A Changing Political Landscape
Monday, Oct 04, 2004; 9:15 AM Media Notes
CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Shortly before the first presidential debate got underway here, Irish television reporter Carol Coleman asked the classic isn't-your-guy-in-deep-trouble question.
"How is John Kerry going to pull this one out of the bag?" she said, thrusting a mike at Kerry adviser Joe Lockhart.
"This campaign has plenty of life in it," Lockhart insisted.
By yesterday morning, Newsweek's cover was trumpeting Kerry as "Off the Ropes." The Los Angeles Times front-page headline was "Viewers of First Debate Give Round One to Kerry." "It's a Horse Race Once Again," said the Chicago Tribune.
Why the "dramatic psychological shift," as The Washington Post put it? The answer, in large measure, is polls.
Kerry may have impressed much of the television audience with a strong debate performance Thursday night. But it was a September of sagging poll numbers that caused much of the downbeat coverage, and improved numbers -- starting minutes after the debate ended -- have journalists suddenly proclaiming that the senator might overtake President Bush.
"The polls drive media coverage," says Roger Simon, chief political correspondent of U.S. News & World Report and part of the media invasion in Coral Gables. "It controls the language. All of a sudden there's a front-runner and there's a challenger," and Kerry had been depicted as being "in a hole. He's trying to make up lost ground. He must close the gap. He must come from behind. It's voodoo news."
The alchemy is working, at least fleetingly. Newsweek has Kerry jumping to a 47 percent to 45 percent lead. And the "who won" polls Thursday night were all lopsided, with Kerry deemed the debate victor by 9 points (ABC), 16 (CNN) and 18 (CBS). Never mind that these are blurry snapshots (Al Gore won the first insta-polls in 2000) or that the surveys, financed and trumpeted by news outlets, have been unusually volatile this year.
After Bush bounced to a double-digit lead in some surveys after the Republican convention, reporters and pundits began downgrading Kerry's campaign skills and his team, creating a self-reinforcing reality.
"Polls have been so weird this year we all know not to rely on them," says Liz Marlantes, a Christian Science Monitor reporter. "But it's still really difficult because it's one of the only concrete things you have -- even though they're not concrete. Otherwise you go on what voters tell you, and that tends to be anecdotal." Besides, "the polls could all be wrong."
Conservatives believe many reporters are secretly rooting for Kerry, but there may be a more fundamental motivation, says John Harwood, political editor of the Wall Street Journal. For journalists, he says, "having a rooting interest in having a race may have a positive effect on the coverage of Kerry right now, because people have an incentive to say, 'We still have a contest.' " That, says Juan Williams of National Public Radio, is why political writers cast the debates "as Kerry's last big shot," while a loss would have been interpreted "as the beginning of the end."
Minutes before the debate, Time correspondent Matt Cooper said of the Kerry comeback scenario: "Everyone in this room wants to write it. They're aching to write it. When the polls close up, you'll see more of it."
He was right -- at least until the polls shift again.
Pink-Slipped Pollster Pollster Frank Luntz is crying foul after MSNBC canceled his long-scheduled focus group two days before the debate. Luntz, who is under contract to MSNBC, had already spent $30,000 on recruits for several focus groups and invited reporters in Florida to watch -- only to be told that the network didn't want to declare a winner in the debate.
"I think they buckled to political pressure," says Luntz, who has advised Republicans from Newt Gingrich to Rudy Giuliani but says he's done no GOP work since 2001. "They caved. . . . Why is it that Democrats are allowed to do this" after leaving politics, "but Republicans aren't?"
But MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines says: "We made a decision not to use focus groups as part of our debate coverage. This decision had nothing to do with Frank's past work or politics. We think our viewers should be able to make up their own minds without 'scientific' help" -- despite the fact that the network has prominently featured Luntz and his on-air focus groups for four years.
Luntz has criticized President Bush on occasion, and his non-televised focus group, ironically, favored Kerry in the debate. Some NBC executives find him extremely fair but believe his longtime GOP links create a perception problem.
"For me, nothing is more important than getting it right," Luntz says. He says MSNBC bowed to pressure from conservative-turned-liberal activist David Brock in dumping him and that the network hasn't even agreed to use him as an analyst -- sans focus groups -- in this week's debates.
It's official: CNBC has abandoned news, at least at night.
After dropping the signature newscast created by Brian Williams, the network is now axing its only Washington political show, "Capital Report," after the election.
"It's clear CNBC prime-time is going in a different direction," says co-host Alan Murray, who left the Wall Street Journal in 2002 to become the network's Washington bureau chief.
