ABC News' The Note: First Source for Political News
W A S H I N G T O N, Aug. 24, 2004—<br> -- NOTED NOW
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6 days until the Republican convention70 days until election day
NEWS SUMMARY
This day, John F. Kerry is coming to the publishing capital of the world — and the site of next week's GOP confab — to try the oldest political trick in the book.
In the day's center stage political set piece, he'll attempt to "turn the page" on the domination of the campaign's meta-narrative by his Swift Boat opponents, and shift the debate to a fight over which candidate can better help the middle class.
That would be the hard-working-work-hard-and-play-by-the-rules-and-sometimes-forgotten middle class.
He will say things like his: "The Bush campaign and its allies have turned to the tactics of fear and smear because they can't talk about jobs, health care, energy independence, and rebuilding our alliances — the real issues that matter to the American people. They have no plans, no positive vision and no understanding of an urgent and undeniable truth — a stronger America begins at home."
With President Bush down for another day — while his convention week schedule comes into focus — Kerry has a reasonable prospect of making all the evening newscasts.
The question is, to what effect?
Now, Bill Clinton had a way of convincing audiences that his campaign was not about the past, but was about the future — it was about policy debates that were engaging and interesting and provocative — and meaningful.
John Kerry hasn't been able to sell audiences on his version of the future (Note Note: saying "it's about the future" is like saying "Message: I care.") because the central organizing metaphor of his campaign is about the past.
There's time for him to turn it around, but much of the press won't let go completely for a while. While we wait for the next national poll to tell us how this has or hasn't moved the numbers (Darn that lag time between conventions and the limited polling budgets of the Bush-Cheney-Evans economy!), here's what we're looking at:
Even absent polling data, there are hand-wringers on the left and wide-eyed dreamers on the right who wonder: is Kerry losing the race right now over this stuff? And is he executing the right tactics and strategy to save himself?
When we first read "Unfit for Command"'s charge that Kerry was never in Cambodia, it struck as perhaps the single item in the book deserving of further exposition from Sen. Kerry, in that there are no eyewitnesses and no documents to back up the Senator's contention that he spent Christmas in Cambodia where no American troops were said to be operating. And because Sen. Kerry has made that event a turning point in his political development.
Now that the charges of medal inflation and fabrication have been largely discredited by the likes of Tapper, Dobbs, the Los Angeles Times and others, supporters of the book fall back on the Cambodia charge to tar Kerry with the book's central thesis that he's prone to verbal prestidigitation.
If it sounds like an upside-down world version of a calculated PR effort — put your weak stuff out there first to get attention and your strong stuff out there when folks are paying attention — it is.
And we still find it a bit hard to believe that voters will much care about the underlying matter of whether Kerry crossed the border or not, or spoke imprecisely about it on the Senate floor.
It's why the group is now running an ad that speaks more precisely to a central question many Americans will have to answer about Sen. Kerry: is a man who led protests against the U.S. government and its war in Vietnam while troops were fighting and dying an acceptable commander-in-chief?
The means may be illegitimate to some, but the question is not, and it's not an easy question for Kerry to answer especially since Kerry himself has made, in David Broder's words this morning, "his Navy combat in Vietnam the principal metaphor for his dedication to public service and the proof of his toughness in a time of terrorism."
"He might have guessed," Broder continues, 'that the skeptics would not remain silent. In a 2002 conversation, Kerry told me he thought it would be doubly advantageous that 'I fought in Vietnam and I also fought against the Vietnam War,' apparently not recognizing that some would see far too much political calculation in such a bifurcated record." LINK
More on all this below.
On a day Notable for THREE Dana Milbank Washington Post bylines, Kerry does New York, then travels to Pennsylvania for a 7:35 pm ET fundraiser — and appears on tape on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" at 11:00 pm ET.
Meanwhile, President Bush is down at his Crawford ranch as his Secretary of Defense is "implicitly" indicted in a Pentagon report that is expected to fault civilian leadership for the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. The commission producing that report holds a press conference at 2:00 pm ET.
Back in New York City, that shadowy 527 group Moveon.org rents out the Hammerstein Ballroom for a celebrity-heavy evening bash that will launch a 10-week series of TV ads featuring the likes of Matt Damon, Scarlett Johanssen, Rob Reiner, Kevin Bacon, Al Franken, and others. The campaign's title: "Don't Get Mad, Get Even!" Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean gives the keynote speech, expected at 8:00 pm ET. Incidentally, Doctor, when is your book coming out?
And while we're in New York: RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie will unveil new video material criticizing Kerry's positions on Iraq during a Penn Plaza press conference at 1:00 pm ET.
Vice President Cheney is in the Midwest today, speaking at a 9:35 am ET fundraiser for a congressional candidate in Overland Park KS, holding a 12:10 pm ET town hall meeting with his wife Lynne Cheney in Davenport, IA, and speaking at a 5:10 pm ET RNC fundraiser in Waterford, MI.
Sen. John Edwards is in Ohio, speaking to the AFL-CIO convention in Columbus at 3:00 pm ET and a 7:00 pm ET DNC fundraiser in Cleveland.
Teresa Heinz Kerry is in West Virginia.
Voters in Alaska today will choose their Democratic and Republican nominees for Senate. There is a very, very outside change that former state senate president Mike Miller will upset incumbent Lisa Murkowski. Challenger Tony Knowles, the former governor, will easily get the primary nod. LINK
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: what the heck did the president mean?:
The AP's Espo relays the President's comments yesterday to be criticism. LINK
The Wall Street Journal 's Greg Hitt watched President Bush condemn the 527 ads Monday in Crawford and took them at face value, writing that Bush showed "discomfort with the rough political tactics that have benefited the Republican cause in recent days."
Bumiller and Zernike's lead is vaguely Milbankian. "President Bush said on Monday that political advertisements run by a broad swath of independent groups should be stopped, including a television advertisement attacking Senator John Kerry's war record. But the White House quickly moved to insist that Mr. Bush had not meant in any way to single out the advertisement run by veterans opposed to Mr. Kerry." LINK
Whereas Dana Milbank and (Lois Romano's) paragraph about President Bush is Fournierian: "President Bush yesterday repeated his condemnation of unregulated money that he said was "pouring" into the political process. But he stopped short of denouncing the ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which is being aired in three battleground states and is funded largely by Republicans." LINK
James Gordon Meek and Kenneth Bazinet of the New York Daily News report, "Bush mumbled to reporters, 'that ad' should be removed." LINK
Bill Sammon of the Washington Times on President Bush denouncement of TV ads from "billionaires writing checks." LINK
Here it comes … . USA Today 's Moniz and Drinkard flesh out three "questions about President Bush's 1968-73 stint in the Texas Air National Guard [that] remain unresolved." LINK
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: the historical reconstructions:
