Kerry's Conundrum
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 2003; 8:57 AM
Here's what's happened since we last checked in.
The lights went out in New York (and a few other places, although it was hard to tell from the coverage).
The lights went out in D.C. (from a series of thunderstorms, and no one else cared. Even when I went all night without power! No Time and Newsweek covers).
The California recall became the most fascinating political story around, with so many journalists flying to L.A. that the state's economy must be improving.
The situation in Iraq started falling apart, so much so that the newsmagazine covers are now questioning how we easily won the war but seem to be losing the peace.
Howard Dean was anointed by the media as the Democratic front-runner, and John Kerry, the ex-front-runner who officially announced yesterday, is suddenly being described as struggling, or floundering, or tanking, or one step from the graveyard.
This is a huge development, because everything the senator does from this point will be played in the press as an attempt to climb back into contention. You get stories like this one in Tuesday's Boston Herald, that began: "Desperate for a jolt of momentum . . . "
Kerry had a very strong outing on "Meet the Press" Sunday, but that drew little coverage. Instead, there are headlines like this one in Slate: "Can This Candidate Be Saved?"
As absurd as these choreographed announcements are when the candidate has been running for a year, they draw reporters like flies. USA Today works Kerry's reduced status into the lead:
"Sen. John Kerry, aiming to reinvigorate his presidential campaign, formally announced his candidacy yesterday with a battleship behind him and fellow Vietnam veterans at his side. . . .
"Political pundits labeled Kerry the front-runner at almost the moment he announced, exactly nine months ago, that he was forming a presidential fundraising committee. But former Vermont governor Howard Dean threw a wrench into his campaign plan. Kerry trails Dean by 21 percentage points in one poll in New Hampshire -- a state some analysts say each man needs to win Jan. 27.
"Before yesterday, Kerry had not been in South Carolina since a debate in early May. His decision to make the first speech of his announcement tour here signals a shift toward a strategy beyond New Hampshire."
The Boston Globe also plays up Kerry's woes:
"Senator John F. Kerry, who has fallen behind a surging Howard Dean in the polls in New Hampshire, came South yesterday in an orchestrated bid to rejuvenate his Democratic presidential campaign -- this time standing before a storied aircraft carrier.
"Later, in Iowa, Kerry conceded that the speechmaking and media blitz carefully planned for this week might not be enough to jumpstart his stalled campaign, and that changes in his political team might be needed, although he said no specific moves were under consideration."
The Globe even explores a mini-flap involving adviser Robert Shrum, saying: "Shrum was described as limiting access to Kerry amid a debate about how strongly to respond to Dean's momentum, including whether to criticize the former Vermont governor in the South Carolina speech." Shrum described such accounts as "utterly and completely false."
The New York Times explains the staging area:
"Mr. Kerry, of Massachusetts, spoke against the backdrop of the Yorktown, an aircraft carrier that saw service in the Vietnam War and is now part of a museum in South Carolina. The setting was chosen to highlight Mr. Kerry's experience as a patrol boat officer in the Mekong Delta, where he received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, and he was joined on the dais today by crew members from a gunboat he commanded in Vietnam.
"The announcement transformed what had been the senator's unofficial campaign for the nomination, and his name has always been at or near the top of the list of most-likely candidates, given his résumé, money and campaign skills. But Mr. Kerry has watched in frustration as a groundswell of support for a rival, Howard Dean, has overwhelmed what some Democrats say has been Mr. Kerry's themeless and weak effort. Mr. Kerry's advisers hoped today's speech would help their candidate steal some of the momentum away from Mr. Dean at the start of the fall campaign season.
"In his speech, Mr. Kerry did not mention Mr. Dean or any of the seven other Democratic hopefuls by name. Instead, he looked beyond the primary contest and took aim at President Bush's foreign policy and the administration's performance on an array of domestic issues including the economy and the environment."
CNN political editor John Mercurio, in his Morning Grind e-mail, says: "It was hard to miss the exasperation in John Kerry's voice yesterday. He had called the Grind to talk about his campaign's two-day, four-state kickoff, which gets underway at 9:50 a.m. EDT today in South Carolina. But the four-term Senator and Vietnam War hero ended up explaining why he has fallen behind the short governor from the small state, and how he plans to make up ground this fall. . . .
