When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began running campaign ads attacking John Kerry, the Democrat faced a choice. He could immediately respond to the patently false charges, or he could continue to talk about his plans to address the nation’s health care crisis and lagging economy. Pundits have wrongly criticized Kerry for choosing the latter course, as they mistakenly view the 2004 election through the prism of past campaigns.
A knowledge of history is a helpful guide to future action, but only if past events are correctly understood. The 2004 presidential contest has become subject to constant comparisons with past campaigns, and much of this talk makes little sense.
For example, many are comparing the upcoming protests at the Republican convention to the Democratic convention protests in Chicago in 1968. But Todd Gitlin, who made this case in The Nation, knows better than anyone that the whole world will not be watching next week’s protests in New York City.
There is a vast difference in the political context between Chicago in 1968 and New York City in 2004. If a comparison must be made, there is a stronger resemblance between next week’s actions and the protests against Nixon at the 1972 Republican Convention in Miami (this was the event where African-Americans across the nation were revolted by the scene of Sammy Davis Jr. giving a bear hug to Richard Nixon).
The Bush campaign created the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to derail Kerry’s plan to spend the past two weeks addressing his domestic agenda. Post-convention polling showed that swing voters were receptive to Kerry’s proposals but needed to know more details.
So while Kerry is out trying to close the deal in states like Missouri and Arizona that went for Bush in 2000, the President’s backers are funding a vicious campaign of outright lies against Kerry. Although the ad buy for the Swift Veterans was only $500,000, the mainstream media conveniently ran stories on the ads, greatly increasing its exposure.
To Kerry critics, the attack ads were Boston Harbor and Willie Horton in 1988 all over again. These critics felt it was imperative for Kerry to redirect his message toward rebutting the attacks, or else risk being seen as a weakling, as occurred that year with Mike Dukakis.
But the analogy to the 1988 campaign wrongly assumes that all negative campaigning is the same. It is not. The reason that the Boston Harbor and Willie Horton attacks were so effective is they had a factual basis and fit into the electorate’s unease about Dukakis.
Unlike John Kerry, Mike Dukakis came out of national obscurity in 1988 to win the Democratic nomination. Dukakis’s success was entirely attributable to his role in producing the “Massachusetts Miracle,” an economic boom that led Dukakis to claim that he would produce similar results in America.
Since Dukakis’s entire candidacy rested on his Massachusetts record, an ad disclosing that the federal government found Boston Harbor to be unhealthy raised doubts about the Governor’s effectiveness.The facts behind the ad were true-what was false was blaming Dukakis for the feds own foot-dragging on the clean-up.
Similarly, the Bush I claim that Governor Dukakis supported a parole program that let an African-American inmate out of prison earlier than otherwise, and that the parolee went out an murdered a white woman, was accurate. The Horton ad was racist, and failed to disclose that Dukakis’s Republican predecessor also supported the program-but the underlying facts about the incident were basically true.
The impact of the two attack ads was that voters uneasy about the nature of the Massachusetts Miracle, and those unsure that a proud card-carrying member of the ACLU would be tough enough to protect them from violent crime, ultimately voted for Bush.
Michael Dukakis did not simply let a week go by before he responded to the attack ads; he did not fight back at all. Dukakis not only left the campaign trail for the entire month of August when the Boston Harbor ad was pervasive, but he strongly believed that negative campaigning hurt democracy and wanted no part of such tactics.
Confronted with two harsh but factually-based attacks on his core credentials, Dukakis had to respond or face defeat. He chose defeat, and regrets his “stupidity” to this day.
In contrast to 1988, there is no factual basis for the attacks by the Swift Boat Veterans against John Kerry. They have been exposed as liars throughout the mainstream media, including powerful front-page exposes in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune that were picked up by papers across the country.
Most Americans can tell the difference between the disclosure of an unpleasant fact such as occurred with Boston Harbor and Willie Horton, and the promotion of a pure lie. Kerry would have made a terrible mistake to let this lie deter him from taking his domestic policy message to the voters—such would be the classic error of allowing your adversary to set the agenda and frame the debate.
The Swift Boat attack ads were a desperate effort on behalf of an incumbent president who is already psychologically preparing himself for defeat. The entire controversy confirmed that the incumbent has no positive plan or message for the future.
The most successful re-election campaign theme of the past thirty years was Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America.” Not a negative word was heard about Walter Mondale during that campaign.
Similarly, Bill Clinton ran a very positive, agenda-setting campaign in 1992, and spent no time criticizing Bob Dole in 1996.
Presidents do not win re-election through attack ads. John Kerry should continue focusing on his own agenda, and not let critics force him to fight on his opponent’s terrain.
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