The Campaign: a Marathon, Not a Sprint

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 29, 2004

Byline: Jamie Dettmer, INSIGHT

We are in for an exhaustingly long campaign. Eight months before Americans cast their votes, George W. Bush and presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry already are engaged in heavy early skirmishes as they probe for potential weak spots and test lines of defense and assault. Both have drawn some blood in the clashes the Democrat with his criticism of Bush for alleged partisan use of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in TV spots, and the Republican in painting the Massachusetts lawmaker as Mr. Flip-Flop, a theme likely to be pressed more emphatically as the election draws closer.

Democrats have been buoyed by opinion polls suggesting that Kerry is running ahead of Bush from 4 percent to 8 percent, depending on the survey. But with Bush being the target of months of criticism during the Democratic primary season, his perceived slide in public support reportedly fallen to the lowest level of his presidency is understandable. The big GOP guns have yet to be fired and the Republican attack apparatus is only just gearing up.

That is the argument of Bush aides, who insist that the drop in the president's approval is a natural result of the Democratic nominating contest. Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd says Bush likely will be running just behind Kerry until the Republican National Convention, when the president can go on full offensive and close with a kick.

Republican strategists also maintain that Kerry's support is soft, comparing it to the kind of backing Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis enjoyed early in the 1988 race against then president George H.W. Bush. Once campaigning in earnest started, Dukakis' support quickly evaporated. GOP strategists argue the same thing will happen to Kerry.

Such arguments have merit but don't satisfy everyone in the Bush camp. Some Republicans on Capitol Hill worry that the Bushies may be underestimating Kerry. They say he is no Dukakis. He will be a tougher contender than Dukakis and is unlikely to fail to respond to controversy and attacks, as his Massachusetts forerunner did. Kerry will slug it out, and neither he nor his rival will shy away from full engagement.

Nor will the Democrats as a whole. A coalition of well-funded Democratic Party interest groups already has taken to the field, supplementing Kerry's campaign. Led by veterans of presidential and congressional campaigns, the coalition in early March began a $5 million advertising campaign in 17 battleground states. Already under legal challenge from the Republicans, this parallel Democratic campaign appears to be circumventing new campaign-finance laws designed to stop the parties from spending so-called soft money unregulated and opaque contributions on behalf of presidential candidates.

How quickly all those full-throated cries against unlimited expenditures by special interests have become one with Nineveh and Tyre. Ellen Malcolm, a veteran Democratic activist, told the Washington Post: "There is no question that Bush has $100 million and Kerry is down to zero. It's very important that there are alternative voices out there talking about the Bush record." Voices such as those of George Soros and Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Faced by the effort of this separate Democratic campaign, which is helping Kerry while he raises more funds, some Republicans argue that Bush needs to up his game more and "do a Clinton" in short, make a full-bloodied assault on his opponent well before the conventions.

But Bushies point out that the president already has gone quickly on the attack and unleashed a barrage of TV spots of his own. "Being too early could backfire our best lines of attack could become dated by the summer and fail if we use them now," says a Bush campaign strategist. "This race isn't a sprint, it's a marathon. And you have to pace yourself."

They also say the president soon will increase the rate and level of his attacks on Kerry, focusing on the Senate record of his opponent and on his rival's economic policies, as he did in a March 7 speech in Virginia, in which he warned against "economic isolationists" who favor barriers to free trade.

All of that makes sense, but there are GOP doubters who have been anxious about the misfiring of some attacks to date and are not at all certain the Bush election team is as surefooted now as it was back in 2000. They point to the flop of the president's State of the Union address, in which he announced a long-term plan for a manned probe to Mars and failed, according to some critics, to reassure the nation about the economy. In recent polls Bush's handling of the economy has received poor approval ratings.

The economy is likely to remain the major focus of the Kerry camp. The Democrat is pushing the loss of jobs during the Bush presidency as a primary reason for voting the Republican out of office. "After leaving a four-year trail of broken promises in every region of America, we know that Bush is running from his record because he doesn't have a record to run on," the junior senator from Massachusetts told supporters in one speech.