G.O.P. Offensive Puts Small Dent in Kerry's Image
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
and JIM RUTENBERG
Published: June 20, 2004
WASHINGTON, June 19 — When John Kerry effectively nailed down the Democratic presidential nomination on March 2, the White House was waiting. With relentless precision, it began a 90-day campaign to weaken Mr. Kerry's candidacy, a blast that included record spending on television advertisements and attacks on Mr. Kerry's credentials and ideology led by President Bush himself.
The Republican spring offensive — unusual in its early timing, its toughness <?b>and the decision of Mr. Bush to personally engage his opponent so far before November — effectively ends on Sunday, as the Bush campaign suspends its broadcast television advertising until next month.
Three months and $85 million after Mr. Bush began, pollsters and independent analysts said that while Mr. Bush had raised doubts about Mr. Kerry, he had not scored as much damage as some Democrats had feared — or some Republicans had anticipated — with this unusually expensive and early assault, particularly given the size of the investment and the use of Mr. Bush.
Mr. Kerry is viewed more negatively by voters than he was on the morning of March 3, and Mr. Bush appears to have succeeded in planting doubts about the firmness of Mr. Kerry's convictions, according to a variety of polls.
But polls also show Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry tied, while Mr. Kerry continues to be viewed more favorably than not. Democrats seem relieved that this period has ended, and more confident of victory than they did when Mr. Bush's attack began in March, all the more so as Mr. Kerry has eclipsed Mr. Bush in his fund-raising over the same period.
"I don't think anyone can look at this data we've released and say Kerry's a candidate who's been trashed and discredited," said Andrew Kohut, director of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, referring to recent polling numbers collected by his organization.
Mr. Bush's advisers said they were satisfied with their offensive. They noted that it had diminished a lead Mr. Kerry briefly enjoyed over Mr. Bush, and argued that it planted seeds of doubt Mr. Kerry would regret come the fall.
Still, they acknowledged that their intricate effort to portray Mr. Kerry as an untrustworthy advocate of high taxes, defense cuts and liberal values had been complicated by the turmoil in Iraq and the Sept. 11 commission hearings.
"During this whole period we had as difficult a month of news as any president's had to deal with," said Mr. Bush's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman. "Despite that, the president's favorable-unfavorable rating has largely not changed. And the American public has come to know who John Kerry is."
Asked to rate the success of the Bush offensive, Mr. Mehlman said, "It's kind of what we thought it would be, although, given the difficult news environment of the past month, we're in stronger position than we would have thought we would have been in."
Rudy Boschwitz, a former senator from Minnesota and one of Mr. Bush's top fund-raisers, said that "outside influences on the campaign are such that it's hard to make this kind of evaluation, that the money has been well spent or poorly spent." But he did acknowledge that there were questions about the strategy.
"It has to be spent," Mr. Boschwitz said. "One could say it should be spent a little closer to the action, but, apparently they have adequate funds, thanks to people like me, to keep it going."
The state of play does not appear to be the result of any particular expertise by the Kerry campaign, or of mistakes by Mr. Bush. Rather, it reflects the extent to which both campaigns have been whipped by events beyond their control, and the challenges of trying to influence public opinion at a time of turmoil and voter polarization.
If Mr. Bush's advertising has had less of an impact than some Republicans might have hoped for, Mr. Kerry's campaign, which began in late April, has not appeared to produce the kind of shifts in opinions about him that some Democrats might have wanted, though some outside analysts credit it with at the very least undoing some damage done by Mr. Bush's. And as Mr. Bush's aides noted, the unexpectedly high expenditures by Mr. Kerry, combined with television spending by independent liberal and Democratic organizations attacking Mr. Bush, outpaced Mr. Bush's spending, suggesting that the two sides had advertised themselves into a standoff.
"I don't think the Bush people had a bad strategy," said Bill Carrick, a Democratic consultant. "I just don't think it worked out. The strategy got overwhelmed by current events and Kerry opting out of the campaign finance system."
Mr. Bush's senior campaign strategist, Karl Rove, argued that these events had in the end not undermined the White House strategy, because the turmoil in Iraq did not begin until about a month after the advertising campaign began.
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