Bush Strategists Now Expect to Trail Kerry or Run Even Through the Summer
nytimes.com
February 29, 2004
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
ASHINGTON, Feb. 28 — President Bush's campaign strategists say they now expect to trail or do no better than run even with Senator John Kerry through the summer, despite their aggressive new effort to counter months of Democratic attacks.
Some Republicans said the campaign's assessment was intended in part to lower expectations and convince jittery supporters that the election was unfolding just as the White House had anticipated. But they said it also reflected a belief that the president had his work cut out for him in getting back on the offensive after a period in which events outside Mr. Bush's control and concerted Democratic criticism had undermined his political strength.
After Tuesday's primaries in 10 states, the White House plans to step up a counterassault that began last Monday when Mr. Bush delivered his first speech of the general election campaign, officials said.
Mr. Bush will make a foray into the heart of the Democratic base, visiting California on Wednesday and Thursday to collect more money toward his goal of raising $175 million or more to last him through the summer. He will start putting his war chest to work in earnest on Thursday when he begins running television advertising.
Strategists with ties to the Bush campaign said the White House was working with the Republican leadership in Congress to draw sharp distinctions between the parties through votes and debates on a variety of issues, especially tax cuts. The campaign is increasingly deploying surrogates around the country, from senators to county chairmen.
"As this becomes a two-man race, we need to define the stakes," said Terry Holt, the Bush campaign's spokesman.
Mr. Bush himself, the strategists said, will refine his stump speech so that it is less about his accomplishments so far than about the opportunities he has created for the future, and the stark choices facing the voters in November. Chief among them, Republicans said, would be whether the country wants to entrust its security to a Democratic challenger that the White House is busily portraying as too liberal and too lacking in principle to be trusted with defending the country against terrorism.
"The real challenge, and the concern — not worry — is that they need to be able to implement a strategy, a series of tactics, that will enable the president to define the election on terms favorable to him," said one Republican who works closely with the White House.
"Uniquely for a successful incumbent, he has not been able to do that so far," said the Republican, who demanded anonymity in part because the White House discourages its allies from speaking openly to reporters but also because he said he wants to remain behind the scenes.
"The next phase of the campaign, from early March to mid- or late April, is about whether the election is going to be fought on safety, security, America's place in the world and keeping the economy growing — the issues that are good for the president," the Republican said. "If it's about credibility, weapons of mass destruction, intelligence failures and job creation, Bush will lose."
Matthew Dowd, the Bush campaign's chief strategist, predicted in a widely circulated memo late last year that the race would be neck-and-neck by spring, when the Democrats settled on their nominee. With that prediction having come true and then some, Mr. Dowd said in an interview that the Bush campaign now had to begin a methodical task of changing many of the perceptions created among voters by the intense focus given to the Democrats.
"I wouldn't be surprised if we are either behind or in a dead heat environment all the way to our convention," Mr. Dowd said.
Mr. Dowd said that Mr. Kerry had not been roughed up as much in his primaries as might have been expected, and that Mr. Kerry was only now getting the kind of intense scrutiny that comes with being a front-runner or presumptive nominee.
At the same time, Mr. Bush remains in a fundamentally strong position, Mr. Dowd said. His approval rating is around 50 percent in the polls, Mr. Dowd said, just slightly below where Bill Clinton was at this point in the 1996 race, which he went on to win easily over Bob Dole.
But defining Mr. Kerry for the voters — and countering the Democratic effort to define Mr. Bush on their terms — will be a lengthy job that will take up a substantial portion of the eight months until Election Day and require patience, he said.
"One week or two weeks or three weeks of ads is not going to change this process in a dramatic way," Mr. Dowd said.
The confident face put on by the Bush campaign belies some anxiety in the Republican ranks. Most national polls for the last several weeks have shown Mr. Kerry leading Mr. Bush in a head-to-head matchup. At this point in his 1996 re-election race, Mr. Clinton was well ahead of Mr. Dole, and he never gave up the lead. President Ronald Reagan had established a double-digit lead over Walter Mondale by this point in 1984.
Perversely for a president who has tried to learn from the mistakes of his father's failed re-election bid in 1992, Mr. Bush can take some solace from Mr. Clinton's experience. Mr. Clinton did not catch the elder Mr. Bush until the conventions, but then built a lead he never relinquished. |