"Alan and I like to call this the little show that could," says the other co-host, Gloria Borger, who gave up her "Face the Nation" gig last year to join CNBC. "With a small staff, we sure got big guests."
Those guests included John Kerry, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Cheney, who made news by ripping the New York Times. But big news didn't translate into big ratings -- "Capital Report" averaged 81,000 viewers this year -- and CNBC is going with the likes of Dennis Miller, John McEnroe and "The Apprentice" reruns.
Before the show, says Murray, "CNBC had no profile in Washington" -- a status it is likely to resume.
There's no escape for Dan Rather, even on the comics pages.
"Mallard Fillmore," a syndicated strip running in nearly 400 papers (though not The Washington Post), takes on the CBS docu-drama for a two-week run beginning today. In one strip, Rather is seen saying: "I'd like to clear the air and say the memos are, indeed, fakes . . . made by evil Bush operatives to make me look bad."
In another, Peter Jennings begins to tout "a hard-hitting, critical look at the whole CBS-Dan Rather mess. But then CBS might start doing stories about our mistakes. So instead, we bring you the third installment in our series, 'Does your pet watch too much television?'
" "Mallard" creator Bruce Tinsley, who styles himself as the conservative answer to "Doonesbury," admits he's "piling on," but says he's mocking a medium in which few are willing to concede bias in major mistakes. "I don't think Dan Rather is by any means the most liberally biased guy out there, but he may be the most colorful," says Tinsley.
Oops
A FoxNews.com story had some world-exclusive quotes from John Kerry, with the Democratic candidate telling a crowd after the debate: "Didn't my nails and cuticles look great? What a good debate!. . . . Women should like me! I do manicures. . . . I'm metrosexual -- he's a cowboy."
But, as reported by liberal blogger Josh Marshall, this was fiction. Fox executives are furious with chief political correspondent Carl Cameron for writing a satire that mistakenly wound up on their Web site, prompting a retraction Friday.
"Carl made a stupid mistake, and he's been reprimanded for it," says Fox spokesman Paul Schur. "It was a poor attempt at humor and he regrets it very much. It was a lapse in judgment on his part."
Returning now to the theme at the top of the column, the coverage is all polls, polls, polls and a few focus groups, with Kerry rising, Phoenix-like, from the ashes. Here's more on the Newsweek survey:
"Debates don't always shake up a presidential race, but this one did -- and there are two more, plus a vice presidential debate yet to come. In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, Bush's 49-43 percent lead in a three-way race has been erased, with Kerry now ahead 47-45 percent.
"Electoral politics is a game of comparison, and the first appearance of the two men side by side -- one having a good night, the other a bad one -- did wonders for Kerry's image. His 'favorable/unfavorable' rating, last month a tepid 48-44 percent, rose to 52-40 (while Bush's dropped from 52-44 to 49-46). A whopping 63 million voters watched the Miami debate, and Kerry was scored the winner by 61 percent of them; only 19 percent thought Bush had won. Among viewers, Kerry overwhelmingly was regarded as the better informed and more self-assured. More ominously for Bush, Kerry was seen as the stronger leader onstage (47-44 percent) -- and even as the more likable guy (47-41 percent). Bush aides privately had to admit that it was a race again, understating the obvious."
USA Today calls it a tie:
"The race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry has tightened dramatically since their first debate Thursday night, with the race now too close to call, according to the latest USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll. The poll shows Bush and Kerry tied at 49% each among likely voters."
The Los Angeles Times has the race tightening as well:
"Sen. John F. Kerry improved his image with voters who watched his debate with President Bush last week, but didn't significantly shift their choice in the presidential race, a Times poll of debate viewers has found.
"Although the debate did not diminish impressions of Bush on most questions, it did restore some of the luster Kerry had lost amid relentless Republican pounding since his party's convention in July, the poll found.
"The key question will be whether those gains will help Kerry peel away voters from Bush in the days ahead.
"Of those who watched Thursday's debate, more than three times as many called Kerry the winner as picked Bush, the poll found. The Democratic nominee also made modest gains with viewers on questions relating to national security and leadership. And the portion of debate viewers with favorable perceptions of Kerry increased from 52% before to 57% after.
"Kerry's most dramatic advance in the survey came in convincing more voters that he had a thorough agenda for the next four years. Asked which candidate had the more detailed plan for the policies he would pursue if elected, viewers gave Bush a 9-percentage-point edge before the encounter; afterward, they preferred Kerry by 4 points."
The Chicago Tribune sees "a campaign that has gained a renewed aura of competitiveness since the two debated last week on television.
