their economic message, the Kerry campaign should introduce specific case studies that highlight the direct impact the Bush administration policies will have on the lives of average Americans. Doing so would put a human face on the near- and long-term impact of Bush's tax cuts, the deficit that is now out of control, and the list of billions in proposed cuts to programs like veterans affairs, education, health care, and even homeland security that were mentioned in a White House Budget Procedures Memo reported in The Washington Post a few weeks ago. These case studies should feature a range of Americans: a single person living in St. Louis, earning the average salary there; or a family of four in Akron; or a retiree in Ft. Lauderdale. Then Kerry could show how his policy ideas, in contrast to Bush's, would benefit the examples in each case; at an event to release the report, he could even have actual people from battleground states who represent each of the scenarios in the case studies, to put a real face on the point, generating both local and national stories on the policy and the people. Additionally, surrogates like Gene Sperling, Bob Rubin, or even Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill could be sent out to discuss and support the findings of the report.
The week started out right with the story on the front page of Sunday's New York Times, a getting-to-know-you piece that focused on the softer side of Kerry and his personality inside and outside of the bubble of campaign life. It reminded voters that although he is very bright, he's also just a regular guy in some ways. His plans to focus on the economy are a step in the right direction. But now is the time, as Emeril would say, to kick it up a notch.
Karen Finney worked in the Clinton White House and on Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign.
