90-Day Media Strategy by Bush's Aides to Define Kerry

WASHINGTON, March 19 — President Bush's campaign is following an aggressive and precise 90-day media strategy to define Senator John Kerry as indecisive and lacking conviction, with a coordinated blitz of advertisements, speeches and sound bites, senior campaign advisers said this week.

The goal, several campaign aides said, is to first strip Mr. Kerry of the positive image that he carried away from the Democratic primary contests and then to define him issue by issue in their own terms before the summer vacation season. The central thrusts will be national security and taxes, they said.

The aides said the strategy was planned weeks ago in coordination with Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political aide, while Mr. Kerry was battling for his party's nomination.

The aides are following a tight timetable, they said, and they want to have defined Mr. Kerry on their terms between now and early June, when they expect voters to stop paying close attention to politics, at least for a time. In addition, Mr. Kerry will very likely have a much larger war chest with which to fight by then, reducing the effect of the Republican media blitz.

"We just see this as the greatest window of opportunity, not that there won't be others," said Mark McKinnon, Mr. Bush's head media strategist. "It's easiest to define somebody when they're ill-defined, and John Kerry's ill-defined."

The Bush aides pronounce their efforts a success so far, and point to polls showing that Mr. Kerry's ratings are dropping while Mr. Bush's are rising, a huge relief to a campaign that just a couple of weeks ago was criticized even by some Republicans as appearing flat-footed.

"If you look at the average balance of the public polls now, the president's either even, or up one or two points," said Matthew Dowd, the president's chief campaign strategist. "And two weeks ago he was down three or four."

This early drive by the Bush campaign is in marked contrast to the approach of the Kerry organization, whose strategists say they believe the period before June is important but not as crucial as Mr. Bush's team asserts. Calling the Bush campaign's depictions of their candidate "distortions," Mr. Kerry's strategists said the labels would not stick. Mr. Kerry is on vacation in Idaho this week.

"The notion that you have a one-sided definition that takes hold five months before an election is ridiculous," said Bob Shrum, a senior advisor to Mr. Kerry. "I don't think the Bush campaign's caricatures are going to stand up to the reality. Voters are smarter than that."

Mr. Shrum added that the campaign had months in which to define Mr. Kerry and critique Mr. Bush.

The Republicans' move comes unusually early in the campaign season. That helps explain the intensive volley of accusations and counteraccusations between the campaigns that is more common in October than March, and which some members of both parties worry will turn off voters.

But Mr. Bush's aides and strategists said that they had a unique opportunity to strike now, when polls show that most prospective voters do not have a good idea about who Mr. Kerry is — and when Mr. Kerry is neither financially nor strategically equipped to respond in kind.

So far, Mr. Bush's campaign has spent nearly $20 million in advertisements while Mr. Kerry has spent nearly $2 million on commercials since effectively clinching the nomination on March 2. Mr. Bush's advisers emphasized that they will by no means let up after June and still expect an extremely close fight in November. "My guess is this race is going to be roughly tied for a while," Mr. Dowd said.

The Bush campaign's strategy began in earnest last week, with its first confrontational advertisement, asserting that Mr. Kerry would raise taxes significantly and weaken the Patriot Act, "used to arrest terrorists and protect America." It intensified this week with a new, multipronged effort to define Mr. Kerry as "weak on defense" and too unsteady to lead the nation in the war on terror. The campaign did that most precisely with a new advertisement broadcast in West Virginia on Tuesday highlighting Mr. Kerry's vote against the $87 billion package to support military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Vice President Dick Cheney reinforced it at a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday at which he said Mr. Kerry's record was not impressive "for someone who aspires to become commander in chief in this time of testing for our country." Campaign aides and surrogates reinforced the message further in cable news interviews and in conference calls with reporters throughout the week.

The Republican National Committee, which works closely with the campaign on its message, fanned the flames with e-mail messages to reporters and supporters with the heading "John Kerry International Man of Mystery," making fun of his statement that "I've met more leaders" who wanted him to win, and followed with an Internet advertisement on the same theme.

White House and campaign officials were reluctant to disclose details of their plans for the weeks ahead. But several hinted that they would soon attack Mr. Kerry more forcefully on his tax policy, in part by discussing votes in his Senate career supporting taxes that had an effect on the middle class, not just the wealthy.

Bush campaign officials said they were almost certain which themes they would be striking and what sorts of advertisements they would be showing at just about any given moment between now and June, even while acknowledging their plans could change on a dime.