"After the first, widely watched Bush-Kerry debate -- and heading into the second in St. Louis on Friday -- observers say the opener gave Kerry a needed boost in a contest in which Bush had enjoyed a late-summer advantage."
When it comes to the mess in Iraq, says Slate's William Saletan, Bush "offers himself -- and you -- a way out. Ignore the bad news, he says. Ignore the evidence that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs had deteriorated. Ignore the evidence that Saddam had no operational relationship with al-Qaida. Ignore the rising casualties. Ignore the hollowness and disintegration of the American-led 'coalition.' If these reports are true, as Kerry suggests, then it was all a mistake. How can we ask our troops to die for a mistake? We can't. Therefore, these reports must be rejected. They must be judged not by evidence, but by their offensiveness to the assumptions we embraced when we went to war.
"In Thursday's debate, moderator Jim Lehrer asked Bush, 'Has the war in Iraq been worth the cost of American lives -- 1,052 as of today?' Bush looked down. He recalled a woman whose husband had died in Iraq. 'I told her after we prayed and teared up and laughed some that I thought her husband's sacrifice was noble and worthy,' the president said. 'Was it worth it? Every life is precious. That's what distinguishes us from the enemy. . . . We can look back and say we did our duty.'
"That's how Bush judges the war's worth: not by costs and benefits, but by character. It shows our nobility. It shows we did our duty. He used the word 'duty' seven times. Kerry never used that word, except to refer to 'active duty' troops. Eleven times, Bush called the mess in Iraq 'hard work.' To recognize error would be to abandon that work and shirk our duty. Again and again, he framed the acceptance of bad news as moral failure. Will. Resolute. Steadfast. Uncertainty. Weakness. Supporting our troops."
Salon's Joe Conason says it's too soon for the Kerry team to break out the Champagne: "Stunned by George W. Bush's lackluster and peevish performance, his media claque had no time to recover to promote an effective line of propaganda on his behalf. On television and the Internet, the president's supporters were unable to conceal their dismay, instantly reinforced by the networks' polling verdicts. By Friday morning, conservative spin had devolved into excuses about his fatigue from comforting Florida hurricane victims -- and the official Republican and Bush Web sites weren't even claiming a victory for their candidate . . .
"The sounds of euphoria emanating from the Kerry campaign are understandable, after weeks of rumored disarray and discouraging headlines. But before overconfidence replaces dejection, Kerry and his advisors should remember a few important facts.
"This first debate didn't conclude the campaign argument over foreign policy, national security, terrorism and Iraq. For many voters, and especially for most undecided voters, that argument may have just begun on Thursday night. While Kerry made a better impression on those voters than Bush did, he may not have yet won their votes."
I've been searching far and wide for someone not on a partisan payroll who thinks Bush won the debate. And I've found one: Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page:
"Question: So, who do you think won the first debate between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry?
"Answer: Bush. By an eyelash.
"Q: What? I thought you were one of those bleeding-heart liberal types?
"A: Sometimes. Mostly I'm a wishy-washy, left-of-center moderate type, which sounds a lot like Kerry. Either way, I vote for the candidate, not the party. But how I vote is beside the point. I think Kerry won this debate on points. I'm an old high school debater. I know about points.
"And Kerry looked good. He showed that he has the stature, experience and brainpower to stand on the same stage with the president and challenge the big guy for his job. Bush looked (about half the time) like he was sucking on a lemon, especially when Kerry challenged any aspect of his judgment . . . "Kerry showed he could cram an encyclopedic amount of information on foreign affairs, the subject of last week's debate, into a two-minute answer. Those of us who have been closely following his past speeches were impressed by the brevity and focus of his answers, for a change.
"But Bush showed himself still to be the master of stretching about a dozen words of geopolitical vocabulary to fill out 90 minutes. The president's responses were tailor-made for people with short attention spans, whic h probably describes most undecideds. Let's face it, if they still haven't made up their minds at this late date, they really haven't been paying attention."
- By Howard Kurtz
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Press Gives Kerry the Nod
Friday, Oct 01, 2004; 8:19 AM
CORAL GABLES, Fla.--Well, no one can say it wasn't a serious debate.
It was, in fact, a relentlessly serious debate--Iraq, Iran, Sudan, North Korea--in which both Bush and Kerry, both wearing American flag lapel pins, tried mightily to project an image of strength.
Bush's message, repeated over and over: Kerry keeps changing positions and can't be trusted as commander in chief.
Kerry's message, repeated again and again: Bush made a huge mistake in Iraq and won't acknowledge reality.
There were no canned zingers or withering one-liners. On the one hand, Kerry didn't fundamentally change the campaign conversation. On the other hand, he showed he could go toe to toe with the incumbent. (How's that for even-handedness?)
