ASHINGTON — This is not the first time Senator John Kerry's advisers have heard the guns of August.Posted on 08/28/2004 1:51:06 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
ASHINGTON — This is not the first time Senator John Kerry's advisers have heard the guns of August.
Sixteen years ago, several of them were working for Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, who began the month with a substantial lead in the polls, only to see it disappear under a steady onslaught from the campaign of Vice President Bush, an onslaught aided by rumors and third-party attacks. Democrats bitterly complained that these outside attacks - including a baseless charge that Kitty Dukakis had once burned an American flag - were guided by an "invisible hand," as the late Kirk O'Donnell, a senior adviser to Mr. Dukakis, put it. The Bush campaign denied any involvement.
It was a searing experience, which helped forge the rapid-response Clinton campaign of 1992 - and helps explain the Kerry campaign's furious reaction to the attacks of a group of Swift boat veterans. The memory "really added to the decision-making on how to engage these kinds of scurrilous attacks," said Tad Devine, a senior adviser to Mr. Kerry and a Dukakis veteran. Mr. Dukakis himself said, in an interview, "This time, having learned from '88, nobody is going to sit around and let it happen."
Republicans point out that they are not the sole practitioners of political hardball. In fact, Ed Gillespie, the Republican chairman, has spent much of the year denouncing what he calls "political hate speech" by the Democrats.
It is all part of the seemingly endless reaction to 1988 - in retrospect, the first take-no-prisoners presidential campaign of the modern era. And for the Democrats it was a humiliating mismatch.
"You had a bunch of policy operatives who wanted to debate policy differences against Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes and the some of the toughest gunfighters we had on our side," said Ed Rollins, a veteran Republican strategist, describing the Dukakis campaign of 1988.
"Not this time," Mr. Rollins added. "Both sides are prepared to throw hand grenades and have been doing it for a long time."
As Mr. Dukakis has long acknowledged, he contributed to his August slide. Perhaps lulled by his 17-point edge in the polls after the Democratic convention, he spent much of the month in his home state and was slow to react when the charges started coming that he was soft on crime and insufficiently patriotic.
The Bush campaign portrayed Mr. Dukakis as a Massachusetts liberal who let criminals out on weekend furloughs and refused to require schoolchildren to say the Pledge of Allegiance. The Democrats campaign defended the policies - the furlough program had had bipartisan support, the policy on the pledge was the result of a Massachusetts court decision - but the legalistic responses were no match for the powerful imagery and rough attacks of the Republicans.
Charles Black, a senior Republican strategist who was close to Mr. Atwater, is one of many Republicans who argue that those issues were fair game, and that Mr. Dukakis was defeated not because of his tactical failures but because voters rejected his beliefs. "There's a big myth about the '88 election, that Dukakis was attacked and he did not respond," Mr. Black said.
"Lee figured out early on that Dukakis was what we used to call an honest liberal. That he would defend his positions on things like the death penalty. He did respond - but his answers put him outside the mainstream."
Mr. Bush recited the Pledge of Allegiance on the campaign trail and asked if Mr. Dukakis had a "problem" with it; Republicans constantly mocked the Massachusetts governor as a "card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U." An independent group ran television commercials showing a police photograph of Willie Horton, a black convicted murderer who brutally attacked a Maryland couple after escaping while on a weekend furlough from a Massachusetts prison.
At the same time, the Dukakis campaign was also scrambling to deal with a shadowy wave of rumors that seemed intended to raise doubts about a candidate who was still largely unknown. "You're fighting an invisible enemy as much as anything," said Susan Estrich, the Dukakis campaign manager, now a law professor at the University of Southern California.
One damaging rumor, that Mr. Dukakis had undergone psychiatric treatment, was pushed onto the front page when President Ronald Reagan was asked about it and joked that he didn't want to pick on "an invalid." Mr. Dukakis's advisers said later that he dropped 8 points in the polls after that report.
The campaign held a news conference with the candidate's doctor and released his medical records, all knocking down the story, but Ms. Estrich recalls, "The problem with rumors is the more you answer them, the more play they get."
The attacks never let up. The night before the election, as Mr. Dukakis flew back to Boston to await what was then a certain defeat, he stopped in Des Moines to refuel and speak to a sad crowd of Democrats. Even then, young Bush supporters turned out to chant the Pledge of Allegiance and shout, "Liberal! Liberal! Liberal!" Mr. Dukakis lost 40 states.
The rough lessons of 1988 took hold: Respond, hit back, leave no charge unanswered. Another lesson, which often gets lost, is that the way a campaign is conducted makes a difference. The senior Mr. Bush took office in January 1989 and immediately tried to strike a bipartisan, conciliatory tone. But the Democratic bitterness endured, and made the task of governing all the harder.
It can't help Kerry to be compared to the loser governor under which he served, though.
For some reason demokrats get the maddest when you beat them on the issues. They still are whining about Willie Horton (initially brought up by SoreLoserman) 16 years later. They will still be crying about Cleland's pro-union vote on homeland security being made an issue 20 years from now.
These bozos at the NY Times can't even keep track of what happened two weeks ago much less two decades ago. Kerry, along with his media outlets in New York, Boston, Washington D.C and LA, initially tried to ignore the Swift Vets. It was only after the Swift Vets scored on knockdown on glass-jaw John, that the demmies started fighting back.
Nice and balanced from the NYTs again...
No mention of MoveOn.org and all the others...
Poor Dims, their being picked on...
They sure can dish it out, fortunately for us they can't take it in return.
who was it that initially raised the Willie Horton issue? I thought it was Gore, but recently I read another report saying it was Gary Hart who initially made it campaign fodder.
You'd think the NYTs would try to avoid words like "seared" considering how Kerry's had his mind seared so many times only to be proven lies...
SoreLoserman.
The Liberals sure like to throw the word "searing" around, don't they?
Seems to me that they can dish it out but they can't take it.
We all know about the millions of dollars spent by Bush enemies this year. We all remember the horrid accusation that Bush was somehow responsible for the dragging death of that poor man in Jasper and we all remember the DUI story coming out right before the election. We remember how they tried to intimate that Bush Sr. had a mistress and many more smear tactics from the left. The reason they didn't resonate with the populace was because they weren't true, except for the DUI and it hurt.
The stuff coming out on SKerry has the ring of truth and though he has screamed, hollered, whined and called "not fair" he hasn't defended himself point by point. He hasn't even really said, "That's nonsense". He just keeps smearing the Vets but all he has to do is rebut them if he can.
Another problem is that SKerry has been too stupid over the years and has made himself a hero in his own mind and in interviews. And that has given us all the ammo we need.
The DUI stuff was a classic campaign dirty trick, but I blame Bush for not disclosing that beforehand.
"The Liberals sure like to throw the word "searing" around, don't they?"
And don't forget the Bill Clinton's favorite, "Mean Spirited"
The Democrat bitterness had been raging ever since 1980, and had been out in the open from 1987 on, with the obnoxious Bork attacks and Iran-Contra grand-standing.
More Slimes spin, trying to tie the Swiftees to President Bush.
You've been duped into playing by their rules. They've co-opted you to support their programing. If not that, then did you agree to it? They foisted the word spin as a seemingly innocent replacement for deception. Use the correct word: deceive, or one of it's derivatives: deception. deceit.
That was a shock, he should have lost 50!
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