Posted on 03/31/2004 9:09:07 PM PST by Pikamax
POLITICAL MEMO Bad Timing as Kerry Slips Out of Picture By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JODI WILGOREN
ASHINGTON, March 31 — At the very moment that President Bush has begun his general election campaign, Senator John Kerry has largely slipped from sight. And Mr. Bush has made the most of Mr. Kerry's absence.
Mr. Kerry's low profile occurs at what would seem to be a particularly opportune time for the senator. Mr. Bush has been struggling with questions about his record on terrorism, and Mr. Kerry had been riding on a wave of excitement after his capture of the Democratic nomination.
Yet Mr. Kerry was off the campaign trail yet again on Wednesday, this time for shoulder surgery in Boston, an operation expected to sideline him through Sunday. The surgery followed his weeklong disappearance to the slopes of Sun Valley.
Some Democrats said that should Mr. Kerry lose in November, he might well remember this month as the time when he seriously undermined his hopes of defeating Mr. Bush. A few invoked one of Mr. Kerry's least-liked comparisons, noting how another Massachusetts Democrat who ran for president, Michael S. Dukakis, stuck close to home in August 1988, in what turned out to be a foolish strategic move in his campaign against Mr. Bush's father.
"The Bush people have seized the vacuum," said Carter Eskew, a senior adviser to Al Gore in the 2000 presidential campaign.
Referring to the Kerry campaign, Mr. Eskew said, "It's a fair criticism to say they've been a little slow to do the same." Mr. Eskew said the Gore campaign drifted through the spring before finally settling on a theme to use against George Bush.
"For some people, they have a little déjà vu, and they're a little worried that's what's happening again," he said. "There is some familiarity here that hopefully can be avoided, which is that in 2000 we did not have a good spring, and we weren't ready for Bush. We weren't tooled up on our side on our positive and our comparative message. We paid a price for that."
Mr. Kerry's aides said they were not worried, arguing that now is opportune to raise money and devise a strategy, as they struggled with the inevitable growing pains of changing from a primary campaign to a general election campaign. They argued that voters were more likely to focus on the hearings into Mr. Bush's handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and testimony of his former counterterrorism chief, Richard A. Clarke, than on an election in November.
Mr. Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, said on Wednesday said that her operation was far from idle. She said Mr. Kerry would report this week that he had raised more than $40 million in the first quarter of the year — a figure that would shatter the $14.8 million record set by Howard Dean, who raised that much in three months — more than any other Democratic presidential candidate. Mr. Kerry's aides said the senator was about to embark on an aggressive schedule of speeches and a national wave of television advertisements challenging Mr. Bush on the economy, job creation and health care.
"We learned in the primary that we are going to run a race on our own terms and on our own schedule and carry out the plan that we put together," Ms. Cahill said. "You're watching it executed in front of you. The Bush people have been laying back a year and half and amassing money to launch a campaign. O.K., but the country still thinks we're on the wrong track."
Still, Democrats said they were concerned by polls in recent days showing that voter perceptions of Mr. Kerry had soured somewhat under the press of Mr. Bush's attacks on him and what even Mr. Kerry's advisers acknowledge have been a series of missteps by the candidate this past month.
A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll this week found the number of voters who view Mr. Kerry unfavorably had increased to 36 percent from 26 percent over the past five weeks, while the number of votes who called him "too liberal" jumped to 41 percent from 29 percent. A New York Times/CBS News Poll this month found that about 6 out of 10 registered voters believed that Mr. Kerry said what he wanted people to hear, rather than what he believed, suggesting some success by Mr. Bush in portraying Mr. Kerry as a flip-floppers.
Mr. Kerry himself has showed signs of concern about the image that he is a slacker on the trail, fitting in a campaign appearance in Boston on Wednesday morning before heading to the hospital.
Ms. Cahill's remarks underline what has emerged as a stark strategic difference between the Bush and Kerry campaigns.
Mr. Bush, after studying his father's experience in 1988 and the success with which Bill Clinton undermined Bob Dole by attacking him in the spring of 1996, has set out to define Mr. Kerry now, in the hope that perceptions created today will be difficult to change in the fall.
As Mr. Kerry has stayed on the slopes and the sidelines, the president has pressed forward with a meticulously planned and lavishly financed campaign to undercut him with a barrage of speeches and television advertisements intended to portray him as a liberal, unprincipled, big-spending Democrat.
By contrast, even Mr. Kerry's supporters say he has yet to offer a concise case against Mr. Bush or one for his own presidency.
"Here's what concerns me in the long term: I can tell you what George Bush's definition of John Kerry is: He is a flip-flopping liberal who wants to raise your taxes," said a Democratic strategist who did not want to be quoted by name. "But I'm not sure I can tell you what John Kerry's definition of George Bush is.`
By contrast, in a sign that the White House has figured out what to say about Mr. Kerry, the senator was greeted on Tuesday in California by Bush supporters who held up black plastic flip-flops and clapped them together as Mr. Kerry tried to speak.
Aides to Mr. Bush said their efforts had been successful.
"The equilibrium point of the race right now is roughly event," a senior Bush adviser, Matthew Dowd, said. "I thought Senator Kerry would carry his strong showing from the primaries longer. But that has dissipated quickly. His negatives have gone up fairly quickly."
There are abundant signs that Mr. Kerry's campaign remains a work in formation. Mr. Kerry has flown across the country the past few days accompanied by Bob Shrum, a senior adviser and prominent speech writer, constantly updating and tweaking Mr. Kerry's stump speech.
After two weeks in which Mr. Kerry arguably hurt himself with ill-chosen remarks, his campaign has tried to keep him from reporters. In one seven-day stretch, he met with national reporters once, in a session that lasted nine minutes.
Mr. Kerry's aides said they thought that any advantage that Mr. Bush might be gaining with his attacks would be fleeting because the senator was about to embark in a noticeable step-up of his campaign.
"Their negative ads have gotten some traction, but not any lasting traction that is going to impact us in the long run" Mr. Kerry's communications director, Stephanie Cutter, said. "For us, this campaign has just started. "
Watching him last night on MTV, he really IS a colossal bore, isn't he?
Every word is so esoterically measured, he makes NO sense at all.
Being the gigolo that he is, why sweat it? If he blows the election, he's still guaranteed luxurious ski trips to Idaho anytime he wants. And he can experience all the rap music he wants. With Teresa's generous allowance, he can hire Snoop Doggy Dogg and Jay-Z to play private concerts at any of his wife's mansions.
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