The buzz in the pressroom was that Kerry turned in the stronger performance and may have revived his campaign, but reporters were surprised by the 10- and 15-point margins by which the networks' insta-polls gave the contest to Kerry. Keep in mind, though, that these early snapshots may not mean much, as Gore found out four years ago.
I've scoured the Major Media coverage and haven't found anyone who says Bush won last night. Tim Russert's take on "Today" is typical: "The president was more tentative and more on the defensive than we've seen him in previous debates. John Kerry was the John Kerry that Democrats hoped they were nominating back in Iowa, someone who could give a forceful presentation."
In the morning papers--gee, I just saw those guys a few hours ago, banging away in the University of Miami pressroom--it's all about how well the senator did.
Ron Brownstein in the Los Angeles Times:
"President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry increased the odds that the voters' verdict on the war in Iraq will decide the November election, as they deepened their disagreement over the conflict during a sharp but civil debate Thursday night. Overall, the two men raised few new arguments. But they offered starkly different visions of how America should pursue its goals in the world, how a president should lead and, most emphatically, whether the ongoing war in Iraq had enhanced or diminished American security. . . .
"The president sometimes seemed exasperated and even angry as Kerry pressed his case against him; at one point, Bush even apparently sighed in frustration, a distant echo of the behavior that hurt Vice President Al Gore in his first debate against Bush in 2000."
Todd Purdum in the New York Times:
"In the end, it was a real debate: sharp, scrappy and defining, just what the nation seemed to be yearning for during a wartime election campaign. Again and again, President Bush defended his conduct of the war in Iraq, insisting, 'there must be certainty from the U.S. president.' Over and over, Senator John Kerry asserted that Mr. Bush had led the country into a debacle in Iraq and it was time for a 'fresh start, new credibility' in foreign affairs.
"From the very first question last night, Mr. Kerry was determined to show, as he put it, that 'I can make America safer than President Bush has made us.' He was cool, respectful, rational in offering a detailed brief that Mr. Bush had embarked on a diversion from the war on Al Qaeda and global terror by invading Iraq, and his answers never exceeded the time limits.
"By the time the debate ended, Mr. Kerry appeared to have accomplished his primary goal for the evening: establishing himself as a plausible commander in chief."
That sentence sums up what the media types are saying.
Michael Tackett in the Chicago Tribune:
"Whether John Kerry won the debate with President Bush Thursday night is an open question that voters will decide, but he almost certainly won a chance for a second look.
"And that he quite clearly needed. Some Republicans had said the Bush campaign wanted to switch the issue of foreign affairs from the third debate to the first one to give the president the chance to effectively close out the race by undercutting Kerry on shifting positions on the war in Iraq. Instead, Kerry painted a contrast with the president over the war and challenged an aspect of Bush's character--a sense of moral certitude--that could be the president's greatest electoral liability, especially among women and independent voters."
Peter Canellos in the Boston Globe:
"After two months spent reacting to attacks on his own record, John Kerry last night succeeded in turning the roving spotlight of the 2004 presidential campaign onto President Bush's Iraq policies, blaming Bush for allowing the United States to bear '90 percent of the casualties and 90 percent of the costs.'
"Bush, following the same effective strategy of his past debates, stuck to a few core themes, such as his argument that Kerry's attacks on the war undermine American troops and insult US allies.
"But for most of the first hour, during which Iraq was the prime focus, Bush's repetition seemed insistent rather than firm, and his body language -- sighing, clenching his teeth, rolling his eyes -- suggested a man on the defensive."
Dan Balz in The Washington Post plays it more down the middle:
"Iraq dominated the first debate between President Bush and Democratic challenger John F. Kerry here on Thursday night, and rarely have the differences between the two men -- and the choices for the country -- been stated so clearly and with such passion.
"Bush and Kerry differed on almost every aspect of the war in Iraq and on other major foreign policy issues such as North Korea and Iran. They disagreed over whether former president Saddam Hussein posed a serious threat to the United States at the time Bush took the country to war there. They disagreed on whether it was right or wrong to go to war as Bush did. They differed on whether the president has a plan to secure the peace. And they parted company on whether the certitude Bush has displayed as president has advanced U.S. security or weakened it. . . .
"Both accomplished many of the goals their own advisers had set out in the days before the debate and likely reinforced the strong backing each already enjoys among their most committed supporters."
Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer is of the Kerry-dodged-a-bullet school:
"Viewers will ultimately decide who won this game, but, at least in the short run, Kerry may have performed some necessary image repair, perhaps increasing his comfort level with wayward Democrats who have been frustrated by his campaign, and demonstrating to independent swing voters that he is more than a mere weather vane.