"The goal is right now," said a Bush adviser, "while he's weak, while they're financially struggling, to strip him of all the good that somehow in my opinion erroneously got attached to him."

The advisers contended that that would be relatively easy to do because impressions of him are so ill-formed with many voters. "He peels like an onion," said an associate of Mr. Bush. "People aren't like, `I really believe in this guy and I'm not willing to accept that information.' They accept it very easily. With some candidates there's a hard shell. With him there's a soft skin."

Polls show that many voters say they do not know enough about Mr. Kerry to form very strong opinions. In a New York Times/CBS poll taken March 10 to 14, more than 40 percent of Americans surveyed said they were either undecided or did not know enough about him when asked if they had a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Mr. Kerry. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Mr. Kerry's campaign acknowledges that he is nowhere near as well-known as is Mr. Bush. But it contended that was more of a problem for Mr. Bush, who they said was trying to turn the election into a referendum on Mr. Kerry rather than one about the president.

"The important thing to remember is that the American people see George Bush as the steward of a bad economy, the leader who led them to war under false pretenses," said Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kerry, striking two themes the campaign believes will be a strong suit against the president.

Kerry campaign officials said they would not be pulled into competing at Mr. Bush's pace, though they would fight back hard, as they have done with surrogates on cable news, e-mail messages to supporters and reporters, Web videos and, to a lesser extent for now, television commercials.

"We're going to fight back when we need to fight back," Mr. Shrum said, adding he did not believe the Bush campaign was as planned out as the Republicans claimed.

Some Republicans said for the last couple of weeks at least, Mr. Kerry's campaign had seemed to be playing more defense than offense.

"The Bush people have stabilized the ballot," said Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster whose firm, Public Opinion Strategies, is releasing a new survey of likely voters showing negative shifts in Mr. Kerry's favorability rating.

But other Republican and campaign officials said they expected Mr. Kerry to come back strongly after his vacation ends next week. And Mr. Dowd said these have been only two good weeks in a long campaign — helped along by missteps from Mr. Kerry that the campaign cannot count on week to week. "Most campaigns start with a plan," he said, "very few end with a plan."

Making it a referendum on Kerry is exactly what they should do. People already know Bush. Up or down on Bush policies would be closer than Bush or Kerry. Kerry isn't an easy guy to like. But Bush is. I hope some of the stories, like calling the Secret Service guy an SOB, get out so people can see Kerry as the jerk he appears to be.

I took at look at Kerry's and Bush's web sites. Bush's site has agenda laid out on many issues, without mentioning Kerry. That got me wondering as to what Kerry's agends was, or if he even had one. His site is almost 100% bashing Bush with very little to say on Kerry's ideas.

I think the goal is to hammer Kerry from now until June, and then everyone goes on vacation and forgets politics for awhile. If done correctly, Kerry will be in such a hole by June, he won't be able to crawl out.

Why are Bush staffers talking about their strategy to the NYtimes?

Because maybe it's Clinton strategists?....(Pulling down my tinfoil hat over my ears.)

They're not leaking anything that's public knowledge. They're trying to make Kerry feel very comfortable with himself, making him feel complacent, arrogant, and like he has the election locked up. And just when he thinks he's won it, the Bush campaign will put him away. Its classic disinformation strategery.

I can remember just couple of weeks back when Kerry was leading in the polls, how people were criticizng the Bush campaign and the RNC for not doing anything. Now that they are doing something about it, its like why are they doing it, or not doing enough.
I remember we had the same complaints when Dean was doing so well in the Rat polls and pretty much had the nomination sewed up when not a single vote had been cast but went down and everyone was complaining about Bush not defining Dean. Why waste money? I think that the strategy of Bush since his first campaign against Ann Richards was to play the underdog, and look at how well that has played out. Of course, having a liberal media and the Rats getting their groups out to come out and vote make a difference of couple million votes plus anyways that the Pubbies have to put up with.
Its interesting where in every election cycle, most fraud activities happen only in rat controlled districts and constituencies.

I took at look at Kerry's and Bush's web sites. Bush's site has agenda laid out on many issues, without mentioning Kerry. That got me wondering as to what Kerry's agends was, or if he even had one. His site is almost 100% bashing Bush with very little to say on Kerry's ideas.

Why is Kerry the nominee -- is it because of his great plans? No, it's because he hates Bush, served in Vietnam, and was considered the most electable. That seems like it's his entire platform!

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