On Monday, the Bush campaign released its latest campaign ad, called “Intel.” Looking at its name, one would think the ad lays out the president's plans for intelligence reform or touts his administration's record on preventing terrorist attacks. But it doesn't.
Rather, the ad attacks John Kerry for allegedly missing 76 percent of the hearings of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and proposing to slash the federal intelligence budget by $6 billion. It ends on a personal note, declaring that, “there's what Kerry says, and then there's what Kerry does.”
This comes days after Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- a technically independent group -- accused Kerry of lying to win medals in Vietnam in an ad that makes the infamous Willie Horton spot look like an ad for Snuggles detergent. Meanwhile this week on the stump, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney continued to deride Kerry as a flip-flopper, out of the mainstream, and clouded by his own convoluted positions. In Traverse City, Michigan, on Monday, Bush mocked Kerry for spending too much time in Hollywood, selecting a trial lawyer as his running-mate, wanting to raise taxes, not taking a firm stand on the diversion of Great Lakes water, changing his mind on the war on Iraq, “playing politics with the judicial system,” and offering a “complicated” explanation about his vote against the $87 billion appropriation for Iraq. And that was just in one stump speech.
But it shouldn't come as a surprise. In the first five months of this year, according to a Washington Post analysis of media buys in the top 100 U.S. media markets, 75 percent of Bush's ads have been negative compared with just 27 percent of Kerry's. The President also has taken the extraordinary step of attacking his opponent directly from behind the presidential podium. All in all, President Bush has been waging one of the most negative, nastiest campaigns in a generation. And looking to the Republican convention starting at the end of this month, expect more of the same -- precisely because Bush has no other choice but to attack.
To understand why, think back about a quarter of a century to another president who also accepted his party's re-nomination in New York City: Jimmy Carter.
Like Carter, Bush is an embattled incumbent elected without a mandate and stuck trying to defend a failed presidency. Both presided over an economic downturn. (Granted, Carter's was more of a total meltdown, but Bush is the first president since Herbert Hoover to preside over a job loss on his watch.) Both contended with an energy crisis. Both were dragged down in a Mesopotamian morass: Bush in Iraq, Carter in Iran. And both faced an electorate that wanted them out of office. In June of 1980, Carter had a dismal 26 percent approval rating, and a Newsweek poll from two weeks ago found that only 43 percent of registered voters want to see Bush re-elected.
Faced with that situation (and I will admit that Bush is in a stronger position than Carter since he does still have credibility on fighting the war on terrorism), there's only one strategy for an incumbent president: attack. Since the American people seem to want to hire someone else for the job, the embattled incumbent has no choice but to convince them that the only other available candidate is totally unfit for the position.
That's why in his acceptance speech in 1980, Carter attacked Ronald Reagan as part of a group that “captured control of the Republican Party” and who would lead the country toward an “alarming, and even perilous, destiny.” He accused Reagan of living in a “fantasy world” and a “world of tinsel and make-believe” where “all problems have simple solutions,” an implicit criticism of Reagan's intellectual heft. Carter also hit Reagan for being “radical and irresponsible” and waffling on what he wanted to do with the Soviet Union. In fact, by the end of the campaign, Carter -- who was elected precisely because of his moral character -- ended up looking mean in the eyes of many voters.
In 1992, another embattled incumbent, George H.W. Bush, followed a similar strategy. But reflecting the coarsening political environment and perhaps a familial tendency, Bush Senior was explicit and more personal in framing his indictment around the character of his opponent, Bill Clinton. In discussing the first Gulf War, Bush Senior said that while he “bit the bullet” in making a tough decision, the “leader of the Arkansas National Guard … bit his nails.” He added that “his [Clinton's] policy can be summed up by a road sign he's probably seen on his bus tour, ‘Slippery When Wet.'” Bush Senior went on, accusing Clinton of being “in the tank” with trial lawyers and of possessing a “passion to expand government [that] knows no bounds.”
One can almost hear the son in the words of the father -- and if you wait long enough, this fall you actually may. Not only is attacking the only logical strategy for Bush to take, but Karl Rove and company have more hope than Bush Senior or Carter did that this time it actually may work. Even though Kerry has made headway since the convention, Bush still has two advantages over the Democratic nominee: He is perceived as a stronger leader and as more capable to wage the war against terrorism.
As seen in this week's “Intel” ad, Bush will do whatever it takes to keep Kerry from matching him on these scores. In response, Kerry needs to parry these attacks while showing that he has what it takes to be an effective commander-in-chief, and the mettle not just to defend America but to destroy terrorists. If Kerry does that, Bush will have nowhere to go except to where other embattled incumbents have gone before him -- retirement.
Kenneth S. Baer, a former senior speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, runs Baer Communications, a Democratic consulting firm.