"At the least, he managed to avoid entangling himself in lengthy new explanations about his past votes on Iraq; at one point, he even managed to pivot from defense to offense by uttering a line that was clearly rehearsed - but arguably effective, at least with some of the skeptics:
"'I made a mistake in how I talked about the war. The president made a mistake by invading Iraq. Which is worse?'"
Al Hunt goes to the experts in the Wall Street Journal:
"John Kerry didn't score a knockout, but he climbed off the political ropes and took the presidential fight to President Bush in the first debate last night. That was the view of two seasoned political strategists -- John Sears, a Republican and Hamilton Jordan, a Democrat -- with no connection to the campaigns."
The New York Post also relies on a panel of smart people:
"Sen. John Kerry scored a decisive victory over an unusually off-his-game President Bush at the first of three debates last night, according to a 10-person bipartisan panel of political consultants and debate experts interviewed by The Post."
But was Bush really off his game? He was a stronger debater than he had been in 2000--but now has a four-year record to defend.
Andrew Sullivan works the body-language beat:
"I found myself agreeing more with Bush than Kerry. But from the very beginning, Kerry achieved something important. In tone and bearing, he seemed calm, authoritative, and, yes, presidential. I watched the C-SPAN version on a split screen, and in that context, it was particularly striking.
"In stark contrast to the Bush-Gore debates, it was Bush who was grimacing, furrowing his brow, almost rolling his eyes and at the very beginning, looking snippy and peevish. He seemed defensive throughout and because his record was front and center - and Kerry's long record in the Senate almost unmentioned - he was actually on the defense. He seemed physically smaller and more mobile than Kerry - and more emotionally alive . . .
"For many people, who have only heard of Kerry from Bush ads or sound-bites or from droning campaign speeches, it will be the first time that Kerry seems strong. In the simple, symbolic man-versus-man contrast, Kerry often seemed bigger. That strikes me as a big deal."
Josh Marshall reacts in real time:
"There were certainly no Ronald Reagan moments. But there were several times when Kerry landed solid punches that the president seemed unable to counter . . . There were a number of times through the debate when the president stumbled through responses and almost seemed lost."
Slate's Mickey Kaus, who had urged Kerry to drop out late last year, has come around, a least for one night:
"Kerry won. I assume everyone is saying this. He not only was shockingly succinct and sharp ('Certainty sometimes can get ya' into trouble') he managed to gloss over all his problems--finessing his prior votes, avoiding the trap of seeming to argue that 1,000 American soldiers died in a vain or inglorious cause, keeping his left in line while saying he wanted to win in Iraq. O.K., maybe he lost a few people on the left. Still. . . .
"2) A skilled debater might have picked Kerry apart; Bush is not that kind of debater;
"3) Bush was badly hurt by, yes, the podium height, which made him seem smaller, in comparison to Kerry, than he actually is. He looked--as a friend of mine put it--a bit like a gargoyle, or someone who needed the podium for protection; Did they really shut down the N.Y. subways during the GOP convention, as Kerry claimed? I think I took the subway during the GOP convention."
I KNOW I did, so I don't know where Kerry got that bit of flawed intelligence.
"4) Bush wasn't that bad--he looked like a plausible president too!"
Dan Kennedy has similar thoughts, but is less enthusiastic:
"KERRY WON. But Bush wasn't bad. Thus the first debate between the two major-party presidential candidates ended essentially in a draw."
A draw? I hate tie games.
" John Kerry was far more crisp and articulate than George W. Bush, but Bush got his points across, and made the best case he could for the war in Iraq. My first impression was that Kerry was considerably better than Al Gore four years ago - but that Bush was also much better than he was in 2000. Yes, Bush fumbled and paused and looked down, and got a little peevish somewhere around the 30-minute mark.
"But if we've learned anything in the past four years, it's that no one but us Bush-bashers cares. So it comes down, essentially, to what those elusive undecided voters are looking for. Polls still show a great deal of discontent with Bush's presidency. If voters were looking for a reason to switch to Kerry, then it doesn't matter how Bush fared tonight. All that matters is that Kerry came across as presidential and in control."
National Review's Jay Nordlinger doesn't sugarcoat the verdict:
"Don't shoot the messenger.
"I thought Kerry did very, very well; and I thought Bush did poorly -- much worse than he is capable of doing. Listen: If I were just a normal guy -- not Joe Political Junkie -- I would vote for Kerry. On the basis of that debate, I would. If I were just a normal, fairly conservative, war-supporting guy: I would vote for Kerry. On the basis of that debate."
