Posted on 03/12/2004 1:11:12 PM PST by BlackRazor
Ads Backwards
by Mark J. Penn
Only at TNR Online
Post date: 03.12.04
In his first barrage of ads--released yesterday and last week--President Bush has chosen to focus on the two issues where he remains most popular: terrorism and taxes. His ads have featured shots of Ground Zero, images of soldiers, and, in the newest ads unveiled yesterday, shadowy (and dark-skinned) figures who are presumably planning to do America harm. The Kerry campaign has pursued a similar strategy, focusing on issues that play to its advantage, such as Bush's perceived abandonment of the middle class. On the surface, these strategies seem to make sense. Why not begin a campaign by reminding voters what they like about you? And why not try to force the election into territory where you feel most comfortable? But in fact, both campaigns have it backwards. The point of early advertising is not to reinforce your positives; it's to plug holes in your negatives. Rather than defining the terms of the election, Bush and Kerry are missing out on an opportunity to change the public's perception of who they are. In effect, both men are leading with their closing arguments.
I served as President Clinton's polling and chief message adviser in the 1996 campaign. When we started our first rounds of advertising in 1996, we focused on things people didn't know about Clinton's first term--for instance, how he'd crafted a bill that put more cops on the streets and reinstated the death penalty for 22 different offenses. We gave voters specifics designed to show that Clinton was a lot tougher on crime than most voters realized. The strategy was successful: Our lead over Bob Dole grew from 12 points when we started running ads in early March to 20 points in the second week of May, which was around the time Dole got his first ads on the air.
Bush has taken the opposite strategy. The issues that Americans care most about today are the ones where the president is weakest--the economy and health care. But rather than try to address this weakness, Bush seems content to avoid it. His ads are merely a symptom of this broader problem in his campaign's strategic thinking. His State of the Union address provided an opportunity to reach out to the center and especially to women voters by talking about family issues. Instead, he preached mainly to the converted, delivering an angry--almost sneering--defense of his national security policy. The speech failed to produce a jump of even a single point in his polling numbers--a rather amazing feat when one considers that the State of the Union is basically an hour of free advertising watched by 75 million people.
His campaign has repeated this mistake in its early advertising. By making September 11 the centerpiece of his first round of ads, Bush has created controversy and diluted their impact. In the ads released yesterday, Bush offered a nod in the direction of domestic policy--but only to attack Kerry on taxes, an issue where Bush is already strong.
What might Bush be doing instead? He should consider returning to the themes of compassionate conservatism that helped propel him to the White House in 2000. At the time, Bush famously promised to change the tone in Washington and usher in a new era of bipartisanship. It's widely perceived by voters that Bush's Washington is actually more polarized and partisan than he found it in 2000. I'm not in the business of giving Republicans advice--not that they would take it from me anyway--but trying to undo the perception that Bush has made American politics more polarized should be a major goal of the early months of his reelection effort. For instance, Bush could highlight little-known domestic programs that he has funded or promoted. He could address issues such as Social Security and the national deficit that have broad appeal. In the same way that Clinton used the crime issue to return to the centrism that helped win him the presidency in 1992, Bush should at least be trying to reach out to the center. Instead Bush's ads reinforce the basic stereotype that Republicans are planning to run a campaign of fear-mongering while wrapping themselves in the flag. By denouncing Kerry on taxes and (implicitly) portraying him as weak on defense, they remind voters that--contra the promises of candidate Bush in 2000--the tone in Washington has not changed; it has only gotten worse.
All of this would be a disaster for Bush if the Democrats weren't simultaneously making similar mistakes. The party's early ads accuse Bush of sacrificing the American Dream and failing to take care of the middle class. But by trying to focus on their opponent's obvious weaknesses, they are missing the chance to neutralize their own. Democrats in general--and Kerry in particular--face an uphill struggle in convincing voters that they can be tough on national security. They ought to be running ads that let voters know that if a terrorist attack occurs on President Kerry's watch, he will respond confidently and with military force. Democrats should be reminding voters--most of whom view homeland security as a Bush strength--that it was actually Democrats who proposed the idea for a homeland security department, and that it was Bush who blocked the proposal for months.
Both campaigns have fallen for the fallacy that initial advertising should be about framing the contest on your own terms--an overrated goal this early in the race. The point of early advertising is not to energize voters by harping on what they already believe; it's to set a favorable landscape for later in the campaign by changing what they believe. That's why early ads should aim to neutralize a candidate's weaknesses--and only later in the campaign should a candidate play up his strengths. Americans don't want to choose between someone who is strong on defense and someone who is strong on domestic issues; they want a president who can do both. Until both campaigns recognize this basic fact, their ads will speak only to the converted, ignoring the non-partisan voters who have yet to make up their minds about each candidate--and who will decide this election.
Mark J. Penn served as President Clinton's polling and chief message adviser in the 1996 campaign and throughout his second term.
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