"Today, Kerry faces a much more serious battle, in New Hampshire and nationwide, to convince political lifers that he's still the best man to topple Dean and, oh yeah, President Bush."
The New Republic's Ryan Lizza describes Kerry in Nasdaq terms:
"Dean is now the front-runner, and the fight is on to define his main challenger. But what may be emerging is actually a different sort of two-tiered race: one where Kerry sinks into the second tier with his four fellow Washington legislators.
"The Kerry campaign looks a little bit like a 1990s tech stock whose paper profits are slowly being unmasked as accounting gimmicks. Just a few months ago, other campaigns fretted about Kerry delivering a knockout punch in Iowa and New Hampshire that would end the race. Kerry aides could recite from memory statistics showing how the early front-runner in presidential primaries usually ended up as the party's nominee. The senator hired the most talented Democratic political consultants, lined up the earliest endorsements, and turned out the biggest crowds. But, now, as he embarks on a two-day swing through South Carolina, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts on September 2 and 3, Kerry is slipping out of the top tier altogether.
"By all the traditional yardsticks, the gap between Kerry and Dean is widening. In Iowa, the latest poll shows Kerry in third place, nine points behind the former Vermont governor. In New Hampshire, the senator's backyard, Kerry's support has collapsed. His yearlong lead has vanished, and he now trails Dean by 21 points in a new Zogby poll. The bleeding in New Hampshire is across the board -- upscale Democrats, blue-collar Democrats, independents of all persuasions, every age group, and every area of the state...
"But this widening gap between Kerry and Dean may not be all bad for the Massachusetts senator. At least it is forcing him to turn his campaign's focus from process to message."
Slate's William Saletan is less than awed by the Kerry persona:
"I can't get a rude but persistent question out of my mind: Can you believe this guy fought in Vietnam? . . . I respect what Kerry did and endured. Still, I look at him and wonder how such a brave warrior became such a cautious politician. . . . When Kerry disagrees with you, he makes you feel as though the disagreement is his problem. When Dean disagrees with you, he makes you feel as though it's your problem. I know Kerry fought and Dean didn't. But it's still hard to believe."
Looks like the aircraft carrier thing didn't work.
Dean is increasingly The Man, says the Note, and reporters are not unhappy about that:
"The Note is a big believer in the nearly iron-clad rule of modern American politics: the person who raises the most money in the year before the voting always wins the nomination (and Howard Dean will be that man).
"Not to mention that come January, when everyone else runs out of time to raise money the old fashioned ways, Joe Trippi (after Dean is -- inevitably -- attacked) will put up the bat, says there are three weeks to go, and the money will pour in -- whether Dean has decided to take the match or not.
"And Dean matters lots because no one can give a linear explanation of how he's denied the nomination -- he might not get the nomination, but can anyone write a simple sentence explaining why? . . .
"And in the dirty little (actually: 'massive') secret of this stage of the campaign, the national political press corps is nearly united in its views that Dean (a) CAN be the nominee and (b) just might be the most fun to cover in the general."
The Washington Post officially downgrades Kerry's chances:
"As the make-or-break fall campaign season commences for the Democratic presidential contenders, Sen. John F. Kerry -- once considered by many the front-runner for the nomination -- is struggling to catch fire in early voting states and adapt to the sudden and race-altering surge of rival Howard Dean.
"Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a Vietnam war hero, has lost significant ground to Dean in recent months, as he has come under fire for sounding ambivalent on the Iraq war and for failing to connect with the antiwar, anti-Bush voters dominating the nominating process. He has struck many Democrats as aloof and indecisive, even as advisers sought to portray him as the only candidate with the stature and stamina to defeat President Bush. Several Democrats said Kerry's campaign often reflects the key weakness of Al Gore's in 2000: relying too heavily on a team of big-name strategists and too little on letting the candidate run loose."
The dreaded Gore comparison. Will ex-Gore flack Chris Lehane fire back?