Yes, but it doesn't matter, says the Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes:
"The good news for Kerry is that on the basis of his solid performance in the first nationally televised debate with President Bush, the griping among Democrats is likely to cease. But change the direction of the campaign, which Bush now leads by a small but significant margin? Probably not. Or affect the outcome? Not that either."
If that's the strongest conservative argument, it was a good night for Kerry here in Florida.
- By Howard Kurtz
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The Future Is Now
Thursday, Sep 30, 2004; 8:56 AM
In this warp-speed campaign, you got yer pre-debate spin, yer during-the-debate spin and yer post-debate spin.
Now there's a new category: Predictive spin. Meaning, pre-spin speculation on the post-game spin. Meaning, the seemingly daunting task of predicting the future.
Hey, you've got to think outside the box. Just what a media columnist needs for the traditionally slow morning-of-the-debate news vacuum.
I, for one, have no idea what the post-debate blather will look like. It depends on whether one of the candidates sighs, lies, fries under the hot lights or says the other guy is no Jack Kennedy. Of course, with a long list of rules on what they can't do--who ever heard of not being able to ask your rival a question?--maybe the Florida face-off will be drained off any semblance of spontaneity.
But since we know (see yesterday's column) that the media verdict is as important as what millions of Americans think they see on the screen--that is, until we tell them what they really saw--there's naturally lots of interest in what how the Fourth Estate will handle the aftermath. Substance or suntans? Fact-checking or theater criticism?
In this hothouse comes Mike Murphy, Republican spinner extraordinnaire, predicting the next plot twist in the Weekly Standard:
"A sure bet in this campaign is that the media will write a big October comeback story for John Kerry. It is inevitable for three reasons. First, the media works in a pack that is happiest when following a simple narrative. Second, from moribund to miracle campaigner is Kerry's tiresome myth turned worn-out cliché. Third, this is indeed a tight race and--as with any incumbent seeking reelection--the undecided vote will break heavily against Bush, which will make Kerry look like he is surging late. (Even hapless Michael Dukakis had such a late surge.)
"The signs of this pending storyline are already apparent in the coverage of Kerry's new team of savvy advisors. Their decision to bet the entire Kerry campaign on a debate over the Iraq war--a strategic suicide note in my view--is the required 'big move' such stories demand and is being applauded as a masterstroke. This is where narrative and reality truly differ. If President Bush wins this campaign, the decision to focus the entire Kerry campaign on a debate over the war, instead of on domestic issues, will be a key ingredient to the president's success. Kerry's mistake is that it is impossible to have a serious campaign-winning political victory over the administration without a serious policy difference between the two. Howard Dean had a policy difference with the Bush administration on Iraq; Kerry essentially does not.
"All his squirming and wiggling aside, Kerry essentially supported the war. . . .
"The media's Kerry comeback will unfold in earnest after Thursday's debate. What actually happens in the debate, barring a highly entertaining Tourette's style meltdown by one of the candidates, really doesn't matter. This is the first campaign debate in George W. Bush's career where he has entered with performance expectations, a troubling burden. While I expect the president will actually do well, that expectations game and the comeback narrative will combine, through the media's funhouse mirror, to put Kerry back in the race. Even though it may ultimately be simply an optical illusion."
But it's hard for the poll-addicted press to write a comeback story without the right polls.
So here's one, from the Los Angeles Times:
"President Bush has a 5 percentage point lead over Sen. John F. Kerry among likely voters, but nearly one-fifth say the candidate debates that begin to Thursday could change their decision, a new Times poll has found."
Can "Race Tightening" be far behind?
"Bush leads Kerry among likely voters in the survey, 51% to 46%. With both men holding at least 90% of the voters from their own party, Bush has seized the advantage by moving ahead among several key swing voter groups that both sides covet, including independents, suburbanites and married women. . . .
"The perception of Bush as a determined leader is boosting him even with some voters ambivalent about his policy choices, especially the decision to invade Iraq."
That could be awfully hard for Kerry to change at this stage.
For one camp, says the Philadelphia Inquirer, the goal is brevity:
"For Kerry aides, preparing the Massachusetts Democrat to debate President Bush on foreign policy tonight has had less to do with providing him material - he inhales facts the way a Hoover vacuums a carpet - and more with restraining him from exhaling it all back when asked a question.
"Kerry held four full-length mock debates with aides, said Stephanie Cutter, his communications director. Each was videotaped, and Kerry and his aides watched the tapes afterward to look for any ways he could improve his performance. Aides used a buzzer to help him keep his answers short."
