A response covering the idea that Bush attacks killed Kerry.
You get two for the price of one, tonight, folks. Feel lucky that I wanted to cover punditure and current events at the same time. Fact is, this reply was long in the works. There have been a number of people (I won't name names) who have made the assumption that GW won the election because we had the telemetry to say bad and nasty things about him. I'm going to take us on a trip down memory lane, and discuss Bush, and why negativity isn't always a bad thing.
Is George Bush And His Supporters Innocent of Negativity? Or Are There 'Smears' On His And Their Record?
Republican primaries in 2000. John McCain has done wonderfully well, winning the New Hampshire primary. And why not? The man's a war hero, one of the most moderate Republicans from Arizona, and while I don't agree completely agree with his politics, even I, the wolf dragon, one of the people 'Most Likely to Dislike a Republican Politician', can't help but like the guy. But he started to lose....why?
Slam Polling. A Smear Tactic.
To quote, in part, unaltered from a McCain campaign worker, "Having run Senator John McCain's campaign for president, I can recount a textbook example of a smear made against McCain in South Carolina during the 2000 presidential primary. We had just swept into the state from New Hampshire, where we had racked up a shocking, 19-point win over the heavily favored George W. Bush. What followed was a primary campaign that would make history for its negativity.
In South Carolina, Bush Republicans were facing an opponent who was popular for his straight talk and Vietnam war record. They knew that if McCain won in South Carolina, he would likely win the nomination. With few substantive differences between Bush and McCain, the campaign was bound to turn personal. The situation was ripe for a smear.
It didn't take much research to turn up a seemingly innocuous fact about the McCains: John and his wife, Cindy, have an adopted daughter named Bridget. Cindy found Bridget at Mother Theresa's orphanage in Bangladesh, brought her to the United States for medical treatment, and the family ultimately adopted her. Bridget has dark skin.
Anonymous opponents used "push polling" to suggest that McCain's Bangladeshi born daughter was his own, illegitimate black child. In push polling, a voter gets a call, ostensibly from a polling company, asking which candidate the voter supports. In this case, if the "pollster" determined that the person was a McCain supporter, he made statements designed to create doubt about the senator.
Thus, the "pollsters" asked McCain supporters if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if they knew he had fathered an illegitimate child who was black. In the conservative, race-conscious South, that's not a minor charge. We had no idea who made the phone calls, who paid for them, or how many calls were made. Effective and anonymous: the perfect smear campaign.
Some aspects of this smear were hardly so subtle. Bob Jones University professor Richard Hand sent an e-mail to "fellow South Carolinians" stating that McCain had "chosen to sire children without marriage." It didn't take long for mainstream media to carry the charge. CNN interviewed Hand and put him on the spot: "Professor, you say that this man had children out of wedlock. He did not have children out of wedlock." Hand replied, "Wait a minute, that's a universal negative. Can you prove that there aren't any?"
Campaigns have various ways of dealing with smears. They can refute the lies, or they can ignore them and run the risk of the smear spreading. But "if you're responding, you're losing." Rebutting tawdry attacks focuses public attention on them, and prevents the campaign from talking issues.
We chose to address the attacks by trying to get the media to focus on the dishonesty of the allegations and to find out who was making them. We also pledged to raise the level of debate by refusing to run any further negative ads -- a promise we kept, though it probably cost us the race. We never did find out who perpetrated these smears, but they worked: We lost South Carolina by a wide margin.
The only way to stop the expected mud-slinging in 2004 is for both President Bush and Senator Kerry to publicly order their supporters not to go there. But if they do, their behavior would be the exception, not the rule." (Emphasis added: mine.)
Fact is, going negative works. History doesn't remember McCain, one of the Republicans who's worked damn hard to be where he's at, a Vietnam vet who's record rival and admittedly, exceeds John Kerry's, was the presidental elect of 2000. It remembers George W. Bush, a man who joined the Texas Air National Guard and didn't serve a day overseas.
Huh? 60/40 and 5 to 1 in news coverage? Who's 'fair and balanced' here?!
Media: Bush and Kerry
"If you were watching the network evening news in June, July and August, you would have seen somewhat favorable coverage of John Kerry -- six out of 10 evaluations were positive -- and somewhat unfavorable coverage of President Bush.
If you were watching Fox News Channel's 6 p.m. newscast, you would have seen about the same coverage of the president. But Kerry's evaluations were negative by a 5 to 1 margin."
That's part of the article. You may follow the link to the whole one. Granted, neither of them are great, but 5 to 1 negative?! And Fox claims to be fair and balanced? Why wasn't there backlash of voters voting against Fox News telling them that Kerry had the consistentcy of pond scum? (I realize I'm exaggerating here). They even covered Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which I quote directly from Brit Hume, the Washington managing editior: "We did a lot on the Swift Boat Veterans. We thought it was a totally legitimate story and found it an appalling lapse by many of our competitive news organizations that were treating that story like it was cancerous." Really? Did you do your homework, Brit?
Apparently not: The Swifties Added Without Asking.
Won't try to cite when CBS did something similar, checking running a story without adqueately making sure that it was at least credible, the backlash was immense. That might be rubbing it in.
Full Circle: Both Sides Are Guilty, And If You're Turned Off By Negative Coverage, Turn Off Your TV
Kerry lost for a lot of reasons: he couldn't get the War in Iraq attacks to stick to Bush, he wasn't convincing in his vague plans for the economy and winning the peace, the man wouldn't shut up about his Vietnam service when there were issues he could of focused on, he didn't inspire voters very well...I could go on all night. He didn't lose because his supporters do what supporters do, which is go on the attack. If it offended you, I'm sorry it did. But negativity is part of politics, and as Bush reminds us himself, he's a big boy with his own political agenda, and any connection he had to any past president is purely heredity and coincidental. You are right by saying it is unfair that we attack each other on these forums, conservative and liberal, over the same stereotypes that we both profess are wrong. Get a conversation going, and talk about stopping personal attacks that have nothing to do with belief. I, for one, will promise I will try to not attack anyone on these boards unless they flame me first. Turn off the TV, by the way, and try to live a few days without the media. Especially...on an election year.
On Al Gore's Internet, the wolf dragon/AWM signing off,
Sol