Ron Brownstein declares that it's the war, stupid:
"If Dean wins the Democratic nomination next year, the explanation may be as simple as this: He opposed a president most Democrats detest when that president launched a war most Democrats loathe.
"Lots of ingredients have contributed to Dean's rise this year: his blunt, plain-spoken style, his outsider status, his campaign's mastery of the Internet and his charge that Washington Democrats haven't been tough enough on Bush.
"But it was Dean's opposition to the war in Iraq that crystallized all of these factors, and it still provides the most dynamic source of energy for his campaign. Some Democrats are drawn to Dean's support for universal health care or gay civil unions, and his promise to balance the federal budget always wins dutiful applause. But none of these topics has emerged as real differences between him and his Democratic rivals. To Dean's following, the moment he stood out from the pack is when he stood up against the war. Opposition to the war in Iraq seems every bit as important to Dean's campaign as opposition to the Vietnam War was to George McGovern's successful bid for the Democratic nomination in 1972. . . .
"But the war may create the greatest challenge for Dean himself. It has provided the foundation of his campaign; it might also impose the ceiling. While most Democrats now consider the war a mistake, 60% of independents in last week's Gallup Poll said it was the right decision. Those are voters Dean will need if he makes it to a general election."
Live by the war, die by the war.
Andrew Sullivan, a big war supporter, is growing increasingly disillusioned over Iraq:
"Howard Dean versus George Bush? It's a scenario to make a pundit salivate. And for the first time it seems vaguely plausible. Far more plausible than an actual Dean victory, of course. . . .
"But the sense of drift in the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policy, and the body-count in Iraq have all eroded George Bush's margin of error in the coming political season. The White House has been predicting a close election for a long time. Now it seems less like expectations-management and more like insight. Bush, in an elegant irony, is vulnerable above all on Iraq.
"No, there's not some Vietnam-style groundswell of opposition. No, the anti-war movement hasn't won the debate. It may even turn out that Bush has the last laugh on the WMD issue, when WMD inspector David Kay presents his report later in September. (The impact of a Saddam killing or capture would also, in one stroke, resuscitate positive reviews of Bush's war-management.) But the public has become convinced, thanks to relentlessly negative media coverage, that the transition to democracy in Iraq is failing...
"The president clearly hasn't succeeded. He hasn't managed to persuade the country that the complex and precarious task in Iraq is heading in the right direction. If things deteriorate, he will be personally and directly blamed. As he should be."
The Nation's Katrina van den Heuvel gives Bush a bad rap:
"It sounds like a Texas wrestling match: Slim vs Dubya. But in a recent poll that asked about truthfulness, rapper Eminem scored higher than President Bush. According to a global marketing agency, Euro RSCG Worldwide, 53 percent of American adults aged 35-44 believe that Eminem's lyrics contain 'more truth' than Bush's speeches. (62 percent in the 18-24 age group agreed.) It turns out that we may need to do a better job of protecting our kids from our President's gangsta' rap."
And in our continuing effort to be fair and balanced, we note that Fox's Bill O'Reilly slammed the New York Times last night. His attack stemmed from a review of archenemy Al Franken's book that contained some unflattering (and, to O'Reilly, inaccurate) passages about the talk show host:
"That newspaper is leading the charge to turn America into a secular nation and return political power to the left-wing of the Democratic party. But the Times is a troubled institution. The Blair scandal badly damaged the paper . . . and as the 'Factor' demonstrated, the Times' inaccurately reported the battlefield situation in the opening days of the Iraq War. The paper's hard news coverage was shaded to bolster its editorial position that the war was wrong. I knew that once I took on the Times, the paper's character assassins would take dead aim on me. That is why few journalists will ever criticize the Times. They know the paper will come after them in a very personal way. Therefore there is no check on the power of The New York Times, it prints what it wants with impunity . . .
"The network TV news takes much of its point-of-view from the pages of the Times. And your local newspaper may very well reprint that paper's articles. The New York Times is extremely powerful in shaping public opinion, and God help those who go up against it. But that kind of power must be challenged when it becomes abusive. The Fox News Channel is one of the few media outlets that currently watches what that paper does, and that is why the Times attacks us so frequently."
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