For both sides, says USA Today, it's steering clear of gaffes:
"When President Bush and rival John Kerry meet Thursday night in Coral Gables, Fla., for their first debate, their most daunting opponent may be the English language, not each other.
"Words -- the wrong ones, garbled ones or too many -- have often been the bane of these men. Presidential debates have tripped up many a candidate before them, even those with smoother command of grammar and diction.
"With millions of voters watching on TV, Thursday night's 90-minute foreign policy faceoff could be a defining event in the presidential campaign. Kerry likely will try for brevity and clarity. Bush likely will aim to avoid mangled syntax and phrases he'll regret."
And they have little running room on Iraq, says the Wall Street Journal:
"What voters say they want out of these encounters, more than facts and figures, is a clearer sense of the two men's judgment. And on that score, both bring real vulnerabilities to the debate. Mr. Kerry's months of public agonizing over whether he supported the Iraq war have made him an easy target for charges of flip-flopping. Meanwhile, polls say Americans increasingly doubt that the Iraq war Mr. Bush started is worth its escalating cost."
Josh Marshall faults the Dems for lousy spin skills:
"Democrats, I think, have seldom really appreciated that there is such a thing as a post-debate debate. I don't mean that they don't know about putting out surrogates or trying to spin the results. Of course, they do. But in 2000 at least (and certainly in analogous situations in this cycle) the effort was very reactive and scattershot. And that inevitably leaves the Democrats trying to parry or deconstruct the ways that Republicans are trying to define what happened. In that way, they're fighting at best for a draw.
"Republicans are already leaking hints and taunts about whether Kerry will sweat profusely under the lights, whether he's too tanned and other similar nonsense. But the antic nature of these taunts doesn't mean they won't be effective. They're meant to throw the other side off balance and, in a related manner, to provide grist for a catty and frivolous press corps."
Catty and frivolous? Why would anyone conclude that, Mr. Pajama Blogger?
"So what's the Democrats' plan going into this debate? . . . It's easy to predict that there will be several exchanges in the debate where the president will describe the situation in Iraq in ways that are entirely belied by the reality of the situation. Perhaps he'll mention the situation in Fallujah where his intervention in the battle planning had such disastrous and feckless results. Will the pundits and talking heads be primed for those moments? Or only for Kerry's moments of over-fancy rhetoric?
"Will the Dems be ready to hit on these issues and focus the post-debate debate on the president's recklessness, lack of a plan and inability to level with the public about what's happening in Iraq?"
The Note offers a preview by looking at yesterday's Diane Sawyer interview with JFK, "which make[s] us wonder how much more debate prep there is to do.
DIANE SAWYER: Was the war in Iraq worth it?
JOHN KERRY: We should not have gone to war knowing the information that we know today.
DS: So it was not worth it.
JK: We should not -- it depends on the outcome ultimately -- and that depends on the leadership. And we need better leadership to get the job done successfully, but I would not have gone to war knowing that there was no imminent threat -- there were no weapons of mass destruction -- there was no connection of Al Qaeda -- to Saddam Hussein! The president misled the American people -- plain and simple. Bottom line.
DS: So if it turns out okay, it was worth it?
JK: No.
DS: But right now it wasn't--
JK: It was a mistake to do what he did, but we have to succeed now that we've done what he's -- I mean look -- we have to succeed. But was it worth -- as you asked the question -- $200 billion and taking the focus off of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda? That's the question. The test of the presidency was whether or not you should have gone to war to get rid of him. I think, had the inspectors continued, had we done other things -- there were plenty of ways to keep the pressure on Saddam Hussein.
DS: But no way to get rid of him.
JK: Oh, sure there were. Oh, yes there were. Absolutely.
DS: So you're saying that today, even if Saddam Hussein were in power today it would be a better thing -- you would prefer that. . . .
JK: No, I would not prefer that. And Diane -- don't twist here.
"Definitely suggests something longer than a two-minute statement"--the maximum allowed by debate rules.
Here's some sobering information from the National Annenberg Election Survey:
Many adults in the U.S. misjudge where the presidential candidates stand on important public policy issues. . . . A majority of adults still do not know which presidential candidate favors allowing workers to invest some of their Social Security contributions in the stock market, which candidate favors eliminating tax breaks for overseas profits of American corporations, or which candidate favors completely eliminating the estate tax.
"Polling conducted from September 21 through 26 among 1,189 adults showed 64 percent of respondents were able to correctly identify George W. Bush, rather than John Kerry, as favoring laws making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion. Sixty percent recognized that Bush, not Kerry, favors making the recent tax cuts permanent. But only 33 percent knew that Bush (and not Kerry) favors eliminating the estate tax; 23 percent of respondents incorrectly said that it was Kerry who favors eliminating the estate tax. When asked to name which presidential candidates favor a given policy position, respondents named the correct candidate a little more than half of the time."
Hey, start paying attention!
Salon's Mary Jacoby has the lowdown on the latest fallout from CBS's National Guard story--the spiking of another piece:
"One measure of the debacle is a '60 Minutes Wednesday' segment that millions of viewers now will now not see: a hard-hitting report making a powerful case that in trying to build support for the Iraq war, the Bush administration either knowingly deceived the American people about Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities or was grossly credulous. CBS news president Andrew Heyward spiked the story this week, saying it would be 'inappropriate' during the election campaign.
"The importance that CBS placed on the report was evident by its unusual length: It was slated to run a full half hour, double the usual 15 minutes of a single segment. Although months of reporting went into the production, CBS abruptly decided that it would be 'inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election,' in the words of a statement that network spokeswoman Kelli Edwards gave the New York Times.
"The real reason, of course, was that because of CBS's sloppy reporting on the Bush National Guard story, the network's news executives believed they could no longer report credibly on the heart of the Iraq nuclear issue, involving another set of completely forged documents: those purporting to show that Iraq had purchased yellowcake uranium from the African country Niger.
"Salon was given the videotape by CBS News on the condition that we report on it only shortly before it was to air. But after the network effectively spiked its own story (which was reported by Newsweek online and by the New York Times), we sent an e-mail late last week to CBS stating that we believed that the embargo no longer applied. We received no reply and therefore feel free to report.
"How the fake Niger documents surfaced was at the heart of the '60 Minutes' report by veteran correspondent Ed Bradley. . . .
"A source close to CBS said Bradley was furious with the decision to spike the report and angry that the reputation of the '60 Minutes' Sunday program has suffered because of the missteps of the Wednesday version of the show. Bradley did not return phone calls seeking comment. On Tuesday, his assistant said the correspondent was 'swamped' after returning from a trip to the Middle East.
"The report contains little new information, but it is powerfully, coherently and credibly reported. It features the first on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who received the fake Niger documents in 2002 and passed them on to the U.S. embassy in Rome. Burba tells how she traveled to Niger and concluded that Iraq could not have purchased uranium from the tightly controlled French-run mines in Niger and that therefore the documents must have been faked."
The New Republic's Noam Scheiber tries to knock down an emerging media cliche:
"If you've been following the presidential campaign these last few weeks, you've probably heard a thing or two about security moms--the erstwhile soccer moms who became obsessed with terrorism after September 11, and, in the process, began tilting Republican. The typical 'security mom' story--variations of which have appeared in The Washington Post (twice), The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer in recent weeks, as well as on CNN, ABC, and NPR--cites the hair-raising effect of the recent Russian school massacre. It mentions Laura Bush's frequent pitches to women on security matters, and notes how the Republican Convention was awash in security talk.
"Often the stories are larded with a testimonial by a real-live security mom, invariably a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, anti-death penalty former Gore supporter who's convinced only George W. Bush can keep her children safe. All of them conclude that security moms could cost John Kerry the election.
"Oh, and the stories usually have one other thing in common: They're based on almost no empirical evidence.
"As with most urban myths, the idea that terror-related anxiety would drive women into the Republican column is eminently plausible: You'd expect the maternal instinct to make women more concerned about security in the high-risk, post-September 11 environment. And, indeed, though women have routinely favored Democrats over Republicans by double-digit margins during the last 25 years, the early post-9/11 era did show some erosion of the so-called gender gap. . . . According to a post-election analysis conducted by the polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, Democrats only won women by a two-point margin during the 2002 midterm elections. (Congressional Democrats lost men by roughly 10 points in both 2000 and 2002.)
"It's not clear that even the 2002 result was attributable to security moms, however. One problem for Democrats that year was that Republicans turned out in much greater force."
But it has such a nice ring to it now that the soccer moms have disappeared.
I love this little item about Fox from Hotline:
"FNC sent a camera crew to a Howard Dean book signing to ask Dean why he wouldn't appear on the 'O'Reilly Factor':
"Dean: 'Bill's show is about Bill, not his guests.'
"An FNC person off-camera asked: 'All the other candidates have come on. Why won't you come on the show?'
"Dean: 'I consider it to be a mark of pride.'
"FNC person: 'It will be a fair and balanced interview.'
"Dean: 'Yeah right'"
And, of course, the most important story in Washington: baseball!
- By Howard Kurtz |
