Kerry Opens New Bush Attack, Focusing on Iraq and Economy
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By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JIM RUTENBERG
The New York Times
April 22, 2004
WASHINGTON — Senator John Kerry on Wednesday began what aides said would be an increasingly visible and combative challenge to President Bush, starting with a bus trip through the distressed Midwest and a television advertisement attacking Mr. Bush's Iraq record.
The moves, intended to define Mr. Kerry's candidacy, amount to a re-emergence of sorts by a candidate who largely yielded the spotlight to Mr. Bush after effectively winning the Democratic nomination in early March.
The television advertisement and the energized schedule came after two months in which Mr. Bush battered Mr. Kerry in advertisements intended to undercut him while he remained largely unknown to most of the country.
Mr. Kerry's aides repeatedly described Mr. Bush's spending as a waste, contending that voters were not paying attention to the race this long before Election Day.
But two newspaper polls this week found that Mr. Bush had succeeded in raising doubts about Mr. Kerry's credibility and ideology. That finding, coming after three weeks of unwelcome news for Mr. Bush from Iraq and a commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, unsettled many Democrats. Republicans said on Wednesday that Mr. Bush's overwhelming advantage over Mr. Kerry on the issues of terrorism and foreign affairs overrode any concerns voters might have had about the news that has besieged the White House in recent weeks.
Evidence of Mr. Bush's continued strength renewed questions about the decision by Mr. Kerry's advisers to ignore the Bush attacks for now.
As late as Friday, Mr. Kerry's campaign indicated that he would not begin his national television campaign until next week. Mr. Kerry's campaign announced Wednesday morning that instead, the advertisements would begin on Wednesday. An aide said that there had been no change in the timetable in response to the polls and that the advertisements began as soon as production was completed.
The campaign said that Mr. Kerry would broadcast two advertisements in 17 states for 10 days at a cost of about $4.5 million. One advertisement attacks Mr. Bush's record on Iraq, while the other seeks to present Mr. Kerry as someone who could protect the nation from terrorists.
Notably, Mr. Kerry's aides did not do what a number of Democrats have pushed them to do in response to attacks by the Bush campaign: run an advertisement that highlights Mr. Kerry's biography, in particular his war record, and begin to lay out some defining theme for his campaign.
"A minimum amount of positive information about Kerry is going to help," said Carter Eskew, a senior adviser to Al Gore in 2000. "There's a certain hunger out there for information about this guy."
A Kerry adviser said the campaign would begin broadcasting a biographical advertisement when the campaign was ready, possibly as soon as next week.
The adviser also said that the central theme of Mr. Kerry's campaign was in one of the spots released on Wednesday: "Together, we can build a stronger America," Mr. Kerry says in the advertisement, speaking firmly and looking directly into the camera.
Mr. Kerry's modest presence on the air was largely a matter of necessity. He has spent much of the last seven weeks raising money — he raised almost $55 million this quarter, a record — and hiring staff members to grapple with what has proved to be a relentless and efficient organization put together by Mr. Bush, who did not have an opponent in the primaries.
Mr. Kerry's aides proclaimed that they would expand the number of states where they would seek to compete with Mr. Bush beyond the 17 or 18 that most parties view as the battlefields. Mr. Bush's advisers scoffed at the assertion as bravado, though some Democrats and Republicans said that such a calculation could not realistically be made until this summer.
The developments underlined what has emerged as one of the critical strategic questions of this campaign: the extent to which television advertisements today shape the effect of an election seven months later.
Advisers to Mr. Bush, who has spent roughly $45 million on advertisements attacking Mr. Kerry, said that recent history — including, in particular, the 1996 election — had proven the power of such advertisements. Mr. Bush's advisers, noting the polls this week, contended that the same thing was taking place now.
"This campaign will be close until the very end," said Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior campaign adviser. "But perceptions have begun to gel."
Mr. Kerry's advisers argued that the fact that the two men remained close in polls, despite the huge investment by Mr. Bush, suggested that most voters were not paying attention now. They argued that in such a volatile year voters will not start to form opinions until the fall.
Tad Devine, a senior Kerry adviser, put it this way: "If you're the incumbent president of the United States having spent $50 million in six to seven weeks trying to define yourself, and you're in a dead-heat horse race with a challenger who's just beginning to come into focus, I would submit you're in trouble."
Other Democrats, though, were not as sure. Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster, said that the period after Mr. Kerry effectively won the nomination was a time in which voters were paying attention.
"This was a period of opportunity for Kerry and Bush," Mr. Greenberg said. He said that that window had not yet closed but that Mr. Kerry had a more difficult task now.
"I think it was a tough period for Kerry," Mr. Greenberg said. "He's been attacked on taxes and flip-flopping and on defense, and his personal negative has gone up significantly in the period. I'm assuming there will be an accelerating amount of information about Kerry and hopefully he'll win back some of that ground."
Aides said Mr. Kerry's decision to attack Mr. Bush's handling of the Iraq war reflected a conclusion that the conflict would continue to help define this contest, as it has for much of this campaign. Mr. Kerry's aides said he would follow up this television advertisement with a speech attacking Mr. Bush's Iraq policy next week, timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the appearance Mr. Bush made on an aircraft carrier to celebrate the fall of Baghdad.
In the other advertisement, he assures viewers he will remain committed to protecting the nation while focusing on improving the economy and health care, summing up by saying: "My priorities are jobs and health care. My commitment is to defend this